Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Jeremy Goldschmidt on investing in Rentbetter

Starting point is 00:00:00 You know, there's sort of two million odd landlords in this country who own rental properties or claim rental income on their tax return. When you look at any investment or any asset, I think there's always got to be a care factor about it. And, you know, property management's no different. You've purchased this asset, you've bought it, now you've got to own the thing. And I think the critical thing there is to not have a set and forget strategy, but to actually be involved in it and to look at what's going on because there are material benefits from doing so. I would say, you know, particularly as it relates back to rent better is the idea of being able to save on the costs of property management, have better control, have access to the right tools and technology. And that should sort of put you in a position, hopefully, to be able to acquire another investment property sooner. Welcome to the Get Invested Podcast, where we share great conversations with experts

Starting point is 00:00:54 from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how and where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the

Starting point is 00:01:30 top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening and now let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters. Now with my continued focus on the importance of the cash flow affordability of your long-term capital growth property investment journey to ensure that you're able to last the 15 year plus distance to reap the rewards, the one thing that makes or breaks

Starting point is 00:02:16 the quality of an investor's experience revolves around the ease and effectiveness of your property management. Now, depending on who you talk to, somewhere between 20 and 33 odd percent of the 2.6 million investor-owned dwellings in Australia that are owned by just over 2 million residential property investors are self-managed. In other words, somewhere between 400 odd thousand right up to 660 odd thousand Aussie investor landlords DIY manage their own properties. And as any existing property investor knows, everything is fine until suddenly it's not. Because it's not a matter of if you're going to have problems with your investment properties, it's a matter of when, how big and how often. Now there's a good reason why over half of first-time investors sell their

Starting point is 00:03:06 property within the first five years and a lot of this has got to do with the ongoing time-consuming a life-sucking headache and hassles of managing the property. And when it comes to property management, often you just don't know what you don't know. And ignorance is certainly not bliss. In fact, it's downright dangerous. And with residential tenancies legislation in each and every state differing, constantly changing and increasingly stacked in favour of the rights of the tenants, how can you control the property, protect yourself and minimise the risks without giving yourself a second job. Many, like myself, have traditionally responded by deferring to professional property managers, but this can be very hit and miss. So what if there's

Starting point is 00:03:47 actually a way that you can still do it all yourself, providing you have the time, the knowledge and the inclination? Well, this is where the Rentbetter platform now comes to your rescue. And to explore this and dive into the world of DIY property management, we're joined by the founder and CEO of Rentbetter, Jeremy Goldsmith. So welcome and let's get Investor, Jeremy. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Absolutely, mate. I think you're sort of tapping into an area that's been long neglected for a long time, but we'll dig into the details of that a little bit later. Before we do so, I'd just sort of love for you to give us a better rundown on who you are, what you do, and most importantly, why you do what you do.

Starting point is 00:04:29 sure um look my uh i guess background of who i am is uh professionally i was a management consultant for many years i worked uh in banks and i worked uh in in the wealth management space in particular um and i guess it all sort of links a little bit of of who i am and why i do what i do comes together pretty quickly because um when i spent time in strategy um looking at the wealth management sector there's a lot of similarities between how that sector of the market and property works meaning you've got sort of if you like frontline financial advisors or in property you've got frontline property managers and they sort of operate on the same basis we're on the street every day dealing with customers but in wealth there was always sort of these giant

Starting point is 00:05:15 property and sorry giant investment platforms that sat behind them as a technology play that helped make things more efficient and make their lives easier and it became very apparent to me in the early days that actually a lot of property managers didn't have that. And when I bought my first property about 15 years ago, I sort of took one look at the, I guess, the property manager and the management agreement that came with it. And I just sort of thought I'd slaved away. I'd worked so hard to save up for this property. And I'm sure everyone can appreciate how difficult it is to save up for a deposit these days. And I just couldn't fathom the idea of sort of handing it over to someone that I didn't necessarily trust or didn't totally know what it was they were going to do

Starting point is 00:05:59 and I looked at sort of the rent that it was getting I always felt that property was was sort of getting less than it should have um so those sort of you know from my professional life to having done something personally that sort of I guess came about to a little bit of the why I do what I do um and and you know if I sort of uh without going too far into my background and who I am. I've sort of got, I guess, a young family and had always had, if you like, a little bit of an interest in doing something a bit entrepreneurial. And I think, to be honest, even owning a property is a little bit entrepreneurial because it's like your own small business to some degree. You can control the levers of income and expense. And so that sort of

Starting point is 00:06:38 led me, if you like, to the Rent Better world. Yeah, love it. Love it. Well, we'll do a deep dive on Rent Better a little bit later. But before we sort of kick in, I'd love for you to share something unique or interesting about yourself that you've actually never been brave enough to share publicly before, please, mate. Yeah, sure. Look, I think the one that always comes up and that is quite interesting and maybe it's sort of appropriate for all audiences, I kind of have this unique family background. And so what that's ended up in for me personally is I actually have three passports. So I have an Aussie, an American, and an Austrian passport. You sound like a spy in disguise, mate.

Starting point is 00:07:18 That's exactly right. I get that question a lot. Whenever I've gone traveling, that comes up a fair bit. But look, it's a function of just my family's got a super interesting background. My grandparents on both sides were sort of of European descent, but ended up, again, both my mum and dad strangely ended up in different parts of South America when growing up and then somehow found their way to the US where they in fact met and then ended up going to Europe for a little while where my older sister was born and then back to the US where I was born and then

Starting point is 00:07:55 settled in Australia where my little sister was born so in fact my whole family actually has different passports which is considering we're all one family and they're all very close it's kind of a bit of a bizarre situation but but it's sort of you know earlier in my professional life i actually moved to the u.s for quite a few years uh and so you know the passport and the citizenship certainly served me well love it love it yeah that that sort of uh ability to jump borders and and sort of mix with different people in different situations that at such an early age i'm sure it's had quite a formative impact on the way you look at the world now would i be right i think so and i think look there's just you know there's um this this sort of concept of i guess

Starting point is 00:08:35 seeing new things and having new ideas thrown at you whether whether you chose to or not the idea of having different cultures and and even just you know i personally as i said lived overseas for a bit you just see different things and have different perspectives and i think um that's why people love travel so much because you just have the opportunity to to get a fresh perspective on things so uh yeah for me and my family it's very much a part of i guess our identity is is to do with all the different parts of the world where we have family and cousins and life experiences love it love it well while we're sort of talking about the background i'd love for you to just give us a bit of a reader's digest on on your journey so far in terms of where you've

