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, especially in these crazy times.

Kylie Davis: (00:23)

Now, the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a Proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and to explore the issues and challenges raised by the technology and how they can create amazing property experiences.

Kylie Davis: (00:36)

And my guest this week is Mark Trowell from the property management disruptor Yabonza. Now, Mark's first job was as a property manager but then he became involved in banking, and many of you may know him from his time at Macquarie. He was recently a guest on The Proptech Association of Australia's Proptech panel, and he made some really insightful comments that blew me away about the scalability of property management, and how the traditional model of geography and having a local office in property management is probably doing a lot of investors a disservice. So, I wanted to get him onto the show and explore that idea further.

Kylie Davis: (01:17)

Now, Yabonza is a full service property management company that is direct to landlords and charges a fraction of the commission of traditional property management. But they are also increasingly working as an outsource property management arm to principals who do not want the hassle of managing their own rent rolls.

Kylie Davis: (01:35)

So, here to tell us all about it; Mark Trowell. Welcome to The Proptech Podcast.

Mark Trowell: (01:40)

Hi Kylie, thanks for having me.

Kylie Davis: (01:41)

No, it's great to have you on the show. Because we had a great proptech panel a couple of weeks ago and I was so interested in some of the comments that you made, I was really keen to get you on the show. But before we kick off, we always start with an elevator pitch. So, what is Yabonza's elevator pitch?

Mark Trowell: (02:00)

Well, I guess in 30 seconds; direct to consumer property management, servicing both the client and ... servicing our clients, being directly [inaudible 00:02:10] tenant and the landlord. I really want the, back to your point around what really we're solving at Yabonza is a number of things. We look at the industry and how it's grown probably over the last 30 or 40 years. And there hasn't been leaps and bounds in terms of technology changes, in comparison to a lot of other industries that have had that sort of same leaps and bounds view, and have been able to scale their businesses create a lot of efficiency, and create high transparency, you know, more communication, etc.

Mark Trowell: (02:43)

So, if you look at those elements, it's going well, I have to a create something that becomes very transparent. So to really give the client and when I told the client or the main tenant and landlord mistakes, a better way of seeing what's actually going on to give them more comfort around what actually is being done on your property, because a lot of it really doesn't get seen today. Because you know, there's a lot of happening in the background with property managers, that just doesn't get seen by landlords or tenants. You know, we bring a lot of acts as a service. So I can see what's actually happening in the background.

Mark Trowell: (03:16)

Another one is that then, therefore increasing the communication levels, increasing the communication channels, and how we communicate them, and what we communicate with them as well. And then the third element is, though, is, is really just a wholesale change in the way the whole property management business is structured. Unfortunately, it's one of those things that was never really structured for the technology that is around today, and to really leverage technology at scale. So in order to in order to really find that efficiency, it's a wholesale change of the way that the business works. And it's bringing it down into very kind of very process driven components of task-driven components overlayed with a high level of service over the top of it to ensure give careful customer service and track lines, but really then enabling us to find the efficiency of the lower level.

Mark Trowell: (04:09)

And finding that efficiently at low level jobs not just efficiency and pricing, but value in terms of the way the property is being managed as well. Everything for repairs and maintenance to the way that open inspections have been allowed to go and just really focusing on going how can that just be better, which saves the landlord more money, saves the tenant tenant queries, [inaudible 00:04:31] really to create a fishing scene, what we call those everyday type of tasks, to then add further value to the client being the tenant and the landlord around how we service them. So not just efficiency and fee structure, but efficiency operating cost which will actually then save the landlord no additional pull out fees or interest in repairs and maintenance. All this stuff adds up over time and looks at your return on your investment.

Kylie Davis: (05:01)

Yeah, so we were talking at a high level about efficiency here. Let's break that down a little bit more so that we so that it it's a little bit more humanised. The old model I guess of property management is to have is that property management requires you to collect rent, it requires you to, you know, get find a tenant, collect the rent, get them on boarded into the property, maintain the property and fix any and repairs and maintenance and, and do a regular inspection to make sure that it's not being damaged. And then when a tenant leaves, do all the post checks, and the traditional way of fixing that was always put a person in it to do all of those things, right? How does Yabonza do that differently?

Mark Trowell: (05:48)

And let me just say, I feel sorry for that person.

Kylie Davis: (05:51)

Oh, yeah, I know. I think property managers have the toughest job.

