The PROPERTY DOCTORS, Sydney Australia Novak Properties
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The PROPERTY DOCTORS, Sydney Australia Novak Properties
EP. 1404 “One day a nail tech. The next, managing $2M in real estate?”
What's really at stake when you choose a property manager? According to expert Cleo, you're essentially handing over "a bag of cash" worth half a million to a million dollars—your valuable property investment—to someone you need to trust implicitly with your wealth building.
In this enlightening conversation, Cleo draws on her 20 years of property management experience to reveal what separates career property managers from those using the role as a temporary stepping stone. She explains why dedication to the profession matters: "Property management has to be your choice. You have to want to do property management. It's not something that you can just go in and out of." This commitment directly impacts how well your investment will be protected and grown.
We explore the number one complaint landlords have with property management—the frustrating experience of constantly changing staff that disrupts service continuity. Cleo offers practical advice on how to spot agencies with stable teams, emphasizing the importance of interviewing the specific person who will handle your property rather than just evaluating the agency. "Don't interview the office. Interview the property manager looking after you," she advises. She also shares why experience matters, how good property managers train landlords to make better decisions, and why switching to a more experienced company is typically free and straightforward when you're not satisfied.
Whether you're selecting your first property manager or considering a change, this episode provides essential guidance to ensure your investment is in capable hands. After all, as Cleo reminds us, property managers aren't just collecting rent—they're wealth managers responsible for one of your most valuable assets.
it's a jungle out there and you're gonna be looking for a property manager. They're gonna be managing half a million dollars, a million dollars of your assets. I call it a bag of cash. Who's the right person to choose? Expert property manager Claire is going to help us this morning. Stay tuned, I'm the ringleader, so let's go. Namaste.
Speaker 2:Namaste. How are you today, Mark?
Speaker 1:Very good yourself.
Speaker 2:I'm good, I'm excited, for today it's a bit rainy, but means inside the office will be nice and cozy.
Speaker 1:So yeah, get stuff done it's a slow start to a holiday of easter that we're all approaching it is, and our easter is tied in with the Australian Easter this year, which is great.
Speaker 2:We're painting our eggs tonight, so there's going to be dye everywhere in my house.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool. And I've been fasting for 40 days no meat, no dairy, no egg.
Speaker 2:I don't know how you do it. I've only done this week no meat and I'm already struggling.
Speaker 1:I had to go to a Italian restaurant last night with seven blokes and tell everyone I wasn't eating meat. It wasn't a good look. When the meat went to the steak, what did you?
Speaker 2:eat Just plain pasta, nothing on it.
Speaker 1:I had prawns, but there was like about 15 prawn heads on my plate, you know, because it was all shared. I was like anyway. So, cleo, let's talk about property managers. Let's help people out there that are searching for a great property manager. Give them some tools, tell them what to look after, a lot to look out for what, um, the, the things, and and you know if this is huge You're a property manager of 20 years. You see, you've seen some of your office juniors go and become full senior property managers from one day to the next and you're like, oh no, tell us more.
Speaker 2:It's true. I think in this fast-paced society we live in, I guess the different generations want to move up quickly. Whereas I'm Gen X, I started from the bottom and I worked my way up. As they say, there was a hierarchy when I started, things like that that are quite arcaded now. However, um, we wouldn't. I didn't dream to, um, you know, ask for more money or ask for a better title or anything, until I'd done at least eight years under my belt. People always ask me oh, you don't work Saturdays. I'm like no, I work Saturdays, every Saturday for eight to ten years before I negotiated in my contract to not have to work all the Saturdays, you know, whereas I don't know these kids. These days they've got a lot of demands.
Speaker 1:They do, and I guess you know I love Lisa has got a great saying, lisa Novak, and she says you're going to manage, we're going to manage. You're going to give someone a bag of cash of a million dollars. That's what a two-bedroom unit dy is worth. You're going to give that to a real estate agent you're going to make. You're going to want to make sure they look after it securely. They don't lose any money out of it and when they hand the bag of cash back to you in 5, 10 or 15 years later, there's a hell of a lot more in there. So it's a big responsibility as a landlord to select a company and a property manager.
Speaker 2:It's true, and I feel property management has to be your choice. You have to want to do property management. It's not something that you pick, that you can just go in and out of and you know, waft in, waft out. It's a full-time commitment, like a lot of roles, but property management in particular, we're wealth managers as well. You know, like you said, we're here to make money for the landlord. We're also protecting tenants and community and I feel you can only successfully do that with experience and time. So it doesn't mean you have to be old and decrepit, over 45, like all of us at Novak that are in PM senior roles. But we have experienced mortgage debt, being a tenant, having a tenant so all those factors do help us manage your property in a successful way.
Speaker 1:So being a career property manager is different to being a property manager, in my opinion. Would you agree with that? How would you explain that?
Speaker 2:A career property manager, like I said, will choose property management and they are not using that as a stepping stone. Some people that get into real estate start in PM but their drive is to be in sales, so it's not their first choice. Their first choice is sometimes sales, but with sales it's a different kettle of fish and age and youth comes into that as well and experience. Pm is a good way to work your way, not saying that that's a bad thing, but for my journey I always knew I wanted to do property management. It wasn't a question of do I go into another area of the business. I did my certificate full-time and did my license full-time, unpaid, back in the day at Brookvale TAFE, like a lot of people, and you had a taste of what you wanted to do in real estate. We studied law, we studied sales, auctioneering, property management. That was the IT side of it and I chose PM because that's what I wanted to do. So I've stuck with that because I felt that that's, you know, an area where I would enjoy.