Starting point is 00:09:13 invested your time your energy your money over the years what have you learned from it how has it shaped and led you to what you're doing now sure i think um i mean the start of it is probably if i think about um my professional career early on um as a management consultant i think you learn um pretty quickly to to work in teams and that there's always you know from a project perspective or just the work that you're delivering there's always just a mountain to climb and it's about you know short sharp time frames and delivering sort of you know crazy amounts of work in that time frame so so i think very early on in my professional career i learned to invest in people and i think that served me quite well in this business as well just because

Starting point is 00:09:59 you know often obviously there's a level of skill and and a level of sort of expertise that people bring to the table but but i think i've always found and it's still in many ways to date a big part of who i am that there's sort of skill and there's will and the people who have sort of that high level of commitment and that high level of interest in doing something i often find you know they'll punch above their weight and they'll deliver better outcomes than someone who just shows up and says i've done this for 30 years this is the answer um yeah you know it's a little bit of the curiosity and the willingness to try new things um and you know if i if i sort of jump back to the rent better business and all that we've done and we'll we can sort of go through

Starting point is 00:10:38 that in a minute but but that is very much a part of the journey that we've been through is trying to take something that is perhaps a less mature and evolved segment in the market and really We translate it to our customer base, which you mentioned before, you know, there's sort of 2 million odd landlords in this country who own rental properties or claim rental income on their tax return. Yeah. There is just a huge number of them here. And for years, the traditional model or the main sort of viewpoint has always been for people to go out and do a certain thing. And we are basically explaining or educating, if you like, the public in a certain way that you can do it a different way. Um, and that's, you know, I often say if things are obvious, then they would have been done

Starting point is 00:11:25 long ago. So, so the answer to some of the challenges that we're trying to solve are not totally straightforward and it does take a little bit of the experimentation and the mindset that says, Hey, we're, we're a great team. We've got good people and we can handle any of those challenges. Yeah. And you hit it on the head there. We become very habitual.

Starting point is 00:11:41 We're so time poor that we just fall into the old habits and whatever one else does. Yeah, absolutely. When you're sort of pioneering new territory, new thought processes, new actions, new habits, that can take some time. And particularly with the sort of risk or perceived risk that surrounds a property arena, I can see that that would take some while to take root. But sort of talking about that journey so far, what key events have brought about your greatest learnings and your best improvements so far, please, Mo? well i think um there's probably if i sort of try and focus in on a couple of things there's there's the standard one which might seem a bit cliched but it's it's making mistakes um and i think you as long as you're able to handle those mistakes in the right and professional way

Starting point is 00:12:33 and course correct a little bit um i think that those mistakes become a really good thing and become a part of the journey so so to me even even small things and or just sort of say the way that we used to describe certain things that we do as a business or the way that we approached if you like the first setup of the business um it was it was with an open mind that said hey we're going to test this we're going to see what works and we're going to see how customers respond to it and adjust accordingly and i think um you know the sort of it's pretty fashionable these days to talk about test and learn but but i think i think that is really the the faster you can do it and almost the smaller scale that you can do it the better off you are and i do feel lucky back

Starting point is 00:13:16 to the previous question that we've had the right team and the right people around for that journey that we're able to if you like course correct and adjust when we saw that things weren't working the way we expected or that you know this idea which we thought was so brilliant wasn't actually going to work um so i think a lot of a lot of the sort of early stages of the journey the critical part And even to some extent today, the critical part is being able to learn from those experiences. And probably the other thing I'd say to answer this question, you know, for me, if I reflect where this business or how this business came about and where it all started, a really big part of it and, you know, again, another cliche here, but, you know, necessity is the mother of all inventions. I mentioned that my property journey to begin with was that I used to self-manage my property. And what happened over time was there were certain tricks and things that I was doing.

Starting point is 00:14:18 I shouldn't say tricks. There were certain methods that I employed and there were certain ways that I would do things. And I just found that over time, more and more family and friends and friends of friends knew what I was doing and started to say, hey, you self-manage your property. I'm interested in that. Or my cousin or my friend's friend is interested in it. Can I connect them to you and can you help them? And it became over a very – over a short period of time,

Starting point is 00:14:46 it became very apparent that little guides or sort of steps that I'd written in emails which were flying far and wide were sort of, I guess, hitting or striking a chord with people who own property that were saying yeah i think there's a better way that i can do this i'm interested i'm going to give it a go and self-manage um and so to me you know that's kind of a formative part of this whole journey because it became apparent that there was a huge demand for this and if people just had the tool or the way to do things that made it a little bit easier for them then they'd absolutely be interested in it yep yep um and that you know that i guess it's not

Starting point is 00:15:25 always totally obvious but you just sort of find that moment in time where you put two and two together and as i said i professionally had one sort of angle on on this sort of sector and market and then at the same time had some personal experience with it um i feel like the sort of confidence of those two things um is what really is what really made the business and made the journey yeah love it love it so tell me uh if you look back on your both your personal investment journey and the professional side of the equation what's what would you consider to be your both your best and your worst investment so far and and what have you learned from both of them um that's a really great question

Starting point is 00:16:05 look i think i think my best investments um over time as i said it's it's probably not a specific asset or a specific investment that I've made more so to do with the people and the way we've approached the business. And I think if you really look at what's worked well, and I'm just going to sort of throw it out there, you probably know this better than anyone, the old comment that it's time in the market, not timing the market. And early on in my career, I worked at, I don't know if you would recall or listeners would recall uh count financial yep who were just this brilliant business and in the early 2000s i i worked there uh actually at the end of my university degree okay and worked in this place which was uh advisor services where you do a little bit

Starting point is 00:17:00 of research and supported financial advisors and just you know dollar cost averaging and the concept of investing over the long term and all those sorts of concepts which i guess academically at university I'd sort of learned and understood them but it just it really hit at home as I started to apply it in the workplace yeah and so for me you know it sort of speaks nicely to property because I don't think uh you know there's a lot of excitement always about getting a huge return on on a specific you know stock that you purchase or a specific investment you make but I think with property it tends to be a slow burn game yeah and so for me that always struck a chord around I guess a investing in property and I was lucky that I got to invest a bit younger

Starting point is 00:17:39 But B, just having a mindset that says actually you've got to invest over the long term and sort of be sensible about where you're going in your future. And I think also, as I mentioned, this sort of concept that it's quite entrepreneurial, I believe, to own an investment property. And everyone does it in this country, right? It's not like some other markets around the world where you've sort of got high institutional investment that's really concentrated. yeah uh you've got um a lot of mums and dads and you know it's it's every profession in australia who's investing um yeah and so i think for all those people out there it's very much the australian spirit if you like that there's a element of being a bit entrepreneurial about it of building wealth of making sure that you're sort of watching your investment and controlling the costs and doing all

Starting point is 00:18:27 the right things to make sure that when you're you're ready for that asset to be at its sort of you know, highest value and get the return on it, you've managed along the way. Yeah, yeah, beautifully said. Let's jump to the future for a minute then. Yes, sure. I'd love for you to paint us a picture of your sort of life vision and what your ideal lifestyle looks like.