Mark Trowell: (05:55)

I was that person about 29 years ago. That's where I started, so I know exactly what they do. And I feel sorry for them. But I mean, it is an industry that, you know, unfortunately, you know, they, they, they sort of bare the brunt of everything, because there's just so much going on in their everyday lives. You know, there's only so much time or capacity they actually have. And so it doesn't really allow them to what we call work on those higher value tasks for clients. So, a couple examples you listed there, I think one was around payments, one was around repairs and maintenance. One was around efficiency, inspections, and property mission reports. And there's a number of things that we look at, first of all, we look at property, like data has a lot of data. And we look at processes in terms of standard workflows.

Mark Trowell: (06:44)

Now, it's never going to capture 100% of what you get, but you'll capture the bulk of what you get. Now, if we just break it down into payments. For example, we acquired a company called Easy, Easy Share, which is a payment gateway. And that was actually already operating in the tenant side, aggregating rental payments and able to split bills and that sort of stuff. So we looked at it and when you know what we need to achieve here is a way that we can get local more structured payments. Instead of having money coming in sitting trust accounts for whatever it is, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, whatever it is, have, you know, it's not our money, it belongs to the landlord. How can we create efficiency around that?

Mark Trowell: (07:26)

Because there's a lot of backend work that has to go around when handling real estate world records trust accounts and the way they pass money through, and recording ledgers, and lots of stuff. And by us acquiring EasyShare and plugging into our system which we've been able to disperse for landlord what we created with a straight through payments methodology. So we could take from either one tenant or multiple tenants, didn't have to have the concept of lone tenant anymore. We aggregate those payments, and that would then pass through the payment gateway and then we would move on automatic disbursements on the other side. So this would be any any fee, his own. He has any outstanding approved invoices. And then the net funds dispersed all and was nominated account straightaway. So that's just one thing.

Kylie Davis: (08:12)

That's not a that's not blockchain is it?

Mark Trowell: (08:14)

No, it's not blockchain.

Kylie Davis: (08:15)

Not yet.

Mark Trowell: (08:15)

Not yet.

Kylie Davis: (08:15)

It's pre blockchain.

Mark Trowell: (08:19)

Wait until we bring our own currency. And then maybe we will.

Kylie Davis: (08:22)

Okay. Cool.

Mark Trowell: (08:27)

So that was payments. And so that creates a lot of efficiency around payments. It allows us to to record things in different way. It allows us to track payments in a different way. And for the landlord, the money is there. They're not waiting for longer periods of time. And then it also gives us the ability to bring in more methodologies of payments that we can actually use, eventually blockchain. But it opens up all those opportunities. And not just does it open up opportunities then, in terms of just the way that payments are processed all the way through. It opens up a lot of opportunities on the tenant side.

Mark Trowell: (08:57)

So after you were in [inaudible 00:08:58] is again how can we create beautiful experiences for the tenant. Because the better experience we can create for the tenant, the better it is for the landlord, and the more value creating rental for the landlord. And a good analogy of that right now is there's a lot of built to rent coming to the market. We've probably seen it with companies like [inaudible 00:09:15]. And as an individual landlord, how do you compete with that. And then pure focus is around creating beautiful experiences for the tenant. But them putting in various services in there. They're making payments easy. They're looking after their lifestyle, all those sorts of things.

Mark Trowell: (09:32)

So if you've got a landlord that's got a property right around the corner, from a build to rent property, to build to rent properties is going to be quite desirable. So how do you compete with them? You've got to compete on the service level. And the way that we look at tenants coming into properties, you've got to look at them the same way a hotel looks at them. They're guests. The reason you're able to collect rent on the property is because you've got someone that wants to live there, and I've chosen your property. So how do you make it desirable?

Mark Trowell: (09:55)

And it's not just a case of it's in a good location and the rents right. It's how can I give them a service that they want to come in and actually expect. Yeah, that's how you differentiate two hotels in the same sort of area. What service am I getting. Why is it a four star hotel versus a five star hotel over there. And some it is I've got a concierge that will help me out. They'll do leasings. So our payments gateway allows us then to open up opportunities around our tenants.

Mark Trowell: (10:20)

And we look at how do we make a tenants life in that property as simple as possible, or as easy as possible. And so then he opens up the ability for us to look after the administration of that tenant or that household. So we can facilitate builds for them. So not only doing it now for the property, but we're doing it for on behalf no matter what [inaudible 00:10:39] you have, we direct the platform. It's a one stop shop for you. And that really then creates value, because more people now moving towards: I just want my life, I just want my general life admin looked after. I want everything in that property looked after. So let's make it easy. Let's make it a one stop shop.

