Kylie Davis: (00:02)

Welcome to the Proptech Podcast. It's Kylie Davis here and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. I passionately believe we need to create and grow a sense of community between the innovators and real estate agents, and sharing our stories is a great way to do that. The aim of each episode is to introduce our listeners to a Proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and explore the issues and challenges raised by the tech and how they can create amazing property experiences. And my guest in this episode is David Howell, the notoriously quiet CEO of Dynamic Methods.

Kylie Davis: (00:40)

Now, I chose David that he is an international man of history in Proptech because everyone knows him, but he is impossibly hard to catch. Now, you might not have heard of Dynamic Methods itself, but you probably know of their products if you're an agent. They're the brains behind REI Forms across New South Wales, South Australia, WA, and most states, Realworks in Queensland, and now they've launched Forms Live in Victoria. And they specialise not just in forms and contracts, but in the workflows for agents and property managers around those forms.

Kylie Davis: (01:14)

And with more and more tech-enabled platforms, streamlining those workflows for agents and property managers, the quality of the forms going into these systems is really paramount. And that's Dynamic Methods' secret sauce. So if you didn't think a conversation about forms could actually be interesting, get ready to be surprised as we look at how forms really are the oil that's greasing the wheels of digital transactions in real estate.

Kylie Davis: (01:39)

So welcome to the Proptech Podcast, David Howell. How are you?

David Howell: (01:43)

I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Kylie Davis: (01:45)

I'm good, thanks. So David, when we have a new guest on the Proptech Podcast, the first thing we ask is for you to give us your elevator pitch. So what is the problem that Dynamic Methods solves?

David Howell: (01:59)

Sure. The way I'd describe us is we're a software development company that specialises in real estate.

Kylie Davis: (02:07)

Fantastic. Yeah, simple, simple as that. But you have been going for about 15 years and you are the, I guess, like the oil that is driving the engine of an awful lot of tech or awful lot of innovation inside real estate. So tell us about how you started and your personal background.

David Howell: (02:30)

Sure. So my background is actually electrical engineering and mathematics. So while I was studying at university, I got a part-time job as a computer programmer. That was what I loved to do. When I was 10 I think, my parents bought us a Commodore 64.

Kylie Davis: (02:52)

Oh.

David Howell: (02:52)

And my dad would bring home the old tapes that you would put on the tape deck. And they were games, but they were actually coding games back in the basic language. So that's how I kind of got the bug of writing code and doing things like that. So while I was in high school, I was doing web pages and things like that as well. And then, yeah, like I said, at uni I was majoring in electrical engineering or computer systems engineering and doing another degree with mathematics. And yeah, got a part-time job doing things around Microsoft Office and office productivity. And that was kind of what we got known for. We were doing lots of things. You know the old maps of Word templates?

Kylie Davis: (03:46)

Yes.

David Howell: (03:46)

Things like that.

Kylie Davis: (03:46)

Oh yes.

David Howell: (03:47)

So we're doing a lot of work for law firms and government departments, both local and federal. We kind of became known for our skills in productivity within the office, particularly around forms and documents. We worked with a lot of presidents, libraries, with a lot of law firms around Australia.

David Howell: (04:12)

So when I finished uni, I ended up starting my own business and doing some consulting around that. So again, my expertise was around Microsoft Office and productivity tools to fill out forms and create structured data as quickly and easily as possible. And yeah. But that's got absolutely nothing to do with real estate.

Kylie Davis: (04:44)

So bring us back to real estate. How did that happen?

David Howell: (04:46)

What happened was, because we were quite well known for that across Australia and I had ... So this was just myself and I had one staff at that time. the Real Estate Institute of South Australia needed some work done, completely unrelated to what we do now. And I went into their office and I did my work, and then saw what they were using in terms of offering forms and contracts for their members. And I thought we could do something better.

Kylie Davis: (05:16)

Was that on a pad of paper or something, like back in the old days?