Starting point is 00:18:46 So, you know, make it as vivid and real as you can. What's that look like to you? Well, look, I think as we were talking before, I mentioned that I've got three young children who are just, you know, the thing that makes life so great and I have a wonderful wife who again collectively as a family unit they're just so important to me and so anytime you'd ever ask me sort of in terms of what does success look like something that's really important to me is that you know that family unit and the relationships and obviously I have my extended family and all those around

Starting point is 00:19:25 but ensuring that all those relationships are intact and sort of you know as healthy as they can be is probably my number one most critical element to anything that I see as part of lifestyle or success. But I do think in today's world, if you look at how, I guess, business is changing, how interactions are changing, we really do operate in a global market. And so I think the ability for our business over the lockdowns over the last couple of years for us to be able to work so closely as a team but still be remote has been really, really important.

Starting point is 00:19:58 So I think sort of flexibility and autonomy over work becomes really, really critical. And I like to think that A is a business and B is sort of a person that, you know, is in the workforce, that that's something that I absolutely can deliver out to our team. I think travel is always going to be a very big part of everyone, including me, wish list is being able to see new places and new things and do it in a way that's sort of, I guess, fits into all the other goals and dreams that you want to achieve um and i think uh and look this is again probably something it's a topic that you cover in many different ways i think actually um uh try and find the right words for this year but um i think purpose and investing your time

Starting point is 00:20:47 in and just sort of take away the concept of dollars and a return that's financial but more a return that might have a broader set of rewards to it is really important and i think you know um as as a i guess my wife and i have always talked quite a bit about this that it's not like you sort of reach a point of life where you suddenly magically go oh i've got these two new hobbies that i've started and here we go this is now my purpose i think those things take a long time to cultivate and it's a combination of maybe building expertise as well as interest it's not like you can't be at 100 points on one and zero on the other you've got to actually balance them out over time so so to me and and you know i do a little bit of non-profit work on the side i think

Starting point is 00:21:31 that's really sort of critical in just rounding out again these different perspectives and ways that you think about the world so it's not just you know totally myopic yeah totally agree well if we sort of putting that in context then and i'll sort of get hard on the rational investment please for a moment but sure what is your investment strategy uh to attain and maintain your ideal lifestyle long term and where does where has and where will property fit into that yeah sure look i think um like like many australians uh property absolutely fits into it um i think i've always just personally had a lean towards more of if you like a clash a cash flow investment basis than just pure capital gains or capital growth yeah which which uh i don't know

Starting point is 00:22:21 if you have a personal view on it um i think you know given the last two years and just the surging prices in the property market i think there's a lot of people who who focus on capital gains who are grinning um but certainly as a sort of younger investor who was starting out with if you like less cash in my pocket and very concerned about how to sort of manage and maintain assets and investments the cash flow did become very important to me yeah i'd spot on i totally agree i think that the focus on growth because you'll never retire on the rent from property so growth needs to be a big component but it needs to be affordable growth in the context that the cash flow and the way you structure the property means that the property is looking after itself and not

Starting point is 00:23:02 buying into salary savings or lifestyle so yeah right on track with what you're saying there jeremy yeah so from from my early days and even when i looked at properties in the beginning it was looking you know there's a lot of talk obviously negative gearing is a great thing but there was a lot of focus for me on looking for sort of neutral or positive properties which again not not always the easiest to find and certainly years ago was a bit easier but they're still out there and that was sort of the beginning of if you like the first seed of my portfolio and look from from sort of a broader investment basis I guess there's an asset allocation question there right you've got to find the right things that will suit your risk

Starting point is 00:23:41 profile and suit your needs. And it doesn't always mean having the sort of billion dollar portfolio. It starts small and you can make small gains and put them back in. And that's kind of back to that, you know, time in the market rather than timing the market. You're in a position as you do that slowly to get exposure to things that are going to grow. And, you know, you've got in some senses, you've got the time. I'm right in that middle age bracket where I'm both looking back and looking forward rather than just looking forward yeah um but but i do think that uh you know personally um uh i've always very much enjoyed keeping an eye on markets and you know in different stages of life obsessing over property in different ways um and now obviously with with the addition

Starting point is 00:24:28 of the business that adds a whole other asset class to my investment um outlook yeah and i love But so if we sort of summed up your thoughts on what you believe are the keys to successful investment, what are they in your head? Well, I think it's probably having a long-term mindset. I mean, that's really critical. There's always obviously the sort of short-term and the shiny things. And surely, you know, there's a lot of people who are making money and talk about it. But I think, you know, having a long-term mindset and knowing where you want to get to is really critical. yeah um i think um and maybe this isn't always the case for everyone but for me personally it's

Starting point is 00:25:12 really important to understand the fundamentals of the thing that you're investing in um and so uh you know that sort of stops you from just jumping at anything that you're told is good and not really understanding it but i think like even if i look at my first property investment i'm sure if if we looked at the numbers um and the way that it worked it did make sense but the fact was it was in an area where i grew up and i just i knew the demographics i knew the dynamics of that place i knew exactly what it was going to rent for and the way it was going to rent because it was my stomping ground and i you know i think a lot of people get comfort in property because it's tangible and it's real and it's pretty straightforward yeah um so for me you know i

Starting point is 00:25:55 think a second uh if you like leg of of the philosophy or of the approach has to be actually understanding why it's going to work and what it is that you're doing um and i think probably um a third part to it to that um would really take you towards the idea that if you're um i guess if you if you're not interested in it at all um then it's going to be really hard to to maintain so i think um there are obviously different asset classes and different ways to invest and you kind of got to find something that that works for you um and so that's i guess it's a function of the long term and the understanding of it if it's not something that's going to work for you then then maybe it's not something to continue with you might look for a different

Starting point is 00:26:44 investment i love it love it if you sort of um looking back and you sort of as you mentioned sort of halfway through the journey almost if you if you look back to you know your first investment then we're starting out again would you do anything or invest differently i think um probably would have gone a bit harder a bit earlier um you know i sort of as i mentioned on the cash flow basis was always very particular about how things would work and you know with with hindsight um it's very easy to say these sort of things but um you know the idea that the policy settings in australia and you know population growth and immigration excluding this period over covid but typically all things are going up and to the right um and so the idea that um i guess

Starting point is 00:27:31 having more of a foothold in that property market in particular um that was you know a little bit like monopoly in some ways like the more you could get the earlier you could get it the better off you were going to do yeah um so i think probably um would have gone a little bit harder a little bit earlier but i think you know in in many ways i'm proud of having made sensible decisions and having thought through and that you know some of those decisions will stand the test of time yeah i love it well i'd love to sort of dive into property management now in a bit more detail jeremy given it's a subject that we both uh have a focus on and as i often say you know the longest relationship that you're going to have with your property is managing it.