Kylie Davis: (10:58)

Yeah, well. I love that I love so much that you're looking at tenants as a guest. That is a that is, I mean, pretty revolutionary and completely flipping the, the traditional way of thinking about tenants who are just people who are too poor to afford a house. And I think it's I think that is actually part of what needs to happen in, in the industry. It's great to see.

Mark Trowell: (11:23)

Great, clearly been there for a reason you want to make this as best as possible. And the better you make this stuff, the better they'll treat the property as well. So it's a two way win. And the more value then therefore, it allows the value to Mangle to recognise.

Kylie Davis: (11:41)

Yeah, so Mark we've talked about payment efficiency, but how does a single centralised tech business in property management be efficient around things like, you know, inspections, or but yeah?

Mark Trowell: (11:58)

So what we've done there. I guess one of the unique things is, is we looked at this and went, how do we scale a business? And it was really breaking it down into the physical elements and what we call non physical. So physical elements mean, why do you need to be present or near a property yet versus what can you actually centralise. So there were two different [inaudible 00:12:21] and the things that was the primary drivers around the physical components were property condition reports, routine inspections, open for inspections, holding case. So the things you have to solve, you solve those, then you have a scalable business.

Mark Trowell: (12:35)

We didn't just have to solve them in such a way that will work I we, we were creating our localised property manager what we had to do is solid and by with this fairly quickly, and and still, again, look at the level of service that we're actually building the efficiency component. And what we actually did in that area was create an on demand workforce. And predominantly there were... They all will have to be licenced.

Mark Trowell: (12:58)

So we know that this is a level of standards that they have to keep. We put them through certain level of training and we're branded. They're given all the actual, they give them all the technology. And so we really make it quite efficient for them. So when someone enters the house or the property or the department, the property, the actual work starts and when actually leave the works finished, everything's uploaded back into our platform.

Kylie Davis: (13:21)

Right? Okay? No clipboards.

Mark Trowell: (13:21)

Sorry?

Kylie Davis: (13:23)

No clipboards?

Mark Trowell: (13:25)

No clipboards. All electronic. All tracking. All traceable, is quite interesting because one of the things that we actually were questioned on. People would say what about quality. What about the standard of these people? And but what we actually found was quality went up. We were finding those people who were then didn't have the same pressures, I guess, of an existing property manager that we spoke about earlier on where they're doing everything and some of the biggest usage of the time is actually content, which might be a property [inaudible 00:14:04], replace maintenance tools at the same time you're trying to handle tenants and landloard queries.

Mark Trowell: (14:08)

And we're spending my time travelling in the car and when I stop, so there's a million things going on. But what were some of my workflows was they were already licenced anyway, so they knew, they know about property management. So they go in and they're focused on one task, they focus on just that job and nothing else, but their job. So it's all about them executing on that piece of work. And because they're an on demand workforce, as well, it's the same sort of things Uber driver or anyone else. You're kind of rated. You've got to work to a certain standard, because if you don't, there is no kind of fallback option. So it's easy, what I would call a self regulating type approach to it.

Mark Trowell: (14:46)

And because of that, you've got people that are wanting to come in and run those work and do a really good job. And we're pretty impressed with our on demand workforce and the way they actually working and the standard that that has come out of it as well. So that really looks after a lot of the condition reports, routine inspections and open inspections. And then holding is the keys to the final thing we had to solve. Because we do know what pays them like. Actually what we did is we rolled out a... We have a business called Yabonza keys.

Mark Trowell: (15:19)

And while there is still physical keys in the network, and there's no, there's no digital keys out. Their uptake hasn't been as quick as it could have been. We rolled at a company called Yabonza keys. And what we actually do is we partner with convenient storage chains, generally 24/7 minis store chains, and we actually put lock boxes in those. All the keys are coded; they're all tracked with NFC devices, and anyone that needs to get on a certain property, they're able to actually go there and add a code.

