Episode:	E148
Show Title:	What’s Happening in the Hobart Rental Market Now?
Cast:	Aaron Horne, Patrick Berry, & Abbey Berry
Show Length:	22 minutes 26 seconds

This week, the Property Pod team are joined by Abbey Berry, Director of Property Management at 4one4 Property Co., to discuss their recent wins at the RateMyAgent Awards, the state of the rental market currently, and the way that 4one4 is navigating it.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Abbey

There have been some challenging moments in recent months. We are trying to re-educate our owners. There is still a perception that our rental market is going gangbusters and rents are sky-high.

Patrick

And it doesn’t help we make sure that mainstream media is reporting that that right across the country there’s a rental crisis and no homes available. And yes.

Aaron

Funnily enough, there’s a lost episode of the show that we recorded last week where none of the technical stuff worked. But we kind of touched on some of the stuff I’ve been hearing on the radio and in reading newspapers and all those things that this rental crisis of, you know, does not have places and must be happening on the mainland.

Aaron

And we’ve kind of leant across the journey of the podcast that mainstream media kind of will hit Melbourne, Sydney and doesn’t really talk to our markets so much.

[intro music]

Aaron

 All right, guys, welcome back to the Property Pod. Your weekly engagement in real estate here in the marketplace. I’m your host, Aaron Horne, and I have a very special surprise for everybody out there today. Not only am I joined by the Director of Sales, Patrick Berry, here at 4one4, but I’ve brought in another big gun, his wife, his superstar, actually… Oh, my God, I’m so excited. This is my plan all along. Happy anniversary, guys!

Patrick

The anniversary episode.

Abbey

I was going to say it’s also a big surprise to me.

Aaron

Welcome and thank you so much for coming in. Yeah, we were one team member. Sure, but yeah. Abbey, you’ve joined us. Just to tell us all about your anniversary, basically. How did Pat bring the romance?

Patrick

Oh, wow. That worked.

Abbey

Well, he. I took me for a very nice romantic night away as well. We went to our favourite restaurant bar and he bought me the, in his words, ”the biggest bunch of flowers” from Hill Street grocer that he could find.

Patrick

Was the biggest. Thanks.

Aaron

I saw it as nice. Nice. That’s what it is size that matters when it comes to 13 years of marriage is it.

Patrick

That’s correct.

Aaron

Patrick

And I really wanted to show up. So I had the flowers been delivered to the office for getting that as a public holiday on the Monday, I was like, God dammit.

Aaron

Now I want to know how much I love my wife.

Patrick

Is nice, how much I spent on these stupid flowers.

Aaron

Well, guys, they’ll all know now. There was a giant bunch of flowers. You guys had a wonderful time, but no thank you for coming in and being part of the show for us today. At last minute, one thing I wanted to kind of shout out to both of you guys and everyone here at four and four is the awards that have been kind of going on.

Aaron

I’m not talking about the Oscars they were on this week. There were no slaps and faces at the Oscars. Hopefully live. And I slept in faces in this room today, but we will find out how it goes. So what I’m going to do is actually present a sales award to Pat and I’m going to present a sales award to Abby.

Patrick

So the sales or to that?

Aaron

No, sorry, a property award for.

Patrick

Property Management Award.

Aaron

So just for any visual people out there, look at this bad boy got the trophy. So giving your best Oscar speech, Pat, just thinking about how they all went over the way. I got to hand this one over to you, and I don’t have to play the music to play you out, but tell us all about how happy you are to win, whatever that one is.

Aaron

That’s top five agency.

Patrick

Multiagency in the City of Hobart for. Look, this one means a lot to me, guys. I’ve really worked hard on this one with my team. Had to think a lot of people here, I’m going to forget two names, but I’m going to try and get through them all to my mom and dad. Thank you so much to my wife for supporting me in everything I do.

Patrick

I got there and to those people that work for us, I guess they get a shout out to us that a beautiful.

Aaron

That’s good. Now over on this side, one of our found found top ten agency in property management here in Tasmania. Oh, it’s fun going.

Patrick

Yeah, yeah. Doing it.

Aaron

Yes. I hear you, guy.

Abbey

Thank you.

Aaron

All right. Best effort at a speech. Don’t forget he mentions.

Abbey

You right, my agent. Thank you to my team. It wouldn’t have been possible without them. This award is their award and without them, they wouldn’t be a property management team. Say, well, that guy’s beautiful.