David Howell: (05:20)

It was very primitive system. They were still selling stationary pads as well. So the combination of the two. But it was just very, it was just very cumbersome. So I thought we could do something better. And I actually pitched to the Real Estate Institute of South Australia CEO two weeks later. He loved the idea but couldn't afford it. So we actually went to New South Wales first instead. And I pitched to Tim McKibbin. And yeah, he loved the idea and he took a punt on us, being completely unknown in real estate, and yeah, that's exactly how it started.

David Howell: (06:03)

So gradually, just over time, we've gotten through each state and territory, and yeah, over time the software or the platform has changed quite a bit as well. That was the very first version. That was a long time ago. It's well over 10 years ago.

Kylie Davis: (06:21)

Yep.

David Howell: (06:21)

And that was using some old technology. And we actually got caught by a bit of a feud between Apple and Adobe.

Kylie Davis: (06:34)

Right.

David Howell: (06:35)

Back then our software relied-

Kylie Davis: (06:37)

Back in the day.

David Howell: (06:37)

Yeah. Our software relied heavily on Adobe Reader and the plugin with the browser. And I don't know if it ever hit you, but Steve Jobs and Adobe had a bit of an argument over their plugging and Apple refused to change their browser to suit Adobe. So that meant the plugin broke, which meant we had quite a lot of support, a lot of issues around our Mac users. So what we did is we actually went back to the drawing board and we rewrote the whole platform again. And this time we weren't relying on any plugins or anything like that. So it's completely native in the browser.

Kylie Davis: (07:22)

So Dynamic Methods is the name of the business, which is the software company that specialises in data and forms and real estate. But the company or the business that you're now talking about, the products that people are most likely to know you by are REI Forms? Would that be correct?

David Howell: (07:42)

Yeah. Nobody really knows Dynamic Methods.

Kylie Davis: (07:46)

No, you're a bit of an international man of mystery, I jokingly tell people.

David Howell: (07:49)

I like it that way. So, yeah. Think of our platform as a bit of a white label product. We're REI Forms Live in most states and territories, but are also Realworks up in Queensland, and then we're Forms Live down in Victoria.

Kylie Davis: (08:06)

So how does that relationship with the real estate institutes work?

David Howell: (08:10)

So what we do is we partner with the best provider of forms in the state and territory. So that's where the real estate institutes come in. They provide us with the forms and the IP around the forms. And then we provide the technology and it produces a great solution.

Kylie Davis: (08:31)

Fantastic. So Dynamic Methods has gone solo in Victoria though with Forms Live. Tell us a little bit about that.

David Howell: (08:39)

Yes, so over the years we now manage well over or nearly 800 forms across Australia within our platform. And we have become, I guess, the industry experts on forms and form technology in real estate. So with Victoria, we actually thought consulting with a property law firm was a better way to go. So we have launched Forms Live and using Colin Biggers & Paisley as our consultants for forms.

Kylie Davis: (09:19)

We've gone from this old, traditional method of having a pad full of forms that you fill in and you get your client to fill in or you post them out and you send them out. What does best practise using forms digitally look like today?

David Howell: (09:33)

Good question.

Kylie Davis: (09:38)

And one I've sprang on you, so I'm sorry about that.

David Howell: (09:42)

No. Kind of the issue we have is we still need to support a lot of different methods for filling out forms, which is where it gets complicated. We've got a lot of forms from different sources that might be from the local law society or the Law Institute, might be from the local government, might be from federal government. And these forms may still need to be filled out by hand or partially filled out.

Kylie Davis: (10:14)

Because of a law that says that they need to have a wet signature still.

David Howell: (10:17)

Yes, exactly. So yes, some forms, not all forms, some forms must still be signed on paper, pen and paper. And also, a lot of real estate agents and property managers across Australia that they still want to do that. So we need to provide them with that solution as well. If we wanted to provide them with just a single solution of everything is done online and electronically, then things would be a lot easier. But also then, like things are a lot more difficult as well.

David Howell: (10:54)

Yeah, in terms of a best practise today, electronic signing is by far the most efficient way to get your forms executed. But yeah, like I said, it doesn't always work out that way unfortunately.

Kylie Davis: (11:11)

Let's just pause there for a moment and hear a quick word from our sponsors.