Mark Trowell: (15:54)

The operator has a device in store and they tell someone what case to actually give them based on the code if passed across. So it's actually a really good trackable service, and actually took on a life of its own, because now actually services a lot of Airbnb properties. So we came to the general community. And we found that a lot of... There's a lot of things that other businesses that prohibit style, and things are like on demand workforce that you need to solve, things like keys. And what we found that started to solve the solution for Airbnb hosts or short term accommodation hosts. And so we may have a lot of short term accommodation hosts constantly booking occasion for the sites and asking us to open more and more sites across the country. So it's actually taken quite a life of it's own.

Kylie Davis: (16:42)

Cool. That's very cool. So how big are you guys now? Like, what cities are you working in?

Mark Trowell: (16:50)

Yeah, coverage is everywhere.

Kylie Davis: (16:52)

Oh, awesome.

Mark Trowell: (16:52)

Everywhere. So one of the things we set out to do is we went with if you want to be scalable, you truly have to be scalable. You can't then say, I'm going to put a local property management in certain area and just build around that. We have to solve these elements around making it scalable. So to give you an idea of our coverage, obviously the main capital cities is a kind of a no brainer, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, all of them clearly [inaudible 00:17:19].

Mark Trowell: (17:20)

But you know, to give you a reach of the properties we own. Obviously the hotspot, bigger concentrations in capital cities, given the fact there's a lot of property there. We've got a lot of landlords coming onto our platform that own multiple properties. And so my own properties in capital cities, but they also don't properties in places like Mount Iser, Alice Springs, Launceston, Toowoomba. I'm naming just a few Ballarat, Bendigo, these are all places that we actually manage property as well. So that's what we had to solve. It was a one stop shop as a landlord, it doesn't matter where your property are, we'll manage it on one platform for you. So you can bring multiple properties one, and you can consolidate the portfolia into one area. And then London actually...

Kylie Davis: (18:05)

Oh, okay, awesome. Yeah. So-

Mark Trowell: (18:06)

You can manage properties in the UK too.

Kylie Davis: (18:08)

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Kylie Davis: (18:47)

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Kylie Davis: (19:20)

So I'm just gonna sort of double back a little bit to confirm like you guys are actually a direct to landlord property management service. So as a landlord, I don't need to do it all myself, like I would with an instrument. But you're you've got property, your property management service that that landlords can basically see all of their properties inside your service rather than having to like we do at the moment. We have, you know, one on the Gold Coast and one in Sydney and they're both managed by completely separate businesses.

Mark Trowell: (19:51)

Absolutely. It's about consolidating, consolidating the portfolio into one area so you get a better rate. I'm actually right. It's full service. So one of the things apart from them creating efficiency in the process area, what we actually recognise is it's the very and moving people up the value chain. So if you can create efficiency and automate processes a certain level, then you're able to bring people up and probably call high end tasks. And those high value tasks for us is the introduction, what we call the property asset manager. And their whole role is to say, okay, you've got a property, and you've obviously bought it for a certain reason, this investment property, it's either income or capital growth. How can we make sure that you're getting the best performance as possible for that property?

Mark Trowell: (20:38)

Let's look at it's not just a case of every six months or four months on the pickup is what is happening in that particular area? What are some of the influences that can change it? Let's look at structuring have you eligible for things like tax depreciations. You know, what is your mortgage situation about computer failure? Anyone else? So it's really getting working with the landlords. So let's map Analyse your ROI and property. If you have to cover the returns, is there anything that we can help we create a couple of returns over time? And then can we trade them for services? Or is it just straight rent? What can we do around that? So we are constantly taking more and more data into that area to really give landlords a better insight into the performance of their property, how it's performing against other properties in the area and why it might be performing worse than properties that seems similar in that area.

Mark Trowell: (21:31)

What changes they have to make to their property to get better performance out of it. So we start looking at property on that sense, which is what we call genuine asset, right? Oh, yeah. and we then have bought in the same a similar concept of a tenant. And we bought in what we call tenant customer services. And we look because we know that the the value of a tenant is we want to make the best as best as possible. How can we service that thing in such a way as well as ready.

Kylie Davis: (22:01)

Awesome. Okay. And I guess that's where that payment system comes in and the ability to pay other bills as a tenant through.

Mark Trowell: (22:10)

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kylie Davis: (22:10)

Okay. Yeah, okay, awesome. Yeah, no, no, I like that as a philosophy. So how frightened should property managers be of Yabonza?

