Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Realty Talk: AI’s influence on your borrowings

Episode Date: April 20, 2024

AI - Artificial Intelligence - is very much a part of our lives.  It is working in places we don’t even realise.  As an example - did you realise AI could be impacting your borrowing ability? Bushy discusses that with finance broker and thought leader Jason Back.   Also this week we present another installment of our special series on Property Management. Lauren Robinson talks tech with Bushy and how to leverage the opportunities it offers. NEW – join our Facebook group, The Property Hub Collective: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1857513011165686 Join the Property Hub community on Substack! Sign up to get Australian property news, opinion, and episodes in your inbox: https://propertyhubau.substack.com/ Subscribe to RealtyTalk on the Property Hub channel: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Email Property Hub is a collaboration between Bushy Martin from KnowHow Property, Kevin Turner from Realty, Andrew Montesi from Apiro Marketing and Apiro Media, and Australia’s largest independent podcast network DM Media. Business and partnership enquiries: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

hello I'm Kevin and welcome to this week's realty talk show AI or artificial intelligence as it's known is very much a part of our lives nowadays it's working in places we don't even realize as an example did you know that AI could in fact be impacting your borrowing ability well bushy discusses that with finance broker and thought leader Jason back so brace yourself for that one that's coming up later in the show but first up another installment in our special series on property management as we catch up with author trainer and property management veteran Lauren Robinson to talk tech and how to

leverage the opportunities that it offers you and I but just before we start i want to say thanks to our supporters and content partners realty.com.au bmt tax depreciation know how property finance get rare property and apiro marketing and if this is your first time with us a big welcome you'll find us on all podcast players and through the southern cross austereo network if you like the show please hit the subscribe button and help us continue to bring you the best guests every week and don't forget too you can join the conversation anytime on facebook by searching the property hub collective that's facebook and just look for the property hub collective we'll be back in just a moment property deductions can save you

thousands of dollars each year to make sure you maximize deductions you need to work with the most experienced quantity surveyor in the country bmt tax depreciation is the leading specialist in the industry they've completed over 700 000 tax deduction schedules for residential investment and commercial properties australia-wide bmt guarantee to find double your fee in the first full financial year deductions call bmt on 1-300-728-726 today for an obligation free quote realty talk and your host bushy martin as the entire world has become engulfed by the ever increasing advances in ai and technology significant improvements that you're probably not even aware of are rapidly being introduced into the pivotal area of property management

where the rubber really hits the road in relation to property and investment performance gone are the days of old clunky isolated and time-consuming manual measures which are continuously being replaced with live dynamic seamless interactive technology which is improving the efficiency and effectiveness of just about everything. So if you're not working with tech enabled property managers that focus on leading edge continuous improvement you're costing yourself time and money and you'll risk at being left behind. So what are some of these key advancements that investors and property professionals should be leveraging to streamline operations and enhance satisfaction for landlords, property managers and tenants alike

in a true spirit of win, win, win. To open your eyes to these rapidly expanding opportunities and as part of the Property Hub's ongoing special focus on the importance of property management, we're joined again by author, two-decade property management veteran and Realty Talk regular, Lauren Robinson, the head of property partnerships with Longview and a highly respected property management trainer.

So welcome back to the show, Lauren. Thanks very much, Bushy. Lauren, looking forward to this subject because just about every day there seems to be some improvement in the space in relation to AI and technology. So can we start by getting you to talk us through what evolving PM technology you're seeing in the industry? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty exciting for someone who started in the industry when it was paper and pen to now. It's just it's it just changes constantly. So a couple of the really exciting things we see, well, we're utilising at Longview is obviously cloud-based property management software. So majority of agencies are now utilising this.

And for investors, it just makes the process really transparent. So you can see in real-time data. So you can see where the rent's paid up to. As long as you have internet access from any location, you can see exactly where the rent's paid up to. You can see all your statements, your entry condition report. so no more hiding of information and just everything the property manager can see that the landlord and also the tenant should be able to see as well mobile technology so we've now got property management apps for pretty much everything in terms of entry condition reports vacates

maintenance reporting so it's really a much better experience for the tenants but also the landlord so as a property manager from the inspection you can send the reports immediately a tenant can report maintenance and it can straight away be communicated to the landlord so and photos included so everyone is in the picture smart building technology so obviously really tech savvy tenants will appreciate so you know things like lighting control smart thermostats access control systems remote monitoring solutions so that's really exciting for tenants data analytics and business intelligence so that's another really important tool because it helps investors understand what their how their property is performing understanding market