Kylie Davis: (11:16)

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Kylie Davis: (12:10)

Thinking about what in the future, what does an amazing forms process look like? I mean ideally it would be a process that you don't even really realise or care much that you're filling in a form because no one loves paperwork.

David Howell: (12:28)

That's right. You're right. But it is kind of a necessary evil.

Kylie Davis: (12:32)

Yeah.

David Howell: (12:34)

I like to think of Forms Live as the engine around forms and agreements where other companies like our CRM partners and things like that don't have to worry about the annoying boring things like legislation changes and forms, terms, conditions on all those types of things. So they can focus on the other innovative workflow changes, improving efficiency and things like that. So we become, I think you said, the engine or the oil between some of those systems. We're not always the ones driving the innovation, but we're giving the tools for the industry to change.

Kylie Davis: (13:20)

Because we're seeing a huge explosion of new tech in this space certainly from Real Time Agent and OurProperty and all of the CRMs, like everyone's wanting to integrate or have access to forms through their platforms. So I guess it's really important that we have forms as agents and contracts, as agents sitting inside technology that allows them to be easily pulled through or used by, handed off to other platforms.

David Howell: (13:53)

Yes, yes. Over the last probably two to three years our focus has been on providing tools to automate certain parts of the form process, where we can, again, depending on what legislation allows. Again, rather than us having to define what that is and restrict people on what they can and can't do, we've created an API which allows other products to be able to do those cool things like Real Time Agent and Inspect Real estate, Console Cloud, all those guys, where they really are trying to make the life of an agent a lot easier by not having to fill in a lot of the forms which are still a necessity. So, yeah, in an ideal world, there wouldn't be any forms, but it's still the best way to communicate between two parties or multiple parties with terms and conditions and contracts.

Kylie Davis: (14:55)

Yeah. So describe for me what an ideal new forms process looks like. So I'm sitting inside my CRM ...

Kylie Davis: (15:03)

Forms process looks like. So I'm sitting inside my CRM and what happens?

David Howell: (15:07)

Good question. Again, it depends on... Let's take a tenancy agreement for example, because it's an obvious one. Where you might have a CRM who has a lot of the information required in a tenancy agreement, but maybe not all of it. What they can do with our APIs, they can go through, create the form, populate all the fields and complete it and send it off for electronic signing all through our API.

David Howell: (15:36)

Now if they had 100% of the information of the agreement, they could do all that behind the scenes and the property manager wouldn't have to see the form itself. So we provide all the tools to be able to do that. However, that's not always possible. Let's take a contract for a property.

Kylie Davis: (15:57)

The contract for sales?

David Howell: (15:57)

The contract for sale. So in those cases you may want to create a contract and you might have 80% of the information but you don't have all of it. So again, at CRM, may create the form, populate the information. It has, but then provide our user interface or our user experience to the real estate agent to complete the contract itself and then send it off for signing.

Kylie Davis: (16:26)

Fantastic. So, how good are agents at the moment at making the most of these efficiencies and these automations? What proportion of the industry do you think is getting the most out of it?

David Howell: (16:41)

I'll be honest, our champions are our property managers. Property managers are our-

Kylie Davis: (16:46)

Big shout out to the property managers. Whoohoo. Go girls.

David Howell: (16:48)

They our champions, they are very time poor and they have a lot of forms and things to adhere to. Renewals, entry notices, inspections, management agreements, tenancy agreement. There's a form for everything and they have so much work to do.

David Howell: (17:12)

So this is where, yeah, form side really does shine and makes it easier for them in combination with the integration with the CRMs. So they've really taken off and picked up and particularly with electronic signing, with DocuSign. They have embraced it and it's really starting to show off with some of those property managers who just get to save so much time by not having to worry about following up for forms and agreements where part of the legislation is they have to make sure that all these things are signed and executed before they can do things.

Kylie Davis: (17:51)

But in the world that you guys are enabling, they're able to pull the information through, send it out. And then it's coming back automatically or it's alerting them if it's not filled in. Is that what's happening?

David Howell: (18:04)

Yeah, so when we launched electronic signatures, there was this fear that consumers wouldn't be confident in using it.

Kylie Davis: (18:13)

Oh God.