Starting point is 00:28:14 While the sexy stuff is about buying it, the hard work happens when you've got to manage it over 10, 15 years plus. So sort of focusing in on that, what do you see as the biggest mistakes that people make around managing their property? Well, there's probably two big ones. Excuse me. And if you look, I think you said at the outset of the podcast, some of the numbers in the market you've sort of got uh if you like the traditional model has about 75 to 80 percent of the market and and people who are self-managing sort of form about 25 there's some recent stats that talk about it being closer to 33 so um there's two bits of information that come out of that for me the first is that um there's obviously a fairly big chunk of people out there and so you

Starting point is 00:29:00 know equates to about 600 000 or thereabouts who are self-managing yeah um and that number is growing so if you look at some ato stats a couple of years ago it's probably closer to 25 26 and now you know some new stats saying 33 so there are um more and more people going that way it makes total sense from a if you like consumer trends around technology um and the ability for people to just do more online i think covid's accelerated that too yeah um so so there's a lot of people doing this and there's a lot of people who are interested in it and every day as a business we see more and more questions about it and so the two big things that we see um off the back of that is there's sort of this set and forget mentality that's been drummed into the population and i

Starting point is 00:29:45 think it's probably served almost from a sales perspective the traditional model that says i'll just leave it with us it'll be fine we'll take care of everything and you know you'll get your check at the end of the month which which by the way in most cases is still at the end of the month and sometimes it's still a check. Good call. Yeah, so I think, you know, obviously with technology dramatically improving, I think the model as such and the expectations of customers

Starting point is 00:30:14 has dramatically improved. So I think the idea that you've invested in an asset and put serious money in it and it's just going to be a set and forget, I sort of questioned from the beginning. Yeah. And it might not be that you have a daily and again everyone's got slightly different behaviors but I know that in my younger years

Starting point is 00:30:32 when there was sort of the first apps for banking I used to find myself checking my account like five times a day and it was just kind of a behavior because you're just checking what's going on what's going on and the same thing with sort of you know share portfolios etc. Yeah exactly. And now you know I find especially with a property it's not the type of activity that requires that checking checking checking but it does require a level of control and management which I think I know from a lot of our customers and having spoken to people over time, that sometimes that's a little bit less available to them when there's, well, it depends also on the different types of property manager in today's world. But someone else just saying, just leave it with me, I've got it, don't worry, doesn't suit a lot of investors who actually say, well, again, this is my asset, this is my investment, and I know that the day-to-day is the type of stuff that drives value, not necessarily just letting it all go. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:29 Yeah. So I think that's one really, really big thing to think about. And if you've got a property manager and you've got your property is just being comfortable with what's going on there and not necessarily just forgetting about it. The second thing, and this is, again, it depends on the individual, but I do think that the sort of ability to control the cost, and it comes back a little bit to entrepreneurial spirit um you know we see different sort of stats float around about you know what's the average number of repairs and maintenance events per year on a property and and we'll always hear the number of five mentioned from sort of traditional models whereas a lot of landlords who are self-managing or or people and again not to draw on your

Starting point is 00:32:17 personal portfolio bushy but but i would expect that if you if you're saying five events a year on one of your properties, you're probably a little bit surprised that there's so much activity there. And so I think there's kind of this, again, this entrepreneurial spirit that you can control the cost base and therefore you can reduce the outgoings. And it's not to the extent of checking daily, but it's just being really comfortable that you have an investment and the ongoing costs of managing that investment are being well managed. So it's kind of a subset, if you like, of the set and forget, which is just how am I spending to maintain this thing? Yeah, spot on. Very good point. And it's that ongoing commitment that a lot of people, as you say, we've been sort of lulled into the old Pied Piper's view of the set and forget routine. And we all know that's a fallacy. On the flip side then, what do you think are the keys to successful property management as you see it?

Starting point is 00:33:11 well i think it's probably a bit of a shift in mindset um and so again as as a tenant once said to me there's very few places on this planet where you can go and spend 20 30 40k a year and be treated like dirt and and i you know i think there's something in that because the tenant who's paying rent often feels like they're a customer so to speak or they're somebody who's got um uh you know a set amount of money that they're willing to pay they've signed an agreement they're they're there for the right reasons um and that there's just this intermediary relationship that perhaps has a certain formula for it that doesn't recognize that they're a paying customer yeah and so i think from a landlord's point of view and you know if you're

Starting point is 00:33:57 somebody who's got an asset and you've got someone who's in that asset and they're going to pay you ran to look after it you just have a totally different approach to interacting with that customer so to speak or that tenant where they're not an alien they're not someone who's out to get you and and and you know set aside all fear-mongering and whatever there's there's obviously all sorts of people and behaviors out there but we do receive an enormous amount of feedback from both our customers and i guess their customers who are tenants that the toe just the interaction and the demeanour of everyone changes when you know you're dealing with the decision maker

Starting point is 00:34:33 and you know that they're someone who cares about how you are living in your home, which is actually their asset. And we see, you know, across the industry in property management, there's sort of, I don't know if you're familiar with NPS or net promoter scores, which is just basically an indicator of how many sort of, I guess,

Starting point is 00:34:52 if you like, advocates or detractors you have for any particular business. Yeah, we use it in our business actually. That's a really good check-in to see how things are tracking. Yeah, and look, for us, it's one that we're super proud of because our score has been through the roof since inception. We sort of have 80-plus as a score over a long-term basis. But I think that the general property management industry

Starting point is 00:35:16 is close to zero or sometimes negative. Yeah. And it's not any one person's fault, so to speak. I think the model is just a little bit challenged when you've got an individual who's got a very large portfolio with a high coverage ratio of the number of properties that they're dealing with. The tech might not always be up to scratch

Starting point is 00:35:34 and just quite frankly, it makes it a little bit difficult. Yeah, particularly in those, unfortunately, the industry is almost in a lot of cases where there's a real estate sales office, the property management's treated like the leper, the party and the poor cousin. And it's under-resourced, it's under-supported. And that's where the industry can get a bad reputation.