trends tenant behavior so rental rates occupancy rates so it helps you as the investor make more informed decisions which is you know exactly what you need as an investor probably my favorite tool is VR and AI. So virtual reality and augmented reality. So that allows, you know, virtual property tours, interactive like visualization. So it really allows tenants to explore the property and decide whether the property is going to be suitable or not before, you know, spending an hour going to the inspection and, you know, wasting time. So that's pretty exciting for the industry um and then predictive maintenance systems so that's something that's fairly new as well so um it helps landlords understand okay well is there going to be equipment failures and

maintenance needed before the actual maintenance occurs so um yeah and also understanding what the downtime might be extending the asset lifespan and reducing maintenance costs so lots of exciting things happening very exciting and i and i love the fact that there's this sort of instant connectedness between all the key players in real time and pretty much the ability to start for an investor in particular to be effectively managing your property from your mobile phone it's uh you know as you say as long as you've got an internet connection the amount of data and and current live data that you can get your hands on now uh it's mind-blowing in that that context but uh i guess you've talked about a lot of the ones that are with us and I know there's rapid change in this

area are there any other AI or other improvements that you you know that are still coming and what are they and how far away do you think they might be? I guess there's constant changes in the industry but there's some key developments that are on the horizon or perhaps still in the early stages and again around that AR so the augmented reality and virtual reality that's really beginning to transform the property experience with virtual property tours and I guess further enhancements that are set to come about are in regards to realistic property experiences. So tenants or owners of properties or potential owners can virtually customize and furnish spaces before they commit to either buying the property or leasing the property. Robotic process

automation for admin tasks so repetitive tasks such as data entry document processing and invoicing there is already a little bit around automation around that but there's going to be further automation with ongoing advancements that lead to more sophisticated solutions where any so property managers can really handle complex property management and, I guess, more human interaction, which I guess the robotic systems will help reduce human error. We've got smart contracts and blockchain integration. So that's, I guess, around more automating

and securing contracts, execution and property transactions. Natural language processing, so NLP for tenant communication. So that'll just make the process or I guess the chatbots and the virtual assistants more capable of understanding and responding to tenants' inquiries and requests in a natural language, which at the end of the day enhances that tenant experience and streamlines the communication process. And lastly, advanced predictive analytics. So that's being utilised in property management for tasks such as predicting maintenance, but also there'll be further enhancements. So further developments might include accurate forecasting for property market trends, tenant turnover rates and rental demand and enabling property professionals to make more informed decisions around that. So, yeah, often we're being updated as to what's coming up and what's in the early stages of development. And, again, lots of exciting changes, and they're rapidly coming too.

Very exciting. And you've touched on some of these already, but what positive changes, improvements and benefits do you see this creating for investors, property managers and tenants, Laura? I guess at the end of the day, it's around enhanced efficiency and productivity. So it allows everything to be really transparent for the owner and the tenant, but also it allows that property manager

to do more, I guess, higher tasks, so more human interaction and more tenant engagement. It improves the tenant experience. So by having technology that's enhanced, it also provides more convenient communication channels and personalised support. It also allows better asset performance. So it really allows the property managers to make sure

that they're optimizing the asset performance and maximizing returns and then as the owner they're receiving a lot of data-driven insights to make informed decisions there'll be cost savings and operational efficiency for the property managers which again only can help enhance that customer experience because it frees up the resources within the company to focus on other areas and enhance transparency and compliance so compliance and risk management is a huge part of what we do as property managers and making sure that everything, there's no, like everything's tracked and the performance metrics are really kept on top of

and demonstrating compliance with legal and regulatory standards is very important. So all of this technology helps us to make sure that it's done properly. Exciting times. I've certainly seen a big shift in recent times in relation to the borderless nature of property now in this country because I think the enabling and facilitation that technology gives us,

and you've mentioned a lot of the opportunities that can help that, is that people are much more comfortable now buying property unseen in another state than they ever have been, and the connectedness amongst all the professionals that can assist in that process has made it a much more seamless and rewarding experience, still providing all the information that people need to be able to both secure and then manage a property ongoing. So very exciting times. Just to close off then, Lauren, how can investors and landlords access all of this new tech that you've been talking about

in order to take advantage of benefits? Yeah, I guess, like you were saying, it's really important to make sure you surround yourself with property professionals that utilise this technology. So I think being aware that this is all available and then asking those questions when you're interviewing your your team whether it be your your mortgage broker your property manager your financial advisor so just sort of asking them what what software do they utilize um in order to make sure that you have a great experience as an investor as well as your tenants because at the end of the day it's a business and they're your your clients so um i think just understanding what's available what's constantly changing and then knowing what questions

to ask so that you have access to all these tools is really important absolutely agree well look we've only just touched service i know we could talk a lot more about this but you've really whet our appetites and i'd really want to thank you for opening your eyes to these very exciting opportunities lauren which certainly reinforces the need that landlords and investors to be working with board focused professionals who actually specialize in continuously creating new solutions to our ongoing housing problems so we suggest that anyone who would like to know more reach us out to you at longview.com.au forward slash property management Queensland,

or if you're a property management professional, they need to contact you at laurenrobertson.com.au. So thanks again for joining us on the Property Hub today, Lauren. Thanks very much, Bushy. Successful property investment is a game of finance. Do you have the right team and the right game plan? Realty Talk is brought to you by KnowHow Property.