David Howell: (18:14)

But it actually ended up being the other way around. Because every day you're always signing for something, whether it's, let's say a package comes to your door, you're signing a device, your signature. And the consumers actually are more afay with it than a lot of the real estate agents.

David Howell: (18:35)

And so the fear factor wasn't really there. We've got a couple of case studies where the management agreements for a property management was sent out via DocuSign and 70% of them came back within three days, which was a huge boost in productivity for that particular company.

Kylie Davis: (19:01)

Wow.

David Howell: (19:01)

Whereas normally they'd be chasing them up because they've got to either print them out, sign them, and send them back or scan them, all those types of things. So it's just saving the consumer a lot of time and therefore saves them a lot of time.

Kylie Davis: (19:15)

I really struggle to understand why agents don't want to introduce this. I recently changed property managers on a property that we own. And he emailed me the form and I said, "Well, don't you have a DocuSign? Can't I electronically?" He goes, "Oh, no, we're old school. Hahaha." I was like, "Well, no, dude, I'm going to sign this on. I'm going to sign this with Google docs and I'm going to send it back to you." And he went, "Oh, I'm not sure if that's valid." I said, "Well it definitely is. I can assure you. This is how we're doing it."

Kylie Davis: (19:46)

And I know that on an on another property that we bought or when we tried to buy this property, in fact we nearly lost the whole deal because the agent had emailed me the contract back. The contracts had been going backwards and forwards on email to the point where the file size got so huge that, I was working at news at the time and news, had a 10 MB limit on email. And so I was thinking that they hadn't sent it to me. They were thinking I hadn't sent it back. The time was ticking and everyone was thinking rude words about each other because of a 10 MB email limit. And it's just so unnecessary.

David Howell: (20:25)

It is, it is. Look, I can understand. Just so a great example is Tom Hector from Harris Real Estate. He uses our platform and he uses DocuSign. And he sells about 200 houses a year.

Kylie Davis: (20:45)

Wow.

David Howell: (20:46)

Which is absolutely amazing and he's a machine. And he said he couldn't do it without electronic signing. I think a lot of agents feel like they need to be in front of the buyer and seller in those scenarios. And I think in the past you did have to, but moving forward it's just not possible to do that. And there are other ways around creating that emotion.

David Howell: (21:21)

See, there is certainly an art to what real estate agents do when they're selling houses. And that you've got to respect what they do there, but it doesn't have to be done in the living room of the buyers and sellers anymore. And to be honest, no one has time for that.

Kylie Davis: (21:40)

Yeah. I think it's actually to do a disservice to try and hang onto some of those old fashioned courtesies.

David Howell: (21:48)

Yeah, yeah.

Kylie Davis: (21:48)

Because if it's not convenient to you or if it's not convenient to your client and it's making them do more work in order to get the necessities sorted out, then it becomes a real hassle. And then the hassle becomes part of the stress and the stress is not a great service experience.

David Howell: (22:08)

Yes, exactly.

Kylie Davis: (22:10)

Yeah, so Harris are doing a great job. Tom Hector at Harris big shout out to Tom. Anyone else that you can call out?

David Howell: (22:19)

Oh, there's too many. That's the thing. It's a combination of everything. So it's a combination of the fact that now we've had this API out for quite a while now where you can do all these cool things. If you want to connect to Zapier and have an SMS sent to you when a tenancy agreement has been signed by the tenant or something like that, you can configure it to do that. If you want to generate another form from your... What would it be?

David Howell: (23:02)

From a new routine inspection or an entry renewal. Or if you want to automatically plan your schedule for your inspections and automatically create those inspection notices, then something like Inspect Real Estate, they can do all that for you as well. So by having this API, which the sky's the limit in what you can do that we've allowed other people to really jump in and make the most of it.

Kylie Davis: (23:34)

Cool.

David Howell: (23:34)

So yeah, so we don't always hear about the stories, but we just see it in the amount of forms that are being created every month. And the fact that that's increasing must mean it's a good thing.

Kylie Davis: (23:48)

And you guys recently hit your 24,000,000th form that was produced in the system.

David Howell: (23:54)

Yes.