Aaron

Beautiful. Thank you. It sounds like a bit of a mistake, but we do actually we do actually really appreciate it. I think the best thing.

Patrick

About hiding under there has.

Aaron

A list about six or seven. We can run through the list of all the ones there was. I think we won suburb awards in Bridgewater, Claremont Top ten agency in Tassie for sales. You got a list there while I was trying.

Patrick

To ring one up, but I’m not quick enough. So anyway.

Aaron

While I’m spinning the wheels, it does sound like we’re making a mockery of it. But it is a really prestigious award in the sense that it is handed out. Although the reviews come from our customers, our vendors are.

Patrick

Clients as I love the fact that this has nothing to do with how much you write or what story you spin. This this is solely on sales volume properties, rent it and the reviews and feedback that people say about us.

Aaron

Yeah. And then I’ve been working on a bit of stuff for the sales team, kind of pumping up a bunch of their appraisal kits with a bunch of the reviews, and it’s so amazing to read some of the stuff that does come through the paper saying, I saw about four for and I had just this last week like she must be absolutely on fire at the moment.

Aaron

Everyone’s a senator and I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just like I remember her and she used to be a actually.

Abbey

I had a horrible youngest.

Aaron

Yeah, I have a story about that. I was about to drop and I was like, No, she doesn’t deserve it at all. I was pumped up high. Tell us about what’s going on in the property management department at the moment. Obviously flying high have some award wins. You guys flew over for the event. But yeah, now that you’ve come back to Earth, what’s happening in the department?

Aaron

Maybe losing some people, which is a bit sad.

Abbey

Yes.

Patrick

Yeah. Well, we’re lots of words coming out today.

Abbey

And we’re busy, as always. Property management, there’s never really a slow day in property management. So the girls are all working really hard. They’re finding the market has changed a little bit in the last few months. Yeah, properties are taking a little bit longer to rent than previously, but they’re just changing the way that they do things to meet the market.

Patrick

And so then one of the things that we’ve spoke about in the past is how we minimise like vacancy of the actual property. So I’ve pointed out to the team and correct me if I’m wrong, that we normally tend to put the property up early before the previous tenant moves out.

Abbey

Yeah, absolutely. We like to have at least three weeks lead time before a tenant is vacating to start advertising just to ensure that we can hopefully have someone going in reasonably quickly after the vacate.

Patrick

Yeah, and it seems to work pretty well as I think when I was last looking in our data it was suggesting that days on market was around 24 days, but our actual vacant days on market was only about seven or eight. So it’s a huge difference if you can get, you know, the properties started to be market it well before the previous tenant vacates the property.

Aaron

Yeah, well especially at this time where there’s kind of financial straits coming on. Everyone we’ve kind of talked about mum and dad, investors and people out there. We’re not these big moguls that are kind of having huge portfolios. These people who are kind of trying to balance their mortgage while interest rates are changing and things like that. If you’re missing two weeks rent, it’s going to be a big apply.

Aaron

Then if you’re missing one week or trying to get the change over, say.

Patrick

And look, the average rent now is like $500 a week. So two weeks rent, that’s 2000 bucks out of a landlord’s back pocket. Yeah, they’ve got to come up. We’ve to cover mortgage repayments, things like that. So any downtime that we can minimise is a huge advantage to our owners.

Aaron

How are you finding, liaising with your team and with landlords out there with this kind of tie to pinch and longer days? Obviously we’re doing things or you’re doing things to minimise the days, but how are you finding those ones that are sitting there that little bit longer? And yeah.

Abbey

Look, there have been some challenging moments in recent months. We are trying to re-educate our owners and there is still a perception that our rental market is going gangbusters and rents are sky high.

Patrick

And it doesn’t help. We made sure that mainstream media is is reporting that that right across the country there’s a rental crisis and no homes available. And yeah.

Aaron

So things funnily enough, there’s a lost episode of the show that we recorded last week where none of the technical stuff worked, but we kind of touched on some of the stuff I’ve been hearing on the radio and in reading newspapers and all those things that this rental crisis of, you know, it’s not have places and must be happening on the mainland.

Aaron

And we’ve kind of leant across the journey of the podcast that mainstream media kind of will hit Melbourne, Sydney and doesn’t really talk to our markets so much. Is yeah. Is that what’s happening here or there’s kind of there are more places available. You’ve just got to be able to rent them out.

