SPOTLIGHT EPISODE BY SHANNON WELCH: Enhancing Property Management with Anthony's Insights on Sensor Technology

SPOTLIGHT PODCAST HOSTED BY SHANNON WELCH FROM PROPERTY ASSIST.

Imagine having 24/7 real-time monitoring of smoke alarms and cutting-edge water leak detectors at your fingertips, ensuring tenant safety and protecting your investments. Anthony walks us through how Sensor's system provides instant alerts for tampering, low battery, and power outages, giving property managers and landlords unprecedented control and peace of mind. Learn how this game-changing technology not only streamlines compliance and risk mitigation but also brings significant insurance advantages, making it a must-have for modern property management.

Discover the affordable subscription plans that make this technology accessible, starting at just $14.99 per month, inclusive of a smart hub, smoke alarms, and water leak detectors. We delve into the broader scope of Sensor's offerings, from heat alarms to gas leak detectors, emphasizing their role in preventing disasters and ensuring top-notch tenant safety. Anthony shares insights on how automated systems can alleviate the workload of property managers, providing invaluable resources to keep them informed and efficient. Don't miss this insightful discussion that promises to make property management not just smarter, but safer and more effective.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Yeah, cool. Thank you so much for coming on with me today. As you know, we've chatted before and I just wish I had this when I was a property manager, so that's why I just want to get as much as I can from you today on how we can encourage property managers to look into what Sensor has to offer and see if they can implement it into their offices. So I really appreciate you coming on, anthony. What do you reckon would be the top three reasons why property managers should like implement Censor into their offices?

Speaker 2: 0:55

Well, first and foremost, thank you, shannon. It's always a pleasure catching up with you and sharing as much as we can with you and the people you work with. First and foremost, in terms of that question, look, it's a very good one, because what we're doing at Sensor hasn't been done before. It's a whole new world for property managers and it's all about helping them work smarter, not harder, when it comes to new tech. That's certainly going to make their lives easier, but the biggest thing that we're trying to do here is save lives, and with smoke alarms, obviously only working smoke alarms save lives. The big thing we're not going to know about