Starting point is 00:36:01 There are, like any industry, there are also some very good performers, particularly where it's a dedicated property management office and they are, like you and I, mindful of the long-term approach to the exercise, but they are hard to find and few on the ground, unfortunately. I would 100% agree with that. And I think one of the things that's so interesting, as you say, to the poor cousin you know for us as a business it's always been the most wonderful thing because we'll get you know many customers call every day to say i just had this horrible experience i went

Starting point is 00:36:36 to google and i found you guys and i'm so grateful and and for us we all often joke that you know we've sort of got this this hidden sales force out there who are irritating their customers every day and then sending them away it's yeah i often we've got a mortgage breaking business jeremy and i say the same thing yeah thank heavens the banks do a bad job because if they did a good job they wouldn't no one would need us that's exactly right i love that well i want to sort of turn to the risk side of the equation a bit as well then because it's you know i find a lot of people again probably sold the dummy on that set and forget routine go into investing in property with really without really understanding the risk what what do you uh say is the biggest risks that

Starting point is 00:37:20 need to be considered particularly in relation to the property management front yeah look i think there's um and again there's there's a wonderful amount of fear-mongering that goes on that um to some degree there's elements of that that need to be considered and thought about but to some degree it's just a you know an old mindset and that my favorite one is always that you know at 2 a.m the water tank's gonna burst and you're gonna get called from your tenant and you're gonna have to go there and mop the floor and i just you know again it always makes me laugh that one because uh again bushy i suspect you've got um enough experience with your properties and i wonder how many have had a water tank burst at 2 a.m and i wonder how many times the property manager

Starting point is 00:38:04 has been the first call or has answered the call yeah um i just think there's a practicality to it and again you know we had an issue with plumbing in our own house a couple of weeks ago and what did we do? We called the plumber. So there's certain things that can be, if you like, mitigated and be less of an issue. The two parts, I guess, that we always look at around property management is there's a sort of financial element, which has to do with payments and money and just making sure that's all sorted. And then there's kind of an administrative side of things, which is documents and making sure that things are done properly. And the financial side of it, what we generally have found and our customers sort of give us really positive feedback around this is that

Starting point is 00:38:47 technology has sort of led the way in making sure that a lot of those elements in fact are far superior to what most property managers can offer today and and what i mean by that is it's about having a payment schedule that relates back to the lease agreement which was already signed as a legal and contractual a legal contractor and as a document that everybody's party to yeah and making sure that those payments happen on schedule and if they're not and there's going to be an issue with that there's a way to catch up or make those payments and record it and receipt it and do all the right things. When there's, you know, and depends on which part of the country and which property type you've got, we see a variety of different behaviours around whether you sort of,

Starting point is 00:39:27 you know, take on the utilities and bill for usage or whether you just, you know, incorporate into the rent. But the ability to capture those things, transfer the cost to your tenant where you need to and make sure that everyone, again, has a clean record of it, knows what it's for, why and when it's happening. In my opinion, as we laughed about before, the sort of sending a check at the end of the month doesn't cut it. And where we actually see a lot of problems from people who are switching over to us is when they receive a ledger or if you like a sort of historical account of what's happened with their account with an existing property manager is the ability for the property manager to explain it to them is is surprisingly um limited and it ends up being a finance person

Starting point is 00:40:12 in the back office of the business who has to actually go through what happened and when because it's not as clean as they'd like so yeah from our perspective on the payments front of course someone can not make their payments and our system will alert them immediately and then there's always a discussion that can be had and the general consensus from our customers is having that info in real time rather than allowing arrears to build up over you know two four six weeks um the system actually is going to head it off much much faster and help you to avoid any sort of tribunal situation because you you know the issue right away so that seems to be the main category of questions that we've received and over time has proven to be um quite helpful

Starting point is 00:40:51 where there's probably the secondary concern and sometimes it's more a perceived concern than a reality is just the idea that well you know what if someone's going to destroy my place what if that tenant's going to come in and they're just going to i don't know take a baseball bat and bash holes in every wall and destroy everything or steal everything um and and for that you know and i think you probably again would be pretty comfortable with this it happens in the space in a world where you've got a property manager right there are people out there who can do those things and and there's there's nothing that i can ever say that would make it totally foolproof so that it can never happen. But what we do believe, and again, we do get a lot of positive feedback

Starting point is 00:41:34 on this, is that there's a couple of control points that you can use in the process, which we do believe help. And so the first and biggest step to any tenancy is obviously receiving and reviewing an application and accepting that tenant into the property. And sometimes, not saying all the time, but sometimes we do hear some horror stories. And I'm always mindful of horror stories because it's, you know, one story and you're trying to tar a whole industry or brush a whole industry with them, which isn't right. But, you know, sometimes people are in a hurry to get a tenant in because that's how they get paid.

Starting point is 00:42:09 And it could be that their tenant maybe didn't have all the right checks done or the reference checks. There's a very big trend at the moment towards just sending off an email without actually doing a proper reference check. And, you know, you can put any email into your application. Maybe it's your other hidden email. So from our perspective, there's sort of, you know, a bit of a triangulation that goes on from a landlord or from a property owner back to that new tenant, which is a function of seeing them on paper in the application, being able to do the reference checks and actually understand from a judgment call, if you like, having met this person who they are. And then finally, there's obviously, you know, through Equifax and there was actually some coverage yesterday in the paper about their national tenancy database and what they're doing to beef that up.

Starting point is 00:42:54 And I think it's just getting some information for you to make a decent decision in the same way that you would have made a risk assessment when you purchased your asset. You're kind of about to establish a credit risk with this tenant. In some ways, I would believe that you as the asset owner are well-equipped to make a decision over who's going to look after that and make sure that they can pay. Yeah, exactly right. And it's like employing someone. You don't just for five seconds go, yep, you look pretty good, away you go. You go through a whole series of checks and balances that needs to occur. And again, sort of deferring to the property management office

Starting point is 00:43:38 tacked onto the side of a sales-focused business, then shortcuts can happen and issues arise. So it comes down to that level of due diligence that's being applied, whether it be you as a landlord or the property manager to do so. You've sort of touched on a fair bit of this, Jeremy, but why do you think people are better off self-managing versus utilising a property manager? Well, I think there's a couple of angles to it, right?