More than mortgage brokers, Bushy Martin and his team of investment architects set you up with a sustainable strategy structured to lower your costs, tax, risk and stress while increasing your capacity for growth. KnowHow has helped over 1,900 homeowners and investors secure more than $800 million in property wealth. So get set to live more, work less and live your legacy. Want to know how to invest in your freedom? Visit knowhowproperty.com.au. This is Realty Talk, powered by realty.com.au. Now, in recent times, it doesn't matter where you turn,

you keep hearing the term AI or artificial intelligence, which is probably no surprise, given that the term was actually crowned as the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year last year, and it's finally drying out the mind-numbing, endless repetition of the term COVID. and it's fair to say that the fast universal and exponential adoption of AI is influencing every aspect of our lives. So in the world of property and the critical importance of finance

to your home or investment property performance how are AI advancements and digitization looking at changing your loan borrowing experience? Well you may be shocked and surprised at what's actually happening in this space. So to reveal what's changing in the lending arena we're joined by leading and award-winning finance thought leader and the founder of Broker Essentials, Jason Back. A mortgage-breaking business coach and keynote speaker. So welcome back to the Property Hub's Realty Talk Show, Jason. Hi, Bushy. Always exciting times with you. Absolutely, mate. This is a great subject given the tremendous change that's imposing on just about everything. So I guess just to set the context, what's been the average residential

property borrowing process experience in recent years? Look, in the recent years, if you go back probably five to even 10 years uh look it's still very manual lots of paper being pushed around uh yes 10 years ago we were still faxing things into banks uh people were still dropping off rates notices and their 10th page of their credit card statement so yes hands hands hands and uh lots of rainforests are being destroyed unfortunately so uh i'm glad to see we've moved on from those days my word a very long worldly and painful experience for pretty much everyone involved in it actually so let's now jump into the exciting future and i want you to sort of get us you to run us through you know what changes are happening in the opening banking arena ai digitization and and as a flow-on

from that what impact are they having on the borrowing experience both now and more excitedly into the future well there's a couple of things i mean from an internal industry perspective i mean data is king so the more that we know about the consumer the more we know about their behaviors when we know about the history and the future, it makes it easier for everybody involved. So big data, people have heard that term before, everybody's crazy about it. We're all collecting as much as possibly can.

We need to be keeping it safe and sound. So a lot of people have experienced some very high profile cases over the last couple of years with that. So privacy is a big thing and security is a big thing for consumers these days. As far as what the consumer is sort of seeing on the ground, they're probably not noticing a lot at this stage. So optical character recognition where they send us something, our systems read it and it drops it into another system has been around for quite a while.

But as we evolve, we're now starting to get into everyone would have heard of things like ChatGPT and Gemini and Bard and Claude. There's lots of these language models out there. So we're getting computers to do a lot more of the heavy lifting for us. We would have seen at the localized level things like valuations have been automated a lot over the last few years. Your customers would have heard of things like AVMs, automated valuation models. They've been out there for quite a few years now. So lots of little bits in the background all starting to get to come together where we're going to have in the next 12 to eight months to two years, a much more seamless integration

between existing information that we need from you, our ability to get it, and then interpret that to create a solution for our clients. And that's sort of where you mentioned the term open banking. So the information being shared between a lot of the institutions will become much more readily accessible, not just to the broker, but to the consumer. how we bring that information in how we then uh amalgamate it with other sources of information like the ato and if you're uh your readers and consumers out there look at things like the ato 2030 tax vision where you know digitized tax returns or no more tax returns when we're getting

all those pieces of the puzzles brought together it means that we don't need to be spending more time asking you about you know your shopping habits at woolworths and coles and your car loan with BMW, we can spend more time with a consumer talking about debt structure and strategy and the things that actually matter to them. So the way I see it, we're going to spend more quality time talking to the consumer about advice, about strategies, about what's important to them, and less time collecting information that's already available at the moment, just a little bit hard to get. Yeah, yeah, beautifully summed up. So how can property borrowers and homeowners then take best advantage of all this in terms of the

current and future ai digitization related changes then jose look i think that artificial intelligence is a word or as a theory it's it's thrown around a lot and i think we're probably overusing it at the moment um like i encourage my clients and business owners to be ferociously curious so this is certainly not something to be uh afraid of it's certainly something that they should be more curious about so you know don't limit your thinking in relation to what's possible with things like artificial intelligence and with machine learning and large language models that are out there, ask more questions. Talk to your broker or to your buyer's agents about how they're using technology to better the customer experience, to deepen the relationship