Abbey

Yeah, we from just our agency perspective, we currently have quite a lot of properties available, which is unusual. We had more than we would normally have available and they are taking more days to rent. You know, 12 months ago we could do one open home on a property and it would be rented. Now we’re finding it might take three or four of open homes before the property’s rented.

Abbey

Some of the girls are having to have price adjustment conversations with their owners because they’re not renting for the expected price. Yes, it’s definitely changed, to be honest.

Aaron

Yeah, it just feels like it would be so tricky to be in your position trying to navigate this while yet, you know, just trying to have this conversation say, look, I think we might have to drop the rent just a little bit just to kind of get some people in. We can work on it later, but then, oh, no.

Aaron

But I saw on the project last night that, you know, there’s not enough houses for anybody. So like now I’m not going to do that.

Abbey

Yeah, no, that is definitely the case, particularly with mainland property owners here, not here in and saying what’s happening. I think the other thing is that there’s still lots of applicants around. Yeah, it’s just finding the perfect applicant for property is a bit more tricky than it was 12 months.

Aaron

So yeah, that’s that was going to be my next lead in was are you still getting enough people to the places because it’s still people looking to rent. But yeah, you’re sort of vet them so you can’t just be like, Oh yes, wait, whatever. We’ll check them in and then we’ll have to deal with all the problems.

Abbey

Yeah, absolutely. And we still having to be as picky as ever at one of our most fundamental jobs is to make sure that we are picking the best possible applicant for a property, because not only will it cause a problem for the property owner down the track, if we don’t, it will also cause us a problem. You want to be spending our time dealing with the problem that we could have avoided by just being more thorough in the first place.

Patrick

So if I’m a really good tenant, we have a track record of pay my rent on time and I’ve I’ve got the ability there to showcase that I’d be a good applicant and I’m currently renting a property, you know, is there an opportunity there for some tenants that to maybe, you know, shop around and find a better deal, so to speak, like by moving home, do you think is that oh.

Abbey

I mean, potentially prices haven’t really dropped, but they’re not increasing. So we’re we’re doing price reductions. It’s where an owner may have had higher expectations of the market than the average. Yeah.

Patrick

So it’d be still cheaper to stay where I am and so on.

Abbey

A case by case factoring, you’re moving costs and it’s in places I don’t. You might be able to find a better deal, but.

Patrick

Yeah, so it hasn’t it hasn’t affected a huge amount in prices at this point.

Abbey

When settling out at the point that we were in sort of 2013, we were doing price reductions, at least at your time, to keep people in property.

Patrick

Okay.

Aaron

Oh, wow. I’ve never kind of phased that. So yeah, like we’ll drop the rent to keep you here so that yeah.

Abbey

When I, so I started in 2011 and between about probably 12 and 13, we were dropping rents to keep tenants in properties because it would cost the owner less to do that than for the tenant to vacate. Going rent something cheaper. Yeah.

Aaron

Where’s his trousers. Look that just goes to show that. Yeah. The, the life of a property manager changes from here, there and across the whole journey.

Abbey

Yeah. It’s actually just having this conversation with Patrick the other day because obviously I’ve been around for a while. 12 years.

Aaron

How long you’ve been married?

Abbey

Aaron

Yep. Correct. Answer.

Abbey

And when I started the market and the rent was so different to what it is now, but we’re now coming sort of back to that in a lot of my property managers that have worked for me have only ever known the market to be these amazing things rent so quickly. You don’t see that so easy. And I’ve always said to them like, there will come the day when it won’t be this easy and we’re kind of getting back to that now.

Abbey

So some of them are having to a property manager a whole.

Aaron

New skill.

Abbey

Set differently because it’s not their go and show it once and we’re done we can put a tenant inside.

Aaron

And speaking of learning, the kind of the ropes of property management, we’ve had a bit of a shuffle. We’ve lost George, who was a superstar team member who’s gone off to kind of find herself in in a creative field. But we’ve had someone kind of level themself up from a to new what what? What’s the position?

Patrick

Portfolio manager.

Abbey

Manager.

Aaron

Yeah. So can we talk about kind of the shuffling? Do you want to talk about that?

Abbey

Yeah, sure. So yeah, Georgia has left to pursue a completely different career.

Aaron

We love Georgia, by the way. I just sat out to Georgia out there. You’re always welcome. And please come back and make us some burrito scientists.

Abbey

There are fun fact we did recently call her off the bench to do some work for us.

