00:00

Kylie Davis

Welcome to the Prop Tech 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. 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 behavior 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 real works forms, and the Proptech Association of Australia. Thank you for your support of the podcast. 

00:54

Kylie Davis

My guest in this episode is Tony Tadros, the managing partner of Salesfish Audio is a self described transaction service engine that joins the dots between a CRM and PEXA in the house and land business. Tony had a career in real estate selling land packages before embarking on a tech solution to solve some of the pain points he regularly experienced as an agent. In one of those weird coincidences, it was during this time that he discovered a Canadian firm was on a similar track. The two collaborated, and he is now responsible for launching sales fish in Australia. Now, Sales and land in Australia is an $8.2 billion industry, and it combines all the pain of buying a property with the double whammy of dealing with the stress of building. Hazar. So much fun. It's no surprise that this sector is seeing a surge of innovation and prop tech. 

01:50

Kylie Davis

So, here to tell us all about it, Tony Tetros. Welcome to the Prop Tech podcast. 

01:55

Tony Tadros

Thank you very much, Kylie, for having me. 

01:57

Kylie Davis

Cool. Now, look, as I were having of a chat before we began this episode and going to confess I don't know a lot about sales fish. So, Tony, let's kick off with the hardest question first. What's? The sales fish elevator pitch. 

02:12

Tony Tadros

Well, if you have a property development and a sales team and looking for a simple, transparent, secure, and efficient selling and buying process, then you need Salefish. It's a TSC, which stands for a transaction service engine powered with AI tools that is adaptable to any website, portal or marketing presentation application. Operating in real time enables a buyer to select, transact, and deposit on a property on any device anytime. Selfish sits at the intersection between the seller agent and buyer to handle the technical aspects of buying, making an offer to purchase with seller, and exchanging the contracts. 

02:54

Kylie Davis

Okay, so you're playing mainly in the new build space, is that right? 

02:59

Tony Tadros

Correct. All property projects and house and land packages. 

03:03

Kylie Davis

A house and land package. Okay, cool. How big is that as an industry? Or why is this a problem in that space? 

03:12

Tony Tadros

Well, as far as the industry, it's about an $8.7 billion market, according to the ABS value of new, and basically it's for land estate sales or apartments, townhouses house and land packages, dual contracts and residual stock. Now, the problem really stems from the non collaboration, I guess, between, say, if you're selling a house and land package, you got a builder's consultant sitting in a display home who isn't really aware about what land sales are available yet. He's got a house and land buyer sitting in front of him saying, I love your house, but I want to live in this area, I want to live in this estate. He hasn't got eyes into what's actually available. Not only that, he doesn't have the means in order to make that sale happen on the land side, so he's got to send them away. And that's a big problem. 

04:17

Tony Tadros

The other problem, which is even bigger than that, I think, these days, is the Cyber crime and the bec, the business email compromise. That's where we're starting to see a lot, unfortunately, in the real estate space with the transactions. So, according to the ACSC, in 2021, 2250 to 200,000 small office, rarers and small businesses are vulnerable to compromise. That's about causing a $98 million problem. It's about 64,000 per report. 

04:56

Kylie Davis

Right. 

04:58

Tony Tadros

There's new legislation with that, too, that's just been passed in November 22, that the government, after the Optus fiasco and so on, is saying that there's a $50 million fine now for companies for cyber breach. It's a bit of a problem now and we've got to look at what are the apps we're using, what are the systems we have in place for a sale in a digital space, and what are we going to do to protect everyone? It's not just, of course, the buyer number one with their sensitive information, but a company trying to do the right thing, sell their product. How are we going to protect them in this arena, in this digital space? With having to collaborate with buyers and the property developer and the builder and the buyer themselves. 

05:54

Kylie Davis

You're creating a closed, I guess, transaction space as part of this? 

06:02

Tony Tadros

Well, this is what it is and it's Cyber accredited, and that's been baked in from the beginning of the platform. It's Cyber accredited with Cyber Essentials plus that's recognized by the UK government, the Canadian government, the US government, the European Union, which is the toughest in the world, and Australia, although it doesn't have legislation as yet, but it says, look, if you're good with the European Union, you're good with us. So we take that as comfort. We're proud of the fact and humbled that we, as a real estate platform, sales platform, that we have that accreditation and can afford all the users in our platform to be secure. 