Kylie Davis: (23:54)

Congratulations.

David Howell: (23:55)

Thank you. So, our users are creating about a half a million forms a month at the moment.

Kylie Davis: (24:02)

Wow.

David Howell: (24:03)

And that's still growing. So last year that was about 300,000 forms a month. And we've grown another 200,000 forms a month, which is just crazy. Yeah, it's great.

Kylie Davis: (24:18)

So with Forms Live now, operating in Victoria, Victoria was the place where being able to digitally integrate forms was a problem. That's now opening up to agents down South.

David Howell: (24:31)

Yes. So I guess the way my business has grown is just taking our time. The way our company runs is very different to your typical startup or prop tech company. Where we're fully self-funded. We don't have investors or anything like that. So we're more about making sure we take our time and do it right.

David Howell: (25:03)

And that's not to say startups don't do it right, but they're often have other pressures about growing and growth and making sure you get a return. So we've created 24 million forms across Australia. And yeah, now it's time to get into Victoria and get that right in there as well.

David Howell: (25:25)

So, yeah, it's just been a slow process. We've picked up a state or territory every couple of years. And yeah, unfortunately for Victorian agents, they were the last. But we're here now and we're happy to help.

Kylie Davis: (25:44)

Let's just pause there for a moment and hear a quick word from our sponsors.

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Kylie Davis: (26:56)

Fantastic. And you've also done some third party product development. Tell us a little bit about some of those projects.

David Howell: (27:05)

Sure. So we are the tech provider for some other companies as well. And that ranges from conveyancing as well as property management and sales. And we're actually consuming our own APIs as other CRMs would do as well.

Kylie Davis: (27:30)

Drinking your own champagne is the... Yeah, no, no, no. We don't do that.

David Howell: (27:39)

Yeah. So, and again, it's all around our expertise, which is, which is forms and process and workflows. So we're working in partnership with quite a few other companies. So it's hard to talk to all of them, but in terms of API, companies using our API, we're over a hundred companies using our API now.

Kylie Davis: (28:01)

Wow. Okay.

David Howell: (28:03)

Which is just crazy because about seven or eight years ago, we had to pay someone to use our API. Now we're getting requests every week.

Kylie Davis: (28:16)

Yeah. Well API's are all the rage aren't they? And before you mentioned that probably managers can create a Zap. Are there many property managers out there who know how to use Zapier or to create a Zap, or is that something that you guys do?

David Howell: (28:34)

They aren't many. And yeah, I guess it's just an example of one thing we haven't done well, which is I guess from my point of view being critical, is we haven't really educated our users on what you can really do with Forms Live. And that's something we're hoping to work on this year, which is partly why I'm on this-

Kylie Davis: (29:05)

I know. And enjoying it so much.

David Howell: (29:08)

Yes, I love it.

Kylie Davis: (29:12)

Just for the listeners out there, it's taken me a couple of months to get David onto the podcast. So, showing people exactly what great efficiency looks like in their offices is, I guess, the next opportunity for you guys.

David Howell: (29:30)

Yeah, exactly. So I'll be up at the [Aria 00:29:32] Q-Summit in a week's time to show them some of the efficiencies we've got around the contracts and agency agreement, or the form six up there. So I'll doing some breakout sessions with the audience there. And yeah, we will start to publish some the blogs on how to get the most out of Forms Live and integrations, particularly things like-

David Howell: (30:03)

... form side and integrations, particularly things like DocuSign. A great example you were saying before when your issues with the contract with buying your place, the agent, if they use DocuSign they could actually tell whether you had opened up and reviewed the contract but had not yet signed it. So you could do that with all the parties who need to execute it. So you can actually see where everyone's at, and that gives you more information to then focus on what you do best, which is making sure you communicate well with both the buyer and the seller.

David Howell: (30:40)

So, for example Carly, if I saw that you'd reviewed the contract but had not yet signed it, I'd quite easily give you a call and just make sure everything was good. And it gives you more information to make a better decision or communicate better.

Kylie Davis: (31:00)

Yeah, absolutely. But also just turn the thing around faster, there's that part of it too. And especially with both people in a couple of working these days, often people are travelling or you need it sent to two different email addresses and it can be hard to just capture things manually.

