Rachael has over 21 years of experience in sales, management, and leadership within the real estate industry in both the UK and Australia. This role will see Rachael lead a team of experienced account managers who are focused on knowing the real estate industry and creating relationships with partners, including real estate agents who refer people back to Direct Connect.
Prior to joining Direct Connect, Rachael spent time with both McGrath and Little in senior roles where her day-to-day tasks included dealing with escalated complaints from landlords and tenants, with the experience in the industry giving her an insight into the pain points that property managers feel. And, she believes there is a gap in the Australian real estate industry to make things easier for property managers who are under more stress and pressure than ever before.
“There are pain points felt by tenants and landlords that are well looked after by Direct Connect, so I feel we have filled a gap in the industry.
“But from my experience, property managers are very time poor and trying to juggle too much. They have a lot of responsibility and don’t have enough hours in the day. Their portfolio sizes seem to get bigger and bigger. The legislation to protect landlord’s interests seems also to be getting bigger.”
Rachael says there needs to be a greater focus on training and developing property managers industry-wide.
“We are guilty as an industry of not giving enough time to train property managers. Some of them haven’t moved with the time and are under-skilled or stuck in their ways.”
Rachael says some of the load on property managers can be alleviated by technology to streamline certain tasks, but believes technology is not keeping up with the need, as many systems are too complex or fragmented.
“There’s some great tech out there that property managers would use if they had proper training and time, but by the end of the week they are burnt out and don’t have the headspace to engage with tech that’s out there.
“I would love to see tech that would integrate easily into systems they are already using. PM’s want everything in one place, they don’t want to go hunting in different clouds and services.
“The unique role of property managers means they will be nurturing 300 relationships constantly, as opposed to sales agents who deal with a handful of buyers and sellers at a time.
“If property managers and have more training on how to deal with more conflict and how to deal with stress, they would be happier people.”
