The goal for property managers is to acquire more PUM in the most time and cost effective way.
To grow a rent roll, you can rely on marketing and word of mouth referrals, or take the ‘shortcut’ and purchase an existing rent roll. In terms of adding more PUMs, it’s all about keeping renters and property owners happy, and staying compliant.
Great work delivers results, but what if you had a collective of dozens, if not hundreds of potential customers sitting right at your doorstep? This would give you the opportunity to build those all-important relationships with less effort.
The way to do this is by managing strata rolls.
Many agencies fail to explore the strata roll option because they believe it’s too complicated and time consuming, in reality it can be an excellent launchpad to scale.
Rent roll vs strata roll
While a traditional rent roll includes individual properties spread across a geographic area, a strata roll covers all the lots in a block (sometimes hundreds). Your strata roll manager’s job is to deal with administrative tasks, such as managing budgets and liaising with the Executive Committee or Owner’s Corporation.
Provided you do a good job and give the Executive Committee reason to renew each year, this means you have a single point of contact for many times the commission/fee rate of a traditional rental property.
To manage a strata roll, you will need a team with a slightly different skill set from standard property managers (the work is more admin-heavy). Read more about the difference between a rent roll and a strata roll here.
Make your agency the preferred provider
Once you overcome the settling in period of managing a strata roll, you have a potential goldmine of new and qualified leads.
Here’s a hypothetical example:
You acquire a strata roll with 1500 lots and hire the right people to oversee it.
Of these lots, 750 are owner-occupied, which provides potential leads for your sales department.
The remaining 750 are leased and could potentially be managed by you and your team.
While you can’t swoop in and take over or sell 750 lots at once, your agency will have the benefit of being visible and building stronger relationships with the stakeholders in the building.
The benefits to you are:
A more localised pool of clients (less travel for your property managers)
Similar properties (so there are fewer surprises and your team can be specialists)
Stronger connections between property managers, the strata committee and the owners corporation
More referrals from existing clients who know you specialise in the building
The ability to refer quality rental applicants to the next available properties as they come up (saving time during the application process).
You can also be strategic and host free education sessions for the building’s occupants and owners. Invite local mortgage brokers to speak as guests or host a session about how to reduce holding costs of an investment property and you’ll set your organisation apart from the competition in the area.
Strata roll management isn’t rocket science
Higher-density housing and apartment living are taking off in Australia. Adding strata roll management to your business’s list of services makes sense because there will only be an increase in demand in the future.
With a strata roll, your agency is overseeing dozens, if not hundreds of properties under one contract. It will be easier to streamline your services to match requirements and ‘run lean’ in terms of headcount. Bring one expert on board and work with them to develop the team members they need. Add some headcount offshore if possible, to take care of administrative tasks while saving you on wage costs.
Investing in this strategy will add to your revenue growth on its own, while giving you the potential to fast-track the growth of the other areas of your business.