Aaron

Oh, tell me more about this.

Patrick

We’re a little low and staff a couple of weeks ago.

Aaron

Yeah, yeah. There was that day where you came in. It was just like there’s nobody about.

Patrick

Yeah, so I had to put in a favour to Georgia who just happened to be at home doing nothing and.

Aaron

Oh.

Patrick

I love this guy.

Aaron

I like doing.

Abbey

Conditioner condition for us to help us out. Yeah.

Patrick

So it’s handy having someone that’s in between jobs that she can call for a little bit of support if you need it. Oh, I like that.

Aaron

Yeah, just call her in like the like the Avengers to sit at the signal. The Georgia sinkhole.

Abbey

Yes.

Patrick

And then we’re lucky enough for Paige to move into George’s portfolio.

Abbey

Yeah. So Pages paid me this for about 12 months, working alongside our BDM Joyce as her assistant. So she’s. What about property management through that role and we were able to sweet talk her into jumping ship and coming over to property management so.

Aaron

Yeah no it’s super exciting. And look, we’ll all hear about it soon, but one other team member is departing. It’s going to definitely make the offices a lot quieter than than they they are while she’s about can we give a farewell to miss May.

Abbey

Yes Mikayla related yes after I think back to yes. So she’s also off to pursue a new career. Yes. Yes. She’ll be very sadly missed by the entire team.

Aaron

Full of energy, that one.

Abbey

Absolutely.

Patrick

So shout out to our listeners. If you are thinking about getting into property management, we’d love to talk to you at the moment.

Abbey

Well, interesting thing, which I think is a reflection of the current market, is the effect that it is having on property management staff. And he’s getting tougher. I know that our PMS are feeling the effects of being there and the sounding board or the.

Patrick

High.

Abbey

Taxing bag of the frustrations of both owners and tenants, and even looking around at how many jobs are available with other agencies. I think one of the big problems at the moment is that property managers are leaving.

Aaron

The industry, the.

Abbey

Industry, which is really tough as an employer of property managers because there’s no experienced staff to draw on.

Aaron

Well, one thing I do love that kind of bouncing around in the heads of I know Peyton and I know you’ve discussed it a while. You’re really into your health and fitness to keep your mental health going and your body, that kind of wellness idea is is floating about and kind of helping out the team. But we’ve done meditations in the meeting room recently just to kind of trying to break it up a bit.

Patrick

I think it is the market gets tougher with what we experiencing now, both in sales and property management. Any way we can help staff not be just physically fit, but also mentally fit as well as starting to to play a huge role in what we’re looking at from an agency level.

Aaron

So the doughnuts this morning, they were based on mental strength rather than physical.

Patrick

Yeah, definitely. Like, look, you got to you got to keep the morale up where have you can. But I was happy with them but yeah, definitely I’m we’re working at the moment on a wellness portal for our staff. As you touched on, we’re doing meditation two days a week or some of our staff are that choosing to start the day with what are we doing as a ten or 15 minute?

Aaron

This has been like a ten minute mindfulness. So far. But yeah, I guess we can stretch it or depending on kind of uptight.

Patrick

We’re starting to explore ideas. A lot of us have dogs doing dog walking, sort of outside office hours just to clear the mind and have some social fun together. And yeah, I’m trying to implement a heap of collective ideas around a better mental health, just so that everyone you know, we can work through the tough times and make sure we’re all talking to each other and keeping everyone sort of upbeat and happy.

Aaron

No, look, it’s definitely a strength of kind of being able to manage the time of feel. Look, we’re having a tricky time with the market, but we still have to look after the people that are in these four walls and and even the team in the Philippines as well, to make sure that they’re going out for their monthly lunch with the thing.

Aaron

And you hear the stories and trying to choose, oh, should we have this, should we have that? And they spend the whole lunchtime trying to choose a lunch and then end up on the last place. They’re like, Oh crap, we couldn’t choose one.

Patrick

And then you see the photos of that to our Philippine team having lunch and you’re like, Man, that looks good. Auction side.

Abbey

Chicken. I’ve actually had them keeping a list for us. We’ll be heading back over there next month. So we had told them they have to take us to their best pics.

Aaron

Oh, we’re like this lunches.

Abbey

So for that.