Starting point is 00:44:07 The first is what we would always call the sort of cost equation, which is not the main driver, but it is a big reason for doing a lot of sort of changes in behaviour. And what I mean by that is if you can save a couple of grand a year by managing your own property over the life of that property because it's a long-term investment, it's pretty meaningful. If you've got multiple properties, it becomes even more meaningful. So I think if you're talking about saving up for your next deposit or if you're looking – again, you mentioned you've got a mortgage-broking business. I suspect that if you told your customers you can shave 50 basis points or half a percent off their interest rates, they'd all sort of perk up. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:44:47 And obviously, depending on the loan size, if you look at what you can save on property management, in theory, it's about the same or equivalent on a 500K loan or similar. You can actually offset any of the interest rate rises as they come through to some degree by doing this yourself. So there's an element, I think, of just cost savings. The second element from a lot of our customers is about control. and we often liken it to if you saw the explosion of self-managed super funds over the last sort of 25 years yeah um a really big part of that was not necessarily about the cost savings but it was about the control and transparency and that someone you know who's got this amount of investment believed that they could either make a better choice on where that investment goes or decide

Starting point is 00:45:42 which assets it's allocated to and do it in their own sort of self-managed way and and we kind of look at it the same we get the same sort of signals if you like from our customers around they just want to know what's happening and they want a system where it's all controlled in and it's not a day-to-day task for them but they're on top of what's going on because the system tells them yeah so control becomes a really big element um and i think probably the final piece which is what you described a moment ago um is is the trust piece and you know the biggest risk to our business similar to the way you described is if everyone did a really great job out there at really great prices then maybe no one would ever consider self-managing but the fact is is that you know

Starting point is 00:46:25 and there's sort of you know roy morgan's got their um annual survey of professions and i think real estate agents have ranked down the bottom for the better part of 25 years now um and you know It's hard to go a weekend or a week without hearing a friend or family member tell you a story of how they were wronged somewhere by a certain profession. So I just think that there's a lot of individuals out there who are now used to using technology and platforms, who are used to doing things themselves. And I think Airbnb is obviously not the same as our business because it's short term and so there's obviously different elements to it. But as more and more people are used to it, I think that that helps us. And if I look at, you know, the very early days of our business and I sort of have this memory of drawing up a bit of a plan. And if you look at the ownership structure in this country of who owns all the sort of, you know, we talked about three million rental properties and who owns them and what's the demographic.

Starting point is 00:47:26 And it's something like 60 percent or over 50. And it makes total sense, right? It takes you a while to save up a deposit. You know, all the 15-year-olds in this country can't own a property. It's too hard to save up for a deposit. You're going to have to be sort of 30-plus before you've had enough time to save. And so we originally drew a line through that 50-plus segment and said, oh, that group's not going to be that interested in using a platform. And sure enough, in the early days, the very early adopters of our platform were, in fact, those who were sort of pre-retirement or just early retirement.

Starting point is 00:47:57 And they were looking to either protect their retirement income or just sort of a more, if you like, rewarding or just a hobby almost that they've got on the side, which is managing their properties. Yeah. And what's happened over the last sort of 18 months to two years, which has been a really interesting shift for us, is as we've grown bigger and had more exposure to the market, what we've actually found is the sort of, I'll call them the younger demographic, which is a more professional set. uh probably sort of maybe 35 to late 40s who are coming through and saying to us um i'm in the you know i'm about to settle on my next property or i'm just doing the final you know ticks uh you know crossing the t's and dotting the i's on a contract to purchase another investment yeah and there's no way i'm going to go through the traditional model i'm i'm you know signing up to the platform yeah and it's been really interesting because i think it's a change in the

Starting point is 00:48:54 sort of mindset of people that the consideration set for what to do once I've purchased my property has totally changed. And I think that that's actually going to accelerate over the next couple of years as more and more people are just used to doing it themselves. It kind of changes the proposition for what it means to be full service property management. Yeah. Yeah. Good call. So if you were to sort of paint a little word picture again of who is going to be best suited to the Rent Better DIY platform. Also paint a picture of who wouldn't be the right fit. Yeah, sure. I think we've always been really surprised. As I mentioned, we started thinking that it was not going to be people who are over a certain age bracket. And we started thinking it

Starting point is 00:49:40 was not going to be people over a certain income bracket. And we've proven to be wrong on both accounts because we actually have quite a few senior executives who'll show up and they'll just say you know i was paying someone down the road to do this and i've realized that i was chasing and doing stuff anyway so i may as well just take it on and this is great you know cheapest chips and and it works so um for us we think that obviously the starting point is anyone who's got an investment property or who's considering one really you know if if i guess the ability to get a higher return on that investment is important to you then we are certainly something that you should look at yeah um as an individual and a particular sort of mindset i think if you're

Starting point is 00:50:21 someone who's traveling 95 of the time and if you're somebody who just says um no i'm not interested at all in looking at this then um you know maybe that's not going to fit for you because if you're constantly on the move and you're just too busy or even to some degree depending on life stage you might say well you know we've just had a newborn right now it might not be the right time for me but perhaps you know in a couple of months yeah um so i think that there is some element to it and then look the third part is probably proximity to property so we're increasingly adding new features and functions and services through the site with the goal of allowing anyone anywhere to manage their property successfully but there's still certain elements that might

Starting point is 00:51:09 involve um someone being close to the property or doing something and so that's where uh you know we all get to a place where it's 100 you can manage from anywhere anytime yeah um but there's still certain elements where we see customers say oh actually for right now i'm you know i'm moving to another geography it might not make sense for me to do this so yeah um more and more we're adding features that stop that coming up at all which is exciting yeah um but i think it is part of it Yeah, love it. Let's drill into the dollars then for a minute. You sort of touched on that earlier.

Starting point is 00:51:41 What is the cost of rent better and how does it compare with using a property manager just to put some shape around that? So we typically see most customers come through on what we call the rent better way package, which is $149 up front and then $25 a month to remain on the platform. So you're sort of looking at $449 in that sort of first year and then depending on the term of the tenancy, obviously that changes. But it just, again, depending on your average rental price, it sort of comes in at 1% to 1.5%, even though we charge a flat fee. So, obviously, if you've got higher rent, it's going to be lower than that. When you compare that to, if you like, the cost with a traditional property manager, they're probably going to get in somewhere close to about 2, well, probably over 2K a year if you include, obviously, the costs of letting the property or finding a tenant. Yeah, yeah. So it ends up being close-ish to $2,000 a year that you can save per property.

Starting point is 00:52:40 There's also obviously a whole bunch of ancillary other costs that get thrown in with a traditional manager, which sort of can take that cost a bit higher. So from a landlord's perspective, again, we sort of round it up to about $2,000 a year that you're going to save. And the ongoing costs through the platform are pretty minimal. and yeah we just think that most people take a look at it from a rational perspective pretty quickly get to the place where they're like oh actually this is great and at the very least I'm going to give it a go and we you know we've built up quite a loyal customer base yeah love it I want to touch on the the area of the legislative requirements because as you would know there's been a significant shift and it's progressively moving away around the country from Victoria

Starting point is 00:53:29 New South Wales, Queensland, where the legislation clearly does tend to favour the tenants, unfortunately. Is Rentbetter positioned to help landlords to actually be able to comply with the current legislation and particularly notice periods and all the rest of it that goes with that? Can you sort of give us a feel for how that shapes? Basically, the way we've got is for each state and territory, the sort of lease agreements and the legal requirements are baked into the platform. It's interesting though because the thing that we find

Starting point is 00:54:05 and we find less of it with self-managing landlords than we would with the sort of traditional model is the one that bothers people is particularly, as you mentioned, and let's set aside COVID for a second because there's a whole bunch of sort of unique one-offs that may never, ever occur again. There was a fair bit of volatility in lease agreements and people doing all sorts of funny things.