06:51

Kylie Davis

Just roll me through as a land or property developer. I've got my CRM, and I've got a project that's out there. I've got a land and house package that I've made available. A client comes, is interested in that, and then they move into the sales fish platform. How does that work? 

07:15

Tony Tadros

What's the flow look like? If we take it from the start, we've got real estate portals that have been around for about 20 years, right? 

07:22

Kylie Davis

Yeah. 

07:23

Tony Tadros

They're just there to say inquire. Now, they're lead sources, they capture leads. Same with your social media and so forth. You've got fantastic CRM systems that are out there today that will capture those leads and put them through a pipeline and nurture them. Now we're getting to the point where the buyer is ready to go. Now, you go into the TSC platform, which will basically be starting at a real time status of the availability and the pricing of that project. It could be a house and land, could be land, could be apartments, could be townhouses, depending on the project. And they'll see that transparency. Now, when they're with the buyer sorry, with the agent, and they select that property, the contract comes on screen, on demand and is populated with all the particulars. From there, the buyer would basically identify themselves, verify themselves. We could do that internationally, or you could do it over zoom or teams, or it could be on your iPad sitting next to the agent. 

08:36

Tony Tadros

What you do there is you take a photo of your government issued driver's license, passport, and you take a selfie. We've got the biometrics, we send it off to Interpol to make sure that they're not on any list there. Most importantly, we'll extract their information, as in their correct spelling and name address and pop that into the contract as well. They'll see the contract for the second time with their details and the property details already pre populated. They'll go through a one touch signing. Now, you feel like a celebrity when you sign a building contract because there's a million places to sign an initial and date. You do it once in our system and it goes wherever it's supposed to. It's all templated, so it comes out accurate, and it's once. Right. 

09:30

Kylie Davis

Does that mean you've read it, though? 

09:32

Tony Tadros

Well, typically no one does at the beginning. That's why the law has a three day cooling off period in Victoria, in Queensland, five day cooling off period. And typically your conveyancer reads it. Now, if you want your conveyancer to read it prior to signing, you have that ability, too. There's nothing stopping you. We're talking about a buyer when he's ready to execute, right. Taking the frustration and the time lag out of it because it's really trying to give them the best possible experience about buying that property rather than trying to send an expression of interest form first and then wait for a contract to be generated and then sent out to them, and then it gets circulated. We're cutting that out by speeding up the sale process. That's, I guess, what we're really all about. 

10:27

Kylie Davis

Okay. How long does that traditional process take at the moment? The expression of interest and the waiting and all that stuff? What's the standard time period on that? 

10:38

Tony Tadros

Well, look, I mean, pre digital probably dating myself here, but pre digital, it used to be. Well, I'll open the draw of my desk and pull out a contract with a pen and start writing it. So it was pretty instant, right? 

10:54

Kylie Davis

Three copies. Sign here, press hard. 

10:56

Tony Tadros

That's it. Went into digital, and somehow it got slower. 

11:01

Kylie Davis

Yeah. 

11:04

Tony Tadros

It'S supposed to be faster. That's one of the things that really shocked me. The reasons for that is, well, it costs us money to generate these digital contracts, and we don't just want everyone filling it in because they could fill it in wrong and there's pricing and so on. The process at the moment, which I think is quite cumbersome, you have to fill out an AI in a PDF that may be online, then take a photo of the buyer's driver's license with your phone, and then send those two things via email. 

11:46

Kylie Davis

Not listening. 

11:46

Tony Tadros

Not listening, exactly. 

11:48

Kylie Davis

Victor Dominello. Don't pay attention. 

11:53

Tony Tadros

What happens is they prepare the contract admin team have all of these EOYS that they've got to vet and make sure that it's the right spelling and so on, and prepare these e contracts and then circulate them. Now the time between sending in your EOI and getting your contract as a buyer to sign, you're talking about minimum of, say, three days, and could all stretch out to 14, depending on how many sales they've got in the system waiting. Yeah, now that's I've just got a. 

12:26

Kylie Davis

Vision of all of these sales guys with their phones full of people's driver's license, which is terrifying me right now. 

12:36

Tony Tadros

And guess what? Guess what, Kylie? That expression of interest form has got the property developer's logo on it, right. We can't secure everyone's system, even if the property developers company system has a really good It set up and he's dealing with channel agents. Well, you can't secure all of those either, and they're small operators, but yet you're dealing with this highly sensitive information. We've seen the horror stories of the purchasers transferring deposits over to different accounts, because if you're actually displaying who it is right. What is going on in this sale, well, you've just given all the information for that business email compromise to take place, and that's a no. I think that the government's recognized that, too, and changed the legislation to reflect that and to reflect how serious it is. I don't know how many businesses can cop a $50 million fine per breach? 

