An offshore team can help you support your clients and grow your property management business if you’re willing to invest some time and effort.
The property manager shortage continues in Australia, with around 4,000 jobs advertised on SEEK around the country at any one time and more than 500 positions vacant in Melbourne in March 2024. According to a survey from Macquarie Bank, turnover was 25% across all real estate roles in FY2023, increasing to 35% based on property management in isolation.
If you are committed to the property management side of your business, you may be wondering whether you can fill the gaps in your team with offshore workers. This is definitely possible if you have a realistic understanding of how to make this strategy work.
Building an offshore property management team
Firstly, you will always need people ‘on the ground’, to meet with rental property owners and renters, host open homes and liaise with tradespeople. Rental property owners who are willing to pay well for their property management service expect to be able to quickly reach someone who lives in the same city as them and can show up in person if need be.
What an offshore team does is empower your property managers to spend more time out and about. No matter where they are based, remote workers, as they are also known, can ‘pick up the slack’ and take care of desk-based tasks.
Here’s a list of responsibilities an offshore team can take on:
Triage for new enquiries, to check what they need and put them in touch with the right person
Triage for complaints and concerns, even manning after-hours phone lines to improve customer service
Bookkeeping and account management
General administrative tasks such as checking for expired agreements
Initial review of renter applications
Ordering signboards and uploading advertisements
Digital marketing and graphic design to promote your agency and team
Social media management so nobody in your office is stuck uploading posts and images
Data analysis and reporting so you have better visibility about how your website and other parts of your business are performing.
In terms of cost, you can build a team of at least three people for the price of one in Australia, which can really improve your bottom line. The aim of this isn’t to replace Australian staff, but to get more done so your agency can grow.
The challenge with offshoring your property management team
When you look to hire people offshore, there is always an adjustment period. You will have to find and recruit the right people, figure out where they will work (e.g. directly for you from home or at what’s known as a Business Processing Outsourcing centre), make sure they have the right equipment and ensure they can be paid (finance tools like Wise or Airwallex can solve this problem).
There are timezone differences to take into account, as well as things like public holidays (Australian public holidays vs local holidays). You may find yourself wondering what your offshore staff have been up to all day, and there can sometimes be problems with the internet dropping out, or bad weather making it difficult for them to come to the office.
Then there’s the big one: understanding Victorian tenancy laws. As you know, these are complex and admin-heavy. Unless you have the time and funds to set up a comprehensive training program, you’ll probably find it better to assign your offshore staff more general tasks.
The success of outsourcing to offshore people is intrinsically linked to your SOPs so you will need to ensure everything is documented and accessible. Regular meetings and catch-ups are important, and you may even need to hire a general manager to oversee your offshore team. This will generally be necessary once you have a headcount of five people.
Thousands of businesses now operate with a hybrid model of local and remote workers because it delivers a win/win/win:
Your property management business will be empowered to grow
Your local team will have less pressure to complete their daily task list
Your offshore team will have a steady job, likely with health insurance included, holiday pay and perks like parental leave.
A recent real estate industry trend report found having an offshore team allowed real estate agencies to reduce the cost of labour related to the management of their rent roll from up to 60% to as low as 25-40%. The same report said having offshore staff complete the groundwork in assessing new tenancy applications means onshore property managers only need to touch an application for between 3-7 minutes, instead of spending up to 60 minutes.
The benefits are obvious, but to succeed with an offshoring strategy, you need to spend some time planning and preparing, to ensure newcomers to the team have the right training when they join and build an ongoing understanding of your business and industry.
A final tip:
Be transparent and excited about your offshore team and treat them as such: part of the team. Let your clients know they aren’t being directed to an overseas call centre but are dealing with individuals who understand your business and your clients’ needs.