Starting point is 00:54:25 Yeah. The one point that seems to have been a sticking point for a lot of people around those notice periods and changes and how it works is is kind of back to this idea of can I get out of my lease agreement if I need to? Yeah. And it's a thing that seems to bother people because you have signed a lease agreement and it's got a contractual term attached to it. And what ends up happening in that situation? And let's just assume that maybe the tenant lost their job and they want to break the agreement. or go to the other extreme that says the tenant just simply doesn't want to be here anymore and they want to get out of their lease agreement.

Starting point is 00:55:02 Now, an enormous amount of time and effort is spent using, if you like, the stick approach rather than the carrot approach. And I think with that stick, it's where we certainly hear from our customers or see in market a lot more friction caused because I think people are trying to enforce certain legal requirements that sometimes may not be worth enforcing. And what I mean by that is if a tenant wants to go and a tenant wants to leave, the actual benefit of enforcing the agreement. Now, certainly there's terms and there is legalities around it that should be enforced. And obviously, when you sign a contract, you shouldn't do so on the basis that you're going

Starting point is 00:55:45 to break that contract or breach the term of the agreement or the terms of the agreement. Yeah. But there is also an element of of being able to act quickly. And if there's a situation where based on what's been written in the legislation and what's been updated and the notice periods and all the rest, where an amicable outcome can be arrived at pretty quickly, which doesn't incur huge extra costs and times and all sorts of stuff, then we often think that the carrot approach is way better. which is basically you want to leave we can spend months fighting you why don't we just move on quickly and get the next tenant in you know particularly right now where vacancy rates are i think at their lowest in i can't remember what the number was but it was like 20 something years um it seems to me that for most landlords and again we hear this day in day out um the idea of trying to sort of fight is is maybe on a principal basis you want to hold the line and that's why there are now more standard terms around, you know, what does compensation look

Starting point is 00:56:46 like? What are the terms and notice periods, et cetera. But for the most part, the best thing to do is to sort of, you know, rule a line through it and move on. Yeah. Yeah. And let's face it, as humans, we're dynamic and we're not static. Our needs, issues and whatnot change over time. And if you sort of embrace that and look at, okay, what's the win-win here? How can we maneuver this in such a way that it's a if the tenant wants to get out or if a landlord needs to sell the property or wants to take the property back or what any of those sort of triggers if there's a more reasonable approach that doesn't sort of start to getting black and white and sort of legalistic which which can happen if there's a an intermediary involved because they just sort

Starting point is 00:57:27 of stick to the knitting uh then i hear what you're saying that there's there's much more opportunity to manage that but the other thing that i'd love to just sort of touch on as well Because the property management profession have, again, whether it's fact or fiction, I don't know, but quite often in times gone by, they used to talk about the fact that there are some specialist landlord insurers who won't insure a property unless it's professionally managed or on a claim if the legislation hasn't been strictly adhered to. What's your thoughts around that subject? yeah every now and again we get a question about that um from what we've seen there's certain policies and sometimes they're actually um i shouldn't give i shouldn't claim to be an insurance expert i'm certainly not but um where where you look at certain policies that may have been sold through a specific agent um sometimes there are terms in there that relate to that um i think

Starting point is 00:58:27 there is a bit of a myth that um sometimes the policy or the premium will go up if there's no agent and i uh recognize there may be a circumstance where that happens but it's not something we've really come across and i think all the major insurers as far as i understand will have a policy and not have any sort of legal issues with someone self-managing it's if you went on to any of the sort of fair trading consumer affairs it's a totally legitimate it's not it's not as if there's sort of something to to be ashamed of or hidden of it's totally out in the daylight that everybody knows this occurs and as i said more and more people are doing it so i think um as far as i'm aware all the major insurers have no sort of there's no impact if you're self-managing or

Starting point is 00:59:10 you've got an agent uh but i do know there's a couple of providers who might go through agencies for distribution that have some terms in there yeah um and again happy to be fact-checked on that but that's my understanding of it and it's not you know as the myth goes it's not it is a of a myth yeah um uh sorry you had a second point in there which i yeah no that's okay you've covered that off pretty well really uh i guess just to sort of uh close the discussion around the whole rental exercise i'd love given you're active in this space uh every day of the week what's your current outlook for the rental market across the country moving forward given we've just come through a a once in a 30 year uh exercise as a flow on from uh all of the money and everything

Starting point is 00:59:53 else that's been poured onto COVID. What's your outlook for what it looks like and what does that mean to landlords that are looking to self-manage moving forward? Yeah, look, I actually think it's a super exciting time because there's sort of two fundamentals that have been sort of driving the market for the last little while. The first is all these sort of surge in prices or house prices and the yields haven't kept up with it. So the rents haven't moved as fast as the prices have. And so I think if you're a landlord right now, in actual fact, and you can see it already happening in the markets, the rental prices are going up. And just to keep up with surging prices, they'll, I believe, continue to go up for quite some

Starting point is 01:00:31 time. Yeah. The second factor is we've been totally starved of immigration for the last couple of years. So I would hazard a guess that the whatever, the 200 odd thousand immigrants that typically arrive in this country that haven't for the last little while would mostly be renters. Yeah. And so there's, number one, we're already seeing vacancy rates at a super low level. As you add more immigrants who are coming into the country, you should start to see, obviously, more demand and more supply issues.

Starting point is 01:01:01 So that's, those two things should sort of favour landlords. I think interest rates going up probably scare people a little bit and, you know, with good reason, people are stretched. But I think for the most part, the investor market tends to have a bit of a buffer there. And have the opportunity, if you like, to sort of look at, well, even if interest rates move up a few points, there's still the opportunity there to maybe take advantage of a lull or a hesitation in the market and find those assets that make sense. Yeah. And I do think for the individual, again, mums and dads in this country who are the, you know, vast majority of investors, it presents, if you like, also more opportunity to, if you like, expand the location of their portfolio. because certainly regional, which was less exciting or, you know, maybe not even regional, just non-metro, was not such a sought-after area. And I think what's happened is it's not quite levelled the playing field

Starting point is 01:02:03 but certainly increased the value of assets in those places. Yeah, yeah. So it becomes an exciting time and I, you know, a part of me thinks there'll be a little breather now as everyone recalibrates and we'll go on to the next phase of property growth in this country. Totally agree, totally agree. Well said. I want to sort of shift gears now, if we can, into what I call the ambush round, which is just the fast four that every podcast gets you to tap dance on.