Speaker 2:I guess also just age as well plays into it. You know, sometimes having tried other work, other careers, you do get an idea of the world in which we live, would you believe it or not. I had a background in banking. I worked for Westpac for a bit. Um, I've also been in retail when I was younger, and then I feel that those custom based um industries have also helped me with property management, because we're dealing with the most essential thing, which is housing. Other than food, it's housing, um.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, um, I do feel it's important that if you do decide to be in property management, that that's what you want. It's not going to be something that is going to come easy and you're going to, you know, be a senior pm in a year or two because, like it or not, us seniors that do have juniors and people that we guide, we take all that responsibility. They're there to assist and learn. But, you know, when you get those training wheels off early and the mistake and implications could be hundreds of thousands of dollars for the owner, that's not a good feeling for a young person. So, um, you know, we, we do all the sheltering, all the mother mothering, all the training, all of that, but we also take the hit when it's something that needs to have a decision put in place. That could cost money, you know.
Speaker 1:The biggest complaint from all my research and learnings that a landlord has with property management, the biggest complaint is changing of the guard, changing of staff. So if there's a beef that you're ever going to have in your uh as a landlord, your beef is going to be oh my god, my agents always, my property manager is always changing. How do you look out for something like that when you're selecting an agency and an agent property manager that you are going to get longevity with your property manager?
Speaker 2:Well, you've really got to look at their website. You know If their staff you know website's forever changing faces there's a clear indication. You know even your statements. You know when people leave and go in the business. You know sometimes they might leave the names there Novak, you've got Tina. Myself, melissa Brunca. We've been with Novak such a long time Like you can track all the hair trends from back in the day up until what I look like in my first photo till now. We've been there a long time and you know that makes us accountable, you know, for our clients. We've been there a long time. We're not going to say, oh, that mistake was blah, blah, blah and blank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a good photoshopped one.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go back to long hair. Actually, I liked long hair. Do it every time I chop it I want it back, um, but yeah, like we are, excuse me, responsible and accountable, being there a long time, there is no blame shifting of, you know, mistakes or things that happen. We own our things, um, and that rapport with clients, you know, is very important. I have clients for that entire time and they know that if they're overseas or that they're on holiday or they've got some ailment or whatever, that they know I've got, I've got their, you know, biggest asset covered, um, they know me, they know how I work. They know you know, um, they can call me anytime. Availability for me is huge because I do some days from home, but I'm always available on my phone. I'm always available, um, to my clients.
Speaker 1:You know whether it's whatsapp clients in singapore, clients around the country, you know um, yeah, and also one thing I noticed that a good property manager does, and you do is you actually train a landlord how to be a good landlord? So it's not just yes, sir, no sir, three bags more. So it's about no. This is actually the better way, this is the best way, and I look, I liken it to a formula one driver you don't realize what a good driver they are until there's a fuck up, until there's a crash around the corner until there's a crash around the corner.
Speaker 1:And that's the difference between a phenomenal property manager and the and just putting someone behind the wheel because you know they win the race every time with your property, with your asset. It doesn't cost you money, it doesn't cost you time, and I think that's huge. But I know, I do feel for people that have a bad run with a property manager. But I think in ending today and in concluding today, my advice would be you know, don't interview the office. Interview the property manager looking after you for the entire time. Square them up on.
Speaker 1:Are you going to be looking after my property? How long have you been around for and what experience do you have to manage my asset, rather than sometimes you may get the principal, someone like me, schmoozing and then you flick it been around for, and what experience do you have to manage my asset, rather than sometimes you may get the principal, someone like me, schmoozing, and then you flick it to a junior property manager. I wouldn't do that, but it does happen out there. Or you get a person called a BDM, a business development manager, who just goes out there and spruiks, talks, talks about how wonderful the agency is, but then they end up farming you off to a very junior property manager where you're disappointed. The good news is to switch to an experienced company is free and fast and you can keep your tenants.
Speaker 2:Exactly. We take all the hassle out of that, and you know we don't. I'm not in the business of comparing either. You know when you take a property on from another agent you're starting fresh, you're starting from a new platform. You want to make that experience easy for the client, for the landlord, for the tenants even. You know our tenant selection process is very rigorous. It's not just leasing people going through an application saying, oh, did you rent from them? Again, we vet people to make sure they're the right choice for a client's property. You get that with experience. You get that with gut feelings. You get that with having to go to tribunal and NCAT and seeing on the other side when the crashes happen, how not to, you know, go through that same thing. That's just part of how we roll at NOVAC and we do know some of the terms before they're coming. So yeah, I guess that's another bonus.
Speaker 1:Cleo, thank you so much. I do have to say respect to all property managers out there. If you want to liken it to a another job out there, I would call it like servicing of a car, and every time you actually keep, every time you're going to see those guys, it's generally because they're going to cost you money or there's a problem. There's a problem with your car and you're never really happy a bit like a dentist the only time you're there it's going to cost you money and they're going to find something that you didn't know. So it's a really hard job for you. Respect to property managers out there in the world and hopefully we'll help people today on how to choose a great property manager. See you guys. Have a great week, have a happy Easter.
Speaker 2:Happy Easter. Thanks, cleo, on how to choose a great property manager. See, you guys have a great week have happy easter thanks.