Kylie Davis

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. It's so great to have you here and to share stories of innovation and opportunity across real estate, property and building services. And the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a Proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible across how we design, build, buy, sell, rent and invest in property and all of the associated behaviour and activities around that. Now, none of this would be possible without our sponsors, so a big shout out to the Direct Connect team, making moving, easy, dynamic methods, the innovators behind the forms, live and realworks forms, and the Proptech Association of Australia. Thank you for your support of the podcast. My guest in this episode is jake Isman, founder of new proptech startup Propty.

Kylie Davis

And that's spelt P-R-O-P-T-I Property is a one stop shop for the plethora of property reports needed across a transaction, whether that's building and pest strata management, property valuations, and even more things like technical reports like engineering, soil analysis, creating a simple, verified and faster way to identify the right information provider and obtain the right report quickly and affordably. Now, in this conversation, we discuss the hidden labor of reports, the thousands of hours and emails that are undertaken weekly by administrators across the country and across the property ecosystem to find specialists who can provide the right report in the right area, brief in that request and then manage its delivery. Now, just like banks have a valuation panel of verified experts that they go to provide valuations, property takes that concept and expands it across the entire report ecosystem to save agents, conveyancers, mortgage brokers and buyers time and a lot of stress.

Kylie Davis

So, here to tell us all about it, Jake isman from Propty.

Kylie Davis

Welcome to the Proptech podcast.

Jake Isman

Thanks for having me. I appreciate your time.

Kylie Davis

Now, Jake and I were just joking before we kicked off about how many Proptechs there are out there that are called Prop something almost as many as there are called. And so, my apologies, I kind of am struggling with Prop T as opposed to property, which is a different one. Completely.

Jake Isman

Exactly right. We're all kind of similar.

Kylie Davis

Yeah. But Jake, your proptech is unique. So kick us off with the hardest question first. Tell us what your elevator pitch is.

Jake Isman

Yeah, so basically what we do is we help property professionals, whether you're a real estate agent, solicitor, conveyancer, organize a wide variety of property reports across the industry. So whether you're looking out for your first home buyer who needs a strata report, or building a pest inspection, or whether you're a private lender who needs valuations, we can basically cater across the board for what your client actually needs.

Kylie Davis

Awesome. So how does it work? Are you generating preset reports or are you doing them on demand or how does it work?

Jake Isman

Yeah, so basically on demand, I mean, over the past two, three years, we've been basically onboarding different valuers inspectors, surveyors, to kind of get to know who they are, what they stand for. And then from a quote by quote basis, we're able to actually pinpoint the right individual to help facilitate that report that the client needs.

Kylie Davis

Okay, so how many reports do we need? How big is the market for this?

Jake Isman

When we first started, we focused quite small. So initially we first started with the real estate agents. Okay, what do real estate agents need? They need strata reports. They need building and pesh reports. Personally, I have a background in mortgage broking and private lending. So I knew that there's massive pain points around organizing these valuations specifically for private lenders. And then I was like, okay, so what other property reports out there? Which led us to real estate agents? From there we realized that, no, it's not just real estate agents that need help. It's a mass market. Whether you're kind of in the construction game and you need stage inspections or whether you're looking at renovating your place and you need a dilapidation report, the list kind of goes on and on, and we're kind of just chasing that tail, helping to facilitate all the kind of requests that we've been receiving from our clients.

Jake Isman

So it's kind of taken us down this rabbit hole, which is pretty cool. So, yeah, that's kind of how it works.

Kylie Davis

So are you guys like a one stop shop for finding someone who can give a report in the appropriate space?

Jake Isman

Exactly right. So basically how it kind of works is well, yeah, guaranteed we're a one stop shop for everything, which is fantastic. We can cater nationwide. And the benefits, I guess, to using our services is because we are giving all our, I guess, inspectors valuers and surveyors a lot of work. They tend to really focus on the jobs that we give them at first, so we can actually cater for speed, which is most important for solicitors, and conveyancers when they have cooling off periods or valuers when the brokers want to get deals done quickly. So it's had this inherent, I guess, benefit to everyone by having just a one stop shop where people can actually a trust the reporters themselves because they've been veted as well as know that they're going to get the job done. Because I guess we're not guaranteeing, because you never want to guarantee, but we're there to say to the inspectors, this is what we need.

Jake Isman

This is the client's request. Can you do it? If not, we'll move on to the next person and so on and so forth until we can actually get the job over the line for everyone.