Kylie Davis: (31:21)

So we did start to talk about some of the software that you're working on for other businesses, including conveyancing but also RESO. You guys are behind RESO aren't you?

David Howell: (31:35)

Yes. So we're the tech providers behind RESO.

Kylie Davis: (31:36)

[inaudible 00:01:38]?

David Howell: (31:38)

Yes, which is all about improving the process. So one of the pain points that agents have is actually getting the information to complete a contract, and then getting it to a point of execution as quickly as possible. So what RESO does is really makes that process easy and it's in the full control of the agent. Whether they want to make the process very fast, they can speed it up or they can make it as, not slow, but if they've got some buyers who aren't sure, they can just ease them into the process of getting the contract prepared.

David Howell: (32:21)

And that's worked out really well. I think it's one of those things where it highlights what the consumer or what buyers want to do more of, and that's be in their own home on their own time, talking to their partners or whoever to make a decision about buying a house. Rather than having to-

Kylie Davis: (32:45)

Together.

David Howell: (32:46)

Yeah. And they can do that on their mobile phone, and they do. That's the crazy thing. People are putting in offers to buy houses on their mobile phone.

Kylie Davis: (32:57)

Well, why wouldn't you? I mean it's the computer we have with us 24/7 pretty much isn't it?

David Howell: (33:02)

That's right, exactly. And people are comfortable doing it. Again, there's that perception that they're not. Like obviously one of the questions around when you're buying a house is if you've got finance and what those details are. And a great example is that in RESO there was a sale which had 14 buyers, I think. And the agent just flat out did not believe that anyone would put in the finance details that they had for their finance approval. And what do you know, all of them put in all the details for finance. It just makes everything so much easier. So again, the agent can just focus on what would they should be doing, which is communicating with the buyers with all the information they've got.

Kylie Davis: (33:59)

Yeah. Fantastic. And gives you a huge amount of confidence when you're going back to your seller to tell them what the offers are, because you know that because they filled in that finance detail that the offers are solid, I guess?

David Howell: (34:12)

Exactly. And you know, we've even had someone who, and this shocked me, we had a testimonial for RESO where a potential buyer actually wasn't successful in buying that property, but enjoyed the experience.

Kylie Davis: (34:33)

Wow. Normally disappointed buyers are the most pissed off people in the world.

David Howell: (34:39)

That's right. I was absolutely shocked that that was the case, but yeah, I've never been in that position, or not in the past. Not that I've bought many houses. But to me that really sums up RESO and how the consumers are really enjoying it.

Kylie Davis: (34:59)

Yeah. Fantastic. So David, I love that we've actually made forms interesting as part of this conversation, by looking at them as how do you actually make all of that the oil that actually greases the other parts of the process to make it frictionless, and to make it really easy, and to provide a great experience to your clients whether they're sellers or buyers. So, what do you think the next five years holds for the real estate industry and especially for your space?

David Howell: (35:35)

Good question. I think the focus over the last probably 12 months is all about automation and workflow, improving workflow. I think ultimately the forms will be a byproduct of that. As our partners and our integrators get more and more sophisticated, they will be populating these forms a lot faster and without the need for manual input. And that will just allow the property managers or the real estate agents to do things a lot faster.

David Howell: (36:15)

And people are afraid of disruption and in some cases that's how it should be, but I think people also have to remember there is certainly an art and a skill to selling houses, and that art and skill is not around administrative-

Kylie Davis: (36:40)

Filling in a form.

David Howell: (36:41)

Filling in a form, yeah. For [Tom Hector 00:36:47] to sell 200 houses a year, he's got a great team who are very efficient. And that doesn't mean he's not employing people or anything like that, it just means they're much more efficient so they can do more with it. So I think that will increase over the next five years, that's the major increase.

David Howell: (37:08)

What would that mean for the industry? Honestly, I'm not sure. I think there's a few extremes, which I don't know that will be the case in the next five years, but definitely there'll be an increase in productivity. All the tools around agents will just make life a lot faster and easier for them. And that will reflect in what real estate agents do and how they do it.