Mark Trowell: (22:20)

Um, I think probably the manager themselves shouldn't be frightened. I think every industry goes through evolutions or changes along the way. I think you've really got to look at what this means for your own business and how you embrace that. And how can you adapt or evolve? What is it? Is it in your business that you like, what is it that you actually want to do? It's different for I guess, real estate principles around the rent roll rest of the individual property manager. But I mean, if you if you kind of separate those two people will individual property manager is a case of just giving you the ability to focus on opportunities that can plug into a service like ours. Last day by a speech to a few property managers and one of the things I drew on was the Airbnb staff.

Mark Trowell: (23:06)

And you look at the AirBnB 10-12 years ago, versus Airbnb today. And there are companies now that services AirBnb around that weren't really in existence 10 to 11 years ago. Look at all the opportunities I've created. Another good analogy was once used as an iPhone, right? So Apple created this great device, put it into everyone's profits created the iOS. And now there is I think, 1.3 million apps on the App Store. 1.3 million opportunities that got created in the last was iPhone 14-15 years now. I mean, that that's opportunity.

Mark Trowell: (23:43)

So it's the same in the property space, there is so much opportunity in this space. So you really got to then seek out what it is that you're actually after. You've got good skills in a property management, specialising some of those start creating even micro businesses that can service businesses like ours. As we scale, as we move into all these different areas, we will consume certain services. And there's Look, there's things out there that we haven't even thought about yet, that people will come up with an idea. That would be a great idea. We become a platform to say, why don't you plug an idea into our platform. And so I think that's one thing that you got to realise what opportunity will be created in the future, from platforms like Yabonza or other platforms? What does it mean, when can we leverage that?

Kylie Davis: (24:29)

Do you have any examples of traditional property managers? Are they How are they working? Can they work with Yabonza? Or like, is there a way that Yabonza can plug into support?

Mark Trowell: (24:45)

Yes, definitely. We've actually recently focused a little bit attention on traditional real estate agencies. And if we look at some of these, I guess, we just said agencies that hurt small businesses, portfolios for a real estate principal, what are you actually after a little bit more focused on sales. And that's what I like doing it don't necessarily invest too much in the property management side. And they're, they're the ones that are based in terms of valuations to their goals and where they might fluctuate, and we'll handle that kind of person. So we've created mechanisms to actually work with existing real estate agents, whether we're basically saying, you can still build an asset or a portfolio and generate income from Yabonza and still trying to touch with that, and effectively then riding in that kind of Prop tech wave and become a part of it.

Mark Trowell: (25:40)

So and still in stay in contact with clients because a lot of these people what they want is the resale now we're going to move into sales and we're moving into sales. But certainly if you look at the average portfolio, which will be changed, so five to 10 years from sales, depending on where it is. We're going to look at, we've got an upsell opportunities in the sales area. We where do we find all the sales to? Because you know, we can have rentals coming to us and saying, what should we do? So we see an ability to acquire close collaboration with existing real estate agents one which is saying, well, we can certainly bring on your rent rolling in, or you can continue to build, I guess, an asset on Yabonza over which you can then recognise the upside into in the future and have probably a bigger upside because we know, we know we're kind of Prop tech heads versus which additional valuations are heading. And still derive an income of that. So we've created a number of models that now allow real estate agents to leverage.

Kylie Davis: (26:36)

Awesome so I guess if you're a real estate agent out there, real estate principal out there and your property management is just a major headache for you. You've got constant turnover of staff and the whole idea of upgrading or modernising your tech just makes you want to run out of the building. And we are going to give you a plug back I can give you a call. So, how does your charging work? Who pays for you? Landlord, I'm assuming?

Mark Trowell: (27:09)

Who pays for us? Yeah, well, 3 to 4 months and yes, you're the the charges to management face sorry, the 3.9. So we've created a lot of efficiency in what we do. So our unit economics is greatly reduced from a traditional, just the way that we're able to scale the business. You know, we don't scale on a linear basis anymore. I think, by memory... I think the average is about 106 per property manager. You know, obviously, fluctuation got a few, quite a lot more than a few [inaudible 00:27:36].

Mark Trowell: (27:36)

But if you're looking in that concept, 100-250 range is generally the scale. And as your business grows, as additional business grows, you generally find that the scaling actually gets worse overheads of different management ways that get brought in and [inaudible 00:27:56] stuff. So we've we've broken that and we become exponentially scalable. So one of the key things in our business is that we have to move away from it, because we've moved away from it, it means that as we get more properties on management, the margins actually become better anyway, because of the exponential scaling behind it. So therefore, it saves those savings that are directly passed back home to the landlord. I mean, you know, we make money from it.