Kylie Davis

So I want to just dig in a little bit to what the pain looks like without you guys in the space. What was the traditional method of doing this?

Jake Isman

Yeah.

Kylie Davis

Know somebody have a mate that does for you?

Jake Isman

Kind of. I mean, there's a lot of conflict of interest. That's another different topic, but when I was doing admin work for the private lender I used to work for, we had to call a valuer to find out whether they have the right insurance to do first mortgage purposes valuations. There's a lot of valuers out there, so you're going to be calling, what, ten to 15 valuers pending the area to get quotes whether they've actually got the right insurance to do the job, get that information, send it to the broker, a lot of back and forth. It would take half an hour just to get the simple quote. What we're doing is we've basically got all that information already, we've collected that data and instead of you having to go through that process, you simply send us a request like you would any other valuer.

Jake Isman

But instead of getting just one quote from one valuer, you can get it from 15, 1617 different valuers in the industry or in the area. Sorry, that can help you. So it's just a faster way to do it. Instead of Googling, you can just come to property and we basically have that information for you already. And that's just specifically for valuation. When it comes to Strata Reports similar thing, you have to call each Strata reporter to find out a when they can do it, what their turnaround times are, how much it's going to cost. Same with building a pet inspection. It's just this constant pain point where you're trying to find the right person to do your job and it's never as simple as just sending an email. Thankfully, we've kind of developed this service that it is that simple because we just know who to speak with.

Kylie Davis

Awesome. Okay, so what kinds of reports can we get on the property platform?

Jake Isman

So we started off with Strata Reports, building a pest depreciation valuations. Now, we cater for all types of valuations. We've recently done business valuations, which is quite random, seeing as in the property space, but we can cater for that too. All types of surveys, costing reports, stage inspections, handover inspections. Sorry, I'm just trying to think off the top of my head, I probably should have a list out there. We can basically cater for everything. I mean, it's as simple as getting in touch with me. Even if you don't know what you're kind of looking for or what you need. We know who to speak to assist with that. We work with structural engineers, we've worked with architects, so we kind of know exactly what's what.

Kylie Davis

Okay, so what's your business model? Are you taking a clip of the ticket for the jobs that you allocate?

Jake Isman

Yeah, pretty much. It's very minimal. Obviously, we can't go and charge extravagant fees because no one will ever use our services. So for instance, building and Pesh report varies from prices between 450 and 650 depending on the state. We literally kind of just added 10% margin on top and it's really insignificant fee for the client purchasing it, but it's a massive time saver for the solicitor or the inspector involved because they're not the ones going to be receiving these nitty gritty questions that they kind of have to deal with on a regular basis. I'm more than happy and capable to answer those questions for them. So it's a small fee for quite a lot of help.

Kylie Davis

Cool. Do they see it all on a platform and see all of the things that are available or do they need to request reports?

Jake Isman

Yeah, they generally have to request the reports to us. Obviously we'd like to have the technology, we're working on the technology to build in order to actually speed up the entire process. But obviously we're quite new to the market and I'd still like to be on top of everything. So basically there's two ways to go about it. One, order it through the site or simply send me an email and I know who to talk to, which is quite beneficial. It's a quick process in itself anyway.

Kylie Davis

Cool. So how big is it's?

Jake Isman

As in the team?

Kylie Davis

Yeah.

Jake Isman

Your yeah, so we're a small team. We are nationwide, which is quite beneficial. We're looking to grow into having reps at each state. Currently we're just located in Bono Junction, but right now we're going nice and steady so we're happy with where we're at right now.

Kylie Davis

Cool, and how long have you been going for?

Jake Isman

Two years. So it took us about six months to work out whether this, I guess process is actually going to work and benefit people.

Kylie Davis

Would it fly?

Jake Isman

Yes, exactly right. You got to test it before you kind of make it. And then we realized, okay, so for the stakeholders that we've been working with, they're happy, we kind of retain them, which is great. So let's kind of build on the idea. And we've just been building ever since. So I think it's been about two and a half years, which is quite exciting because most startups I think, fail after three and we're kind of trotting along quite nicely.

Kylie Davis

Excellent. So Jake, tell us a little bit more about is it just you or do you have a co founder?

Jake Isman

I've got a co founder, he's more of a silent partner. He's helped quite a lot in terms of building it and doing a lot of sales as well. We've got some overseas staff as well, but predominantly day to day you'll be speaking to me and hearing this voice, unfortunately for you guys.