13:46

Kylie Davis

No, that's a shocker. That federal or that must be federal. 

13:50

Tony Tadros

That's federal, yeah. 

13:52

Kylie Davis

Okay. 

13:54

Kylie Davis

Let me ask you a question. Are you happy with your current operational workflow? Are you really satisfied with printing, signing, scanning and emailing contracts and then having to wait days for them to be signed and returned? Well, I didn't think so. And I have some good news. There is a better way. Dynamic Methods is the team behind leading real estate industry tech platforms such as Forms Live, Rei Forms Live and Real works with a mission to make better happen. Dynamic Methods are dedicated to providing efficiency and productivity tools boosting form technology to real estate agencies across Australia. Each month, 50,000 real estate professionals across eight and a half thousand agencies from every Australian state and territory use Dynamic Methods. Form Technology empowering more than 7.2 million transactions a year. Dynamic Methods is also proud to host quality integrations with some of the prop tech industry's most powerful technologies such as DocuSign, Secure, Exchange, Equifax and more, putting everything you need to get forms and contracts filled in, signed, verified, and exchanged into one easy platform. 

15:05

Kylie Davis

If you're ready to ditch the pen and paper, make your agency look more efficient, head to Dynamicmethods.com Au Partners to learn more. 

15:16

Kylie Davis

Tony, how long has Southfish been around for? How did you get involved in it? Tell us about the company's background. 

15:22

Tony Tadros

Well, Selfish has been around for about 15 years now, so we're like version 15 of what we're doing. I had a prototype that I built back in 2012 with the help of the Vic government at the time in the TVP program. I sat on that for a little while and then eventually I partnered with Selfish, who I stationed in Canada. They're headquartered in Canada, but we operate in the US and Europe and now in Australia and Turkey and so forth. I partnered with them a few years back and we Australia fight the software. What do I mean by that is because for apartments, for townhouses and things like that, they're very similar. In the house and land space, we're unique because we have a block of land anyone can turn around and buy, but you could choose any builder you wish as long as you can follow the design guidelines and so forth. 

16:36

Tony Tadros

So we're open source, if you like. That was something that we had to tweak and we have so we can have multiple builders on multiple estates and you can basically site plan it from the beginning and say, this design suits those blocks that are in real time available, right, and go through a dual contract process. You'll have a land, separate land contract and you'll have the builder's contract. And we're talking about fixed price stuff. So I'm not talking about custom. Customs are slightly more complicated, but you get the sale over the line right. You can sign, that blocks available, that's super important to builders to have eyes in and for the buyer as well. I mean, I've seen the tears, Kylie, I've seen the tears of first time buyers and they go in, buy a block and then find out they can't build the dream home that they wanted to. 

17:41

Tony Tadros

They come running back to me when I was selling land and saying, well, can you help us out here? We need to sell that or we need to get rid of it, we need to swap it over to that another block. This takes the guesswork out and it's about being buyer focused as well, bringing them in, showing them what's available, what houses would fit or what townhouse is available right now and goes through the process as if they're ordering an Uber. I mean, this whole thing from selecting a property to placing your deposit and sending your offer to the vendor takes about 5 minutes rather than seven days. 

18:33

Kylie Davis

Yeah. Tony, tell me about your background. How did you just mentioned that you've sold land in a past life, but how did you get into this? 

18:46

Tony Tadros

Well, in 97 I'm probably dating myself here, but in 97 I started in real estate, right? From there I had franchises and so forth, like in the regular real estate market, established housing and I moved out of that in probably about 2006 and I went into the house and land space and I specialized in land, so selling land estates and so forth on behalf of developers. I started dealing with all the builders, consultants and so on and would try and get sales happening and markets up or markets down and I saw these challenges and I either had a choice, either I go out and employ a h*** of a lot of people or is there another way? Now, my wife, who's Cherish, she's very tech savvy and she said to me, what, I think you could probably do this digitally. And I said, really? How?

19:55

Tony Tadros

She showed me a few other examples of ecommerce platforms and things and it's not suitable for real estate, but I saw the light. Went down the TVP program with the Vic government and were awarded a grant and we built the prototype and that's how I got into Proptech. Finding Sailfish was in Canada was like finding my digital twin on the other side of the world. So similar. We had the same thoughts and ideas but they were commercialized. I put in my paperwork and basically went from there. 