Kylie Davis: (28:23)

Awesome. Okay, so basically, that whole idea that every time you get 100 properties on your books, you need another property manager. That's the that's also the business model that you're breaking or that your that your system is broken breaking?

Mark Trowell: (28:38)

Absolutely. We've moved from what we call a linear scaling approach to an exponential scaling approach. What it does mean is that we don't we, in our early days, we didn't work well with only a few properties under management. We have a certain foundation built into it, but if we only manage it with we're only going to be managing hundred or 200 or 300 or 400 properties [inaudible 00:29:03].

Kylie Davis: (29:04)

That's when you need some really good investors to believe in what you're doing. So tell me a little bit about your background. How did you vote 29 years ago as as what a young teenager you were property managing, but what what have you done in the meantime, before you set up Yabonza?

Mark Trowell: (29:21)

Well, actually I was your at 29 years ago as a property manager in Australia had my real estate licence back then and actually moved to the UK straight after that and and did the same thing. So it was a property manager in London for a couple of years. Before making a logical leap over into banking, I should do very similar fields. And the reason there, I had kind of an accounting apart from property I had an accounting and biblical background anyway. And my my role in banks were always to find efficiencies.

Mark Trowell: (29:54)

So I worked at quite a number of investment banks in the UK for about 14 years. And all of those roles were implementing technology to find the efficiency in some training systems, some in payment systems, some configuration systems. So it was always around how can we take someone's role and create value out of it by automating or creating process efficiency. And some of it was just business transformation and just changing the way businesses were structured or bank parts of the bank restructured to then move people into what we call high value roles. That means more customer focused things and more client focused. So that was a probably a 14 year banking career in in the UK, and then I moved back to Australia in 2008, just as the GFC kicked in.

Mark Trowell: (30:45)

And I started working the programme. So I'm the co founder is quite active. I think most people know in the real estate space. Last I was in the [inaudible 00:30:56] for nearly nine years and probably the last year, five or six years. I mean, it was actually in a running some innovation in real estate technology with requirements, okay, just a really good exposure to, to local real estate agents around the country. I mean, the stats are 40% of real estate agents and 70% of [inaudible 00:31:14] managers. So they're very active in this space. And they're very well experienced in this space as well.

Mark Trowell: (31:20)

So it was a good 10 year [inaudible 00:31:22]. But the it gives you exposure to an even deeper broader industry exposure around the the problems that the industry has faced, and a lot of that is around the scalability of the businesses, the fact that these businesses are still quite local, not local in terms of their outlook. That's fine to be local in terms of outlook, but local in terms of the ability to leverage scalability to leverage efficiency, to leverage an exponential scale versus linear style and even recording local technology brought into these businesses couldn't actually leverage it because of the way that the businesses were actually fundamentally structured. It needed a wholesale change to the way the business itself is structured. So they were they were hamstrung around the business model as much as they were around technology itself.

Kylie Davis: (32:17)

Yes. And that's what we're seeing right now, isn't it? I mean, where the thing that's, the technology's been around and developing quickly over the last five years, and people are starting to become familiar with it. But the thing that's actually holding up, the change is actually the fact that the business model is actually harder to envision than the technology change. Absolutely. Right.

Mark Trowell: (32:39)

And if you're a local agent, in operating local area, how do you how do you do that? That's that's half the battle. And they're the ones that are gonna look there and see the valuable business I've built up being consumed by lots of buyers coming through. Hence, we see them as opportunity of being how do we collaborate?

Kylie Davis: (33:02)

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Kylie Davis: (33:37)

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Kylie Davis: (34:10)

So look, there is a lot of competition going on in this sort of director landlord space at the moment. I mean, you guys are out there. There's different proper there's a whole bunch of tech, us and Australian tech coming out in the space and how do you find that you compare or what do you see your differences are?

Mark Trowell: (34:29)

[inaudible 00:34:32 I think is great that there's a lot of [inaudible 00:34:33] competitors.

Kylie Davis: (34:29)

It validates the idea.

Mark Trowell: (34:36)

I think I think if you were the only one you set this question around, Oh, am I doing it? Is the validation in it. But yeah, I liken it to a lot of the binary payload companies, right, you see your afterpay, etc, etc. And the more than a client coming in, it's it's educating the client. And that's kind of how I see it now. Repetitive side come into this space. It's really edgy. And recline? Well, there's an alternative way of using a traditional property manager, maybe I need to look at what I'm doing it. So I think you'll get that momentum really starting to shift into this kind of new platforms.