Kylie Davis

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Kylie Davis

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Kylie Davis

What have been the biggest challenges that you've learned in sort of two and a half years?

Jake Isman

Yeah, it's surprising to say. I think there's just a lot of challenges within the industry itself. It's knowing who to trust. It's knowing who's able to actually look after you as the purchaser or the seller. Obviously, real estate agents are either looking after or tend to be looking after the seller. They're the ones typically organizing these reports. Now that in itself is kind of a conflict of interest. You wouldn't necessarily go and buy an inspection from a second hand car dealership. You'd go and do your own. So a big, I guess, learning experience that we had is we've built the platform to cater for real estate agents initially, but over time, we've realized that there's an actual big need and a big push for people interested in purchasing property as opposed to people just selling the property that's specifically for the pre purchase inspections and stuff like that.

Jake Isman

But it's just interesting. There's just a need, I think, for someone. There's a lack of, I guess what's it regulation within the industry when it comes to these type of reports. There's little requirements or little barriers of entries to actually enter the due diligence side of things, specific for building and pest and strata reports. And we're just trying to bring some cohesion and I guess reliability. Correct. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right.

Kylie Davis

Yeah. What's your criteria for including a report building or a report business in your platform?

Jake Isman

Yeah, every inspector that we've onboarded, we've spoke to quite a lot. We've built relationships with them. We ask for sample reports prior to actually engaging with them in the work. We're not a regulator, so we're not able to actually test and do all these things that regulators can actually do. What we do is make sure that they're able to actually do the job that our clients require them to do, whether that's no one really wants to deal with angry building inspector for their first home buyer. We kind of vet that. We build these relationships with these individuals to assist in that process.

Kylie Davis

Need not apply.

Jake Isman

Exactly. Right. Yeah. Literally, it sounds funny, but it's just the small things, especially for first time buyers.

Kylie Davis

We've experienced intimidating. Right?

Jake Isman

Correct. Yeah. We intimidated enough. When you're I guess for first time buyers, you're new to everything. I mean, when someone says, you need to go organize a Strata Report and that's it. What's a strata. Report. Who do I speak to? So I guess what we're trying to do is just kind of bring a bit of peace, mind, and I guess confidence in the way you go and conduct your due diligence. It's really niche. Due diligence sounds funny, but I guess everyone needs to do it. So I guess that's what we're trying to do.

Kylie Davis

Okay, and so your clients mainly, are they the real estate agents and finance brokers and people like that, or you also got a B to C side.

Jake Isman

So our B to C side is more I guess, I mean, we do partner with a lot of prop tech companies, online agencies. B to B would also be like the conveyance of solicitors brokers. But when it comes to actually invoicing, we typically invoice the clients. So we're also B to C in that sense, and we're talking to them. We need to build the relationships with our B, two B clients before we can go and contact the B to C. Because everything's built on trust. We want them to be confident that their solicitors know exactly what we're up to because then we can give them the confidence to go ahead and talk them through. So it's kind of a win. So, yeah, that's kind of how we've been growing.

Kylie Davis

Okay, so I just want to make sure I've got this straight. So typically inside a business, there would be, like a Mary on the front desk or an EA or someone in the back end whose job it would be to go and find we need a valuation report for this property, and Mary would do all the ringing around and emailing and try and find that you're streamlining that. So Mary only needs to go to one spot to find the right valuer.

Jake Isman

For it.

Kylie Davis

Then, I guess. Are you then also basically working with Mary and her team to say, look, sending everything out, like letting us help you on all of these?

Jake Isman

Yeah. So basically we're kind of like a glorified administration team in the sense that you don't necessarily need Mary. Yeah, exactly. You don't necessarily need Mary to go and call the client, make sure that it's all booked in, chase it up, find the inspector in the first place. We do all of that as well as instead of Mary telling the client, like, hey, this is what's included, this is what to expect, we do that. So it's kind of a free service for all our partners because essentially they're not the ones really paying for the report. At the end of the day, they're just simply paying well, they're not paying at all. What we do is we essentially take on Mary's role, where we say, hey, we found an inspector, he can be there on XYZ. It's going to cost one, two, three. If you'd like to go ahead, let us know.

Jake Isman

And then typically we'll get full follow up calls explaining, okay, what do I need to do now? Which is what we kind of untake.

Kylie Davis

Okay, fantastic. There's always a lot of lessons when you take on a new Prop tech, and you guys are still very new. So what's your biggest lesson been today?