20:41

Kylie Davis

Right. 

20:43

Tony Tadros

Launched in Australia 2020, just as the Pandemic hit. 

20:50

Kylie Davis

All the best Prop techs launched then. 

20:53

Tony Tadros

Yeah, for us, we noticed that the developers and the builders were locked down after lockdown. They were very anxious about what was going on and what they wanted to get into, continue business in a lockdown environment. They were all thrust into this and into a digital environment, and they grabbed anything off the shelf to try and make it work. And this is the result. I guess what we say is you should take a bit of a stock take now after the Pandemic has settled down and everyone wants to go digital. Still, you got to look at now your systems and see what's cybersecure, because these are the things that have popped up and what is really streamlining your sale process, what is collaborative in this ecosystem. I guess that's where the TSC fits into, between that CRM and PEXA. What I find strange is PEXA is used to settle property, and it's mandatory, right. 

22:18

Tony Tadros

Yet the same property, you can buy it any which way you like. And that's what I find strange. I guess in the future, I think TSCs will be mandatory, too. 

22:33

Kylie Davis

Yeah. Just tell me what a TSC is again, because we know my thing. I have a thing about three let. 

22:39

Tony Tadros

Acronyms, transaction Service Engine. 

22:45

Kylie Davis

Right, tse. Okay, cool. How big is sales fish in Australia? Tony, how big is your organization here? 

22:56

Tony Tadros

Well, we're pretty much covered with the It and so forth in Canada, but in Australia, it's all about the marketing and the sales. We have level one It support as well. It's not huge. It's not a huge group. But it is growing. Right? It's growing. We're going to be stationed in other states shortly, our sales teams and so on. It's certainly where are you based at the moment? Melbourne. 

23:30

Kylie Davis

Melbourne? Yes. Okay. This is a pretty busy I've been hearing a lot more about stuff that's going on in this land and new developer space. So there's open lot there's. Release me. There's a flurry of kind of prop tech kind of popping up in this space. How do you see the competitive space? 

23:55

Tony Tadros

Yeah, well, I'll tell you is everyone solving different problems. 

24:04

Kylie Davis

Look, there's only one thing more stressful than buying or selling an established property, and that is renovating or building. So, in fact, I'm beginning to think that probably buying land and then building off the plan is like an even more stressful thing than the other two combined, or is all of the stresses of the other two combined plus its own little specialness? 

24:30

Tony Tadros

Yeah, I think so. I mean, the thing is, you're dealing with first time buyers because that's affordability bracket there. They're coming in buying a house and land package. But it's so chaotic. 

24:44

Kylie Davis

Yeah. 

24:45

Tony Tadros

Right. Now, open lot, release me. And so on. Open lot is, I guess, rivalingrealestate.com. It's a search engine and you get your leads and then they would pass them on. But it's what you do after that. You say, who are the competitors? It's like no one but everyone, right. In the same time, because there aren't any complete TSC platforms that we know. Right. We do replace a host of third party apps for expressions of interest or holding real time status of the stock esigning pay gates right. The listings themselves of that real time status. Just like Pixar changed the game for settlements, I think TSCs and selfish will change the game for the sale itself because you need a smoother and you need a safer process for buyers. Regardless, it's apartment. It's a townhouse block of land or a house and land package, which is probably the most difficult of all of them because there's another element. 

26:15

Tony Tadros

You've got a land developer and a builder and you have the agent involved and the buyer. So there's four parts. Sometimes, although you might think it fits, but it doesn't, the house that. 

26:29

Kylie Davis

You want to build on the land doesn't fit, you mean? 

26:32

Tony Tadros

Yes, and vice versa, maybe. You got the house and you want to make sure that block is right. We've developed a vice versa crossover, if you like, that would instantly tell you whether it doesn't or it doesn't. So that's number one. Number two, you can jump into the contract and secure it. You can do that with the description I explained a few moments ago, within a few minutes. And that's a dual contract. That's a land and a build contract coming from two different sources. It comes onto your screen instantly on demand, prefilled, just waiting for your details, which is scanned and populated in our KYC process. We find that to be a great advantage for everyone involved. 

27:34

Kylie Davis

Yeah. 

27:34

Tony Tadros

KYC stands for know Your Customer, verifying your ID, who you are.