Mark Trowell: (35:13)

I guess new way of handling property management. In terms of nuances, I guess what we do differently to some of the others, I guess probably one of the biggest differences versus your different than your proper and some of those ones is we went out to say, How can we operate everywhere without necessarily having to put a direct property manager on the ground in that area? Right. And that was a big thing.

Mark Trowell: (35:36)

Because we looked at landlords coming on landlords going this way you can take that property, but I still got three other properties over here. So I still have that managing multiple property manager. So how do we, how do we look at Whole portfolios? How do we look at businesses that can really scale and become agnostic of the area that we so that's probably one of the biggest differences that we have two different imperata And then we looked at that next lead and technology, which is the wholesale challenge. It's tasked by expressed portfolio driven. Everything around property management. Now, different property owners moved into some of those areas, which is driven, kind of finding a lot of efficiency, hence, we can pass the savings on that particular area. I guess I'm point of difference is that how do we scale and how do we flip that around to say, let's just make a bunch of other things and running your own payment gateway?

Kylie Davis: (36:32)

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that would that would differentiate too. So so we COVID where and, you know, in the anxiety around economic uncertainty and the impact that that's having on investors and landlords, and if rental payments, you know, rental freezes and stuff like that, stop, we're expecting to see the whole you know, investors sort of flood the market a little bit and start to pull out how are you guys seeing like, what what are your thoughts around? how that could play out?

Mark Trowell: (37:01)

First of all, I guess what we've seen what a dietary show I'm gonna say she's one of the unique things here is because we we were agnostic of area we actually started with writing border area across Australia, the diner issue and starting to show some interesting things which areas are being more heavily impacted by by COVID. Yep. And even right down into which industries are being affected by COVID. We clicked a little bit tighter right and to actually say it. But ironically enough, we've only really seen I think it was a total of about 10% of our portfolio actually, in the early days requested relief, which really only about four or 5% of that went through in some form, which would might have been mental reduction or rental pause and making that happen longer term so we I don't think probably necessary the full impact of again.

Mark Trowell: (37:52)

I think was job keeper and job seeker is still out there. It's it's probably still cropping up slightly. It'll be interesting to see And some of that, that economic stimulus gets pulled away to see what happens in the market at that point of time. But I think what we are seeing is certainly a shift. And we're seeing some of the CBD areas themselves, the vacancy rates, probably starting to climb up a little bit as more certainly closer to a city, I can move to say, for example, from Sydney to a central coast or I can move up towards Queensland, I can migrate into some of these potentially regional or fringe areas, if I'm working from home three or four days a week and, and I don't have to necessarily pay that for redness or Sydney shifting the market around back. So we're seeing rents under pressure in some of those more CBD areas and they're starting to rise and some of those fringe or other areas.

Kylie Davis: (38:47)

Awesome. Okay, well, that's really interesting. So look back, I'm conscious of the time and what do you see? What do you see in your crystal ball for the next five years in property management, how do you see it's going to change Are we going to be in five years?

Mark Trowell: (39:01)

I think what we'll see is a lot of consolidation coming to the market. I think certainly, you'll probably end up with maybe three or four different types of verticals of where that property is managed, you'll have your traditional existing real estate agents, I think they themselves will start to consolidate, we'll get into consolidation. Next that you'll get kind of the, you know, where the self managed model was to take on us really get that vertical growing, and then you probably get in the vertical where we are in different ways and that kind of properties, which is that platforms face and there's probably a little bit of differentiated within those various models as well and people come to the market with different nuances.

Mark Trowell: (39:44)

So I think you will get really those three, four, verticals really planning out and I think you'll probably start with a shift now moving into either self managed or self managed becomes a lot more efficient. I think you're going to shift to some people time it out and then you go shifting to the newer models were kind of wasted. And I think in your localised ageing, sort of smaller ones will start to get consumed in the next consolidation area to try and, you know, also the business.

Mark Trowell: (40:13)

So you'll get, you'll get larger managers of property, you know, the way from the smallest managers of property. So you get larger and ones with larger reach across the country. And I think the biggest thing is, is around what are called double double sided marketplaces. So you'll then get the offering for the landlord and the tenant increase. So I'll still understand the value around the client, and it will become very cluttered, which is, which is a really good thing. So how do we how do we give more value to our members? How do we give more value to attendance that technology enables us to so I think you'll get a lot of value proposition for both the client as well.