that you have with them. And make sure you overlay that with the questions, of course, around security and safety and the like. Because at the core of what we do, we have to always put the best interest of the customer first, which doesn't just mean giving great advice. It also means we need to be protecting the clients as well yeah i'd love the opportunity where a lot of the the background grunt stuff is going to be looked after and and everyone in the industry can spend more time on the high value exercise and that's really understanding what the problem is and how how best to solve it in that context so pretty exciting uh just to sort of keep us interested in in what's coming uh what else is likely to occur in this space so the borrowers

need to keep an eye out for look i think you're going to see consolidation in the coming years the ability for bigger institutions uh to be able to bring technology onto the market really fast means it's super competitive so we've seen over the last couple of years we've seen a few of the neo banks come and go it's a competitive space everybody's fighting for the you know the end users dollar so you're going to see the potential entrance of companies like apple and amazon and Google enter into the banking and finance race. So that'll be an interesting space. You will definitely see as far as intergenerational or once in a generation or once even in a century type event, we are on the precipice or the cusp of absolute change in how we live our daily lives.

Now, for the average consumer out there at the moment, that doesn't mean much. They're probably not playing around on Gemini and chat and all these sort of language models at this stage. But when you start exploring what some of these things can do for you around time saving, efficiency and productivity etc there's huge upside especially for small business owners out there for those that are searching for things like information around uh like especially with buyers agents and for myself that uses a ba i know that data is still the cornerstone of making good decisions the ability for them to get better data deeper data more consistent information more accurate information that's really exciting because it helps me as the consumer make a better

more informed decision when i when i finally pull the trigger i i know it's based on a wider data set and what the ability for ai and and large language models to condense data really quickly that's going to be key so you know as far as you know your uh your clients go and and people listening to your podcast go um be ferociously curious would be my advice yeah beautifully said And I think what's exciting me is that while a lot of the data is historic and the historic is very useful, I think the capability that's coming in now to do much more realistic forecasting of what's going to happen is very exciting because- Predictive data sets. Yeah, absolutely. And for those in the investment space, we're buying property for its future, not for what it's done.

uh so uh that's i mean bushy could you imagine a world where we've got the ability for uh you know a machine to help us go hey let's tap into what's happening at a local government state government federal government what grants are being issued right now in that particular state or that particular suburb and we've now got all the information around what footpaths are going in or what motorways or what train stations are being put in or what you know the 50-year plan is and to be able to bring all that in to be able to then generate a two-page report for me to just create a decision in minutes i mean that's exciting stuff so i'm less worried about you know ai taking over you know the world and all our jobs and at the moment the way we should see it and i love the

word co-pilot um i love the idea of uh this thing if i'm working it properly and i'm prompting it properly can work with me to help me get what i want in a time and a frame that i want so yeah it's exciting times very exciting times well god really want to thank you again for opening your eyes to all this rapidly changing and particularly in the lending space as well jason and again we encourage any mortgage brokers mortgage brokers listening in who are actually looking to deliver sustainable growth moving forward and want to take their business opportunity to the next level to do themselves a big favor and contact you direct at brokeressentials.com.au so just click on the link in the show notes and again jason i want to really thank you for

taking the time to join us on the show today bush it's an absolute pleasure and i said a big shout out to all the team. I know the great work that you do and the lines that you're changing and the difference that you make. So, you know, thank you for you. Thank you, mate. Talk again soon. Thanks, Bushy. Are you curious about harnessing your super for property investment? Propel your future with the enlightening online seminar, the ultimate masterclass to self-managed Superfund Property Mastery. Reserve your spot now at getrare.com.au forward slash SMSF. Spearheaded by Rusty from independent buyers agency Get Rare Properties, this masterclass unravels strategic property investment using your self-managed superannuation fund. You know,

it's not just about learning. It's about transforming your financial future through education. So embrace this opportunity to enrich your investing acumen. Enroll now in the free masterclass and begin a journey that marries insight with action, leading to a financially empowered tomorrow. Unlock bonus content now as a premium subscriber. And that brings us to the end of this week's show. A big thanks to our very special guests for this week. And make sure that you don't miss a single episode of Realty Talk or Bushy's Get Invested podcast, both delivered to you each week. And you can do that by subscribing to The Property Hub now on your favourite podcast player or wherever you are listening to or watching this show. Also, don't forget you can

join the conversation anytime on Facebook by just searching The Property Hub Collective. thanks to our supporters and content partners a special thanks to realty.com.au bmt tax depreciation know how property finance get rare property and appiro marketing i'm kevin turner on behalf of bushy and the whole property hub team we'd like to say thanks for being with us and we look forward to seeing you again next week