Starting point is 01:02:30 So the first of those, Jeremy, is what's your favorite quote and why? I have one that, in fact, my dad always used to say to me that's always stuck with me. And I think it gets credited to Napoleon but may come from a time before that, which is, I'm in a hurry, dress me slowly. and sort of it sort of you know it meets my you know interest in property it meets my investment philosophy there's an element of there's lots going on just take a deep breath and look around and think of what's happening think about what's happening and you can make some clear decisions um so it's one that's actually sort of stuck with me around patience and persistence and and just generally been important to me i love it that's i haven't heard that one and that's a

Starting point is 01:03:12 That is a cracker. I'm going to borrow that from you, mate. Now, on the literary front, what would be the top book that you'd recommend the listeners have a read of and why? Yeah, look, there's a whole series of books that I would say I sort of grew up reading that always had a bit of an entrepreneurial flair to them. There's one which is probably lesser known, which is called The Apprenticeship of Doody Kravitz. and it's about a young kid in the US who sort of grows up desperate and aspiring to be sort of big business titan and all the sort of to's and fro's and what happens

Starting point is 01:03:50 and the experience and there's just a lot of lessons in it and I've always, you know, it's always been in the back of my mind of this sort of, you know, young kid hustling trying to get somewhere and, you know, I guess to take something out of it that there's, you know, there's endless paths to get there and there's many ways to skin a cat and you just keep going But you've got to be mindful of what the important things that you can't sort of do away with along the way.

Starting point is 01:04:12 Never heard of that one either, mate. I'm two from two. Yeah, is that the apprenticeship of who, Kravitz? D-U-D-I. There you go. Love it. I'm going to put that on the Kindle list once we get off today. That's awesome.

Starting point is 01:04:25 Now, just sort of recircling back to the investment front for a second, what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received today? um the the best invite the best advice i've probably ever got is is maybe something i mentioned a little earlier which was around it's time in the market not timing the market um and i think it's sort of back to this you just have to have the right mindsets which means i'm gonna save a little bit and i'm gonna put it into something that's going to have long-term capital growth or long-term growth um because i believe i can get a better outcome that way so

Starting point is 01:05:00 So for me, and I, you know, credit it to some degree back in the early days when I said, you know, I was at Count Financial, just understanding that approach made a huge difference to me. Yeah. And so that was probably the best advice rather than, you know, put money in this stock. That certainly helped. I think, look, when it comes to the worst advice, it probably does come down to, you know, just buy this stock. It's a speccy and you'll get a huge return. and taking a little gamble on it. You know, I'm not a big gambling type person.

Starting point is 01:05:36 I actually, it just doesn't work for me. So, you know, things that have been just do it, it'll work out. They've never worked well for me. I love it. That's awesome. Now, what about a personal habit or a rewarding ritual or a daily discipline that you've sort of adopted over time that you believe has contributed most to your success today?

Starting point is 01:06:00 Yeah, look, I'm sort of a bit of maybe a creature of habit in that I've just always had a little notebook with me through my professional life where, you know, in any meeting or whatever, I just write things down. I've got a pretty good memory for visual things, so just writing or drawing something, it sticks. And so I've always had a bit of a process at the end of the day just to quickly flick through my notes from the day.

Starting point is 01:06:25 And almost say to myself, what's the number one thing I've got to get done tomorrow? Love it. Sorry, it's a bit specific and small, but it's always just been really important to me as a recount of the day and what do I need to focus on. And that, you know, becomes increasingly difficult as our business grows and there's just more and more of these things that are urgent to focus on. But I've always found that pretty good. And something that I've not started but was recommended recently and will start to do is almost taking that to the next level and looking at sort of journaling and just writing stuff down in more long form, which is probably something I'll explore in the next little while. Yeah, love it. Awesome.

Starting point is 01:07:03 All right. Well, if I sort of got you to summarize our awesome conversation today, what are the key takeaways that you'd like the audience to focus on? well i think when you when you look at um any investment um or any asset i think there's always got to be a care factor about it and you know property management's no different you've purchased this asset you've bought it now you've got to own the thing and i think the critical thing there is to not have a set and forget strategy but to actually be involved in it and to look at what's going on because there are material benefits from doing so I would say, you know, particularly as it relates back to rent,

Starting point is 01:07:45 better is the idea of being able to save on the costs of property management, have better control, have access to the right tools and technology, and that should sort of put you in a position, hopefully, to be able to acquire another investment property sooner. Yeah, love it. Very well said. Tell us what's next for you and RentBender, Jeremy, and for those listeners who have really picked up their ears and going,

Starting point is 01:08:09 yeah, I really need to dive into this. So how can they find out more and get more involved with you? Yeah, sure. So I think, look, the first and best step is if you go to rentbetter.com.au, which is the two words pushed together, R-E-N-T-B-E-T-T-E-R.com.au, there on that website, you can get started if you're ready, but you'll see a whole bunch of really great tools that are available for you. There's an e-book, which is a guide to self-managing.

Starting point is 01:08:35 There's a switch from your agent kit if you are so inclined to do so. and there's also a pricing report if you just wanted to know uh i guess based on on sort of market trends and historical numbers what what do you think you could get for rent um and so those three tools sort of start people on their journey um and then we look we do run a bunch of educational workshops where people will come through and we get a lot of really positive feedback about that so you're most welcome to get in touch about that um and look i think um in terms of where we're heading now we're at a really exciting time uh we we did another round of funding not that long ago and that's given us sort of a bit more fuel in the tank to grow which is what's happening

Starting point is 01:09:13 and the idea that we're sort of attracting more and more partners to the business which enables us to do more exciting things like allow people to you know for specific tasks or jobs or services that they do need help with they can actually book an individual to do certain things um the ability to uh start looking with partners to white label our platform and just offer it to more people in more ways so it's been a really exciting couple of months and i think the next 12 months will be equally if not more exciting awesome no it's a yeah as you've sort of pointed out through the conversation today there's a there's an element of control that technology really assists with and for those who want the ultimate control and just either don't trust or have some doubts around

Starting point is 01:09:58 getting a third party to do it then what you bring to the table through the rent better platform is it's got to be a great opportunity and a growing and evolving one as as you were you and your team continue to get a handle on what landlords are looking for and the tools that they need to be able to do that bigger and better moving forward so but i really appreciate you spending the time and being generous with your time on the show today and look forward to keeping in touch and focusing on the ongoing growth of Rent Better. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:10:33 Look, thank you for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today. Thanks, mate. Talk soon. Bye for now. To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au.

Starting point is 01:10:48 That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash Get Invested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.

Starting point is 01:11:18 Thank you.

Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Jeremy Goldschmidt on investing in Rentbetter

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.