Kylie Davis: (37:37)

And hopefully it reduces some of the stress and helps some of us get our lives back a bit.

David Howell: (37:44)

Yeah. And that's the thing, real estate agents are always working, they're never not working. Same with property managers. I fully respect what they do because I certainly couldn't do it.

Kylie Davis: (37:59)

No. So, it's taken you guys 10 years to get 24 million forms filled in. How quickly do you think it will take for the next 24 million given this speeding up?

David Howell: (38:12)

Look, I think we're on track to do, how many, probably another 8 million forms in the next 12 months I reckon.

Kylie Davis: (38:25)

Wow.

David Howell: (38:27)

Yeah, I'm hoping we could hit the 1 million forms a month target within the next 12 to 18 months with the way we're growing.

Kylie Davis: (38:38)

And that's a great metaphor for how as the tech becomes more integrated, as everything becomes more seamless, it becomes easier to do it. So the volume starts to really ramp up.

David Howell: (38:49)

Exactly. And people always ask how's business when the market's down. But the good thing is there's still that many houses around and generally if they're not being sold, they're being rented. So there's always a form needed for it. And the great thing is from our KPI point of view, we're not worried about anything except to make sure that forms are getting created. Because if forms are being created, then we're a successful business.

Kylie Davis: (39:22)

Fantastic. Well look, David, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us on the PropTech podcast and best of luck with Forms Live in Victoria, and thanks for helping make forms interesting.

David Howell: (39:35)

Thanks Carly.

Kylie Davis: (39:36)

So, that was David Howell, CEO of Dynamic Methods and the powerhouse behind the Real Estate Institute forms and contracts engines of REI forms and Real Works. And now operating independently as Forms Live in Victoria.

Kylie Davis: (39:50)

Now, I realise I'm a terrible geek, but I think this conversation around getting the details of forms and contracts right is really important. And it's great to know that we have companies like Dynamic Methods out there specialising in these things to reduce the administrative burden for agents. Automated form filling in and digital signing, these are things that as an agent, you'd be absolutely mad to ignore in favour of the old ways. I mean why, why, why for God's sake? God put you on this earth to sell and manage real estate, not to do paperwork.

Kylie Davis: (40:20)

And when my new property manager told me that he didn't do that sort of thing, I was really tempted to go elsewhere, except I knew that based on the location of my unit, it was unlikely I'd find anyone else who did it. So I forced him to adopt. And when he told me that he didn't do digital signatures, I think I said something to the tune of, Oh honey, it's 2020 not 1994, I'll sign it digitally, you can have it in an hour, not in five days.

Kylie Davis: (40:47)

And this is the sort of technology that is a no brainer. So if you're an agent, please stop pretending that you're offering better service by doing it the old way. You're not. You're offering a worse service because you're scared, and you're making yourself a bottleneck which is affecting your ability to earn. It's time to suck it up, to ask for some help and get someone to show you how it can be done. And there's lots of help out there, Dynamic Methods being one company.

Kylie Davis: (41:13)

Because as David explained, the API integrations that Dynamic Methods is now offering for REI forms and Real Works by connecting more and more CRMs and tech platforms every week. So the speed and the volume of these integrations is going to get faster and faster. One million forms a month will soon be created on the platform, especially now the Victorian agents who have had to solve the digital form problems themselves individually have now got access to the platform. So expect this stuff to see more of it, expect it to go faster, expect it to become overwhelming if you haven't got your brain around it.

Kylie Davis: (41:53)

Now, if you've enjoyed this episode of the PropTech podcast, we would love you to tell your friends or drop me a line either via email, LinkedIn, or on my Facebook page. You can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google podcasts, and now on Apple iTunes. And if you can think of someone who needs to hear this, please tag them in one of our LinkedIn posts and share it with them.

Kylie Davis: (42:17)

I'd like to thank my audio support, Charlie Holland and the fabulous Jill Escudero and our sponsors, Beepo, making outsourcing easy. And [Home Prezzo 00:12:26] turning your data into amazing marketing content. Thanks everyone. Until next week, keep on PropTeching.