Patrick

Yeah. So I think as tough as it is out there, we have got a really good team and you know, everyone is handling the pressures of the new industry or the new markets. Yeah, quite well. But as a company there’s definitely things we can do better to help ensure everyone’s feels good at work and enjoys coming to work each day.

Aaron

Yeah, and look, again, we’ve, we’ve tried to put the fund into real estate. We try and keep, you know, a light filled area with lots of colourful ness.

Patrick

Colourful, yes. I was looking at the.

Aaron

Screen behind me and all these colours were popping up. I don’t like to talk about colours, but I know like I was describing to someone the other day, it’s just saying that how our agency tries to be not your corporate boring space where you come to work and you sign in at the time and finish. It’s kind of we want people to feel like it’s a family company and it’s.

Patrick

And look, real estate is a tough gig, but it doesn’t mean that you can have fun doing it. Exactly. That’s what we aim to do and that’s what we’ll continue to work forward with.

Abbey

And who wants to come to a boring workplace every day? I know I don’t say.

Aaron

Patrick

Accept awards and how we win these big bad boys. Yeah, I play it saying that they listen to it.

Aaron

Oh, and just the look we haven’t had a chance to. Speaking of awards. Yeah, just walking behind us just now was another award recipient. We should. Maybe we’ll just touch on it really quickly before we go. We might try and get him in the studio next week.

Patrick

Yeah. So give.

Aaron

Us a rundown of.

Patrick

We didn’t like the L not us. Chris as an individual picked up quite a prestigious award last week at the Real Estate Institute of Australia Awards. They’re probably one of the highest accolades of awards you can potentially win in the industry.

Aaron

Yeah. So this is one that’s kind of by the reviews of the people. This is the actual whole industry.

Patrick

This is starts at the state level. So you’ve got to win your state a bit further. So the REIT awards, you’ve got to win your category there. And then the winners of each state progressed through to compete at the national awards. And this year we will. Chris Chris MacGregor was lucky enough to win the President’s Award at the ARIA.

Patrick

Yeah, massive, massive award.

Aaron

Yes, I did this. Like it’s hard to kind of quantify how huge this is like across the whole country.

Patrick

Yeah. So yeah, basically the president’s award is as it sounds, the president of the ARIA selects who they believe is a worthy winner of it. Yeah. And they have to have given back to the industry. They have to provide add value to the industry in ways outside of just servicing clients.

Aaron

So yeah. And if you were to go through the list of things which we’ve got a blog post put together about the win, but basically if you go through the list of ways that Chris has been involved in the industry over the last 40 years, it’s it actually.

Abbey

I.

Aaron

Was just so hard to even put the blog to that. I was like, Holy moly, there’s a lot of stuff in here.

Patrick

So I might have to get him on next week. Yeah, throw it in a bit more.

Aaron

We’ll try and get his signing as well. We don’t know where he is. This morning, but yeah, I’m sure he’ll be about is he?

Patrick

Abby was last minute because his son didn’t turn up.

Aaron

That’s what I’m sure he’s got important stuff going on but yeah shout out to that same awards ahoy tricky market out there but yeah lots of fun here at four and four and we do appreciate anyone out there that listens along to the property pod that’s along with us for the ride. And anyone that’s here with for the fall and fall journey, shout out if you need anything like share.

Aaron

Subscribe to all the things that we like to tell you. This is the wrap up and thanks for.

Patrick

Listening to us for another.

Aaron

Week. Yes, the only other thing I’ve got is the footy starts this week and the footy tipping test, they’re almost at 300.

Patrick

Aaron

Yeah, they’re almost at 400. So we start the first year we had about 110. We’re almost at 300 if you’re listening to this. Oh no. When this goes out the.

Patrick

Footy has already started. Has already started.

Aaron

So I’m going to say we hit 300.

Patrick

But you’re going to.

Aaron

Be you’re going to be one round behind. One round behind. Yes, exactly.

Patrick

Just so you know, you’re going to be an incredibly good tip. It’ll be hard to get back up in the ladder.

Aaron

But there’s also the weekly prises. Is heaps of support on that side. Yeah. Just a shout out to those those guys. But yeah. What’s there for and for Facebook for their weekly wrap ups and hijinx that they they like to talk about. Shaun Amartey always entertaining. It’s like the footy shows back. But yes thank you Abby so much for coming in.

Aaron

Congrats again on the anniversary on the award, on being a superstar phone for.

Patrick

Thanks very much.

Aaron

No problem. Thanks, guys. Bye! 

[extro music]