Kylie Davis: (40:54)

Awesome. So what does the future look like for your bonds or what's on your roadmap?

Mark Trowell: (40:59)

Our roadmap is continuing expansion throughout Australia. Gross growth is where we are right now at the moment. So we we've got some good things on the horizon, kind of lucrative shift and we've gotten pretty big growth on the immediate horizon which is pretty good.

Kylie Davis: (41:15)

How many properties are in your portfolio?

Mark Trowell: (41:19)

We can't say just yet. I can tell you I can tell you that I have to kill you spray that pipeline is is extremely significant. I can tell you that. So we are we are, actually so we are we actually almost dialling down a little bit on the b2c side of things. Because the pipeline, we're seeing what we call our beta beta cspace, or collaboration with existing real estate agents or groups, and you starting to really strengthen and that those critical mass very quickly.

Mark Trowell: (41:53)

So we would say we're spending a little bit less on the whole data setting and collaborating a lot more with existing agents and existing businesses that have local influence over over landlords and tenants. So that's where a lot of our focus is and what that has done, has built a significant roadmap into the next sort of circa 12. So 24 months, owl, our way there is to get a good base right across Australia. And it will probably even kick off about, I would say mid to end of next year, which is an expansion in into the UK. So there is there is a lot bigger disruption to be heading me.

Kylie Davis: (42:36)

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Trowell: (42:39)

Pricing is actually the same in the UK as it is here. And, and there is a lot of legislative changes coming in the UK. And then they're not currently licenced. There's no trust accounts. There's nothing going on over there. So, right. The way we build that platform is very universal. So what we build for Australia, we need to make sure it's resilient to other geographies as well. And that's one of the beauties of building our technology from the ground up. It also allows us to plug other technology interests as well collaborate with other technology providers, which which you do but Sam roadmap is related. Next year, expand the UK.

Kylie Davis: (43:18)

Awesome. Okay, now I've got one last question for you. Where does the name your bonzer come from?

Mark Trowell: (43:23)

What's the story behind ship bonza we were actually in the UK when we came up with it. And feeling homesick is true stories. And one way she's it's kind of a play on Ozzy slang, which is your bonds is kind of nice. It's good. bonds have been good. And the other one being that it's disingenuous, it doesn't mean anything. Right. So really what we didn't want to do is fall into a trap where we had property management or rent or anything like that trapped into it because you get you get siloed into a particular area and there's we know the property management space grows and the ability to offer additional services to tenants manual grows, you don't want to kind of be pigeon holed in a certain area. The other thing is, it's just disingenuous so we can make up what we want. The other thing is also you had to find the UN name at the end of the Wherever you could get everything around that nine side, and we do trademark everything possible. And it's completely make. So if no one no one can own anything around them. It's just it's just Yep, yep.

Kylie Davis: (44:34)

Fantastic. Well, look, it's been absolutely fabulous to talk to you today Mark trail from avanza. And thanks so much for being on the prop tech podcast. Thanks very much.

Mark Trowell: (44:54)

So that was Mark trail from your bonds app. And I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. As many of you know, I do love a big brain and Mark has a unique take on the future of property management, and how the industry can adapt to the change that's being thrust upon it. I love how you bonds it gives landlords the opportunity to have a whole of portfolio view of their Investments regardless of which state or suburb they're located in. And they also have that physical inspection side of the business nailed down. As someone who has two investment properties in two different states. And who has had two very different experiences with their property managers,

Kylie Davis: (45:33)

I find that really appealing. Now, if you're an investor or landlord, how tempted Have you been to move across to a property management disruptor? Or are you already using one, I'd love to hear your thoughts drop us a line. So now if you have enjoyed this episode of the prop tech podcast, I'd love you to tell your friends or drop me a line by email Kylie at real content doctor via LinkedIn or Facebook and you can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google podcasts, anchor and Apple iTunes. I'd like to thank my audio support Charlie Hollins, the fabulous Jill escudero and our sponsors, Mitch wise, exclusive wines made in limited quantities and available only by Celador at Smith wines.com Direct Connect making moving easy and home pres is now part of XP pipe and making real estate marketing easier than ever before. So thanks everyone Until next week, stay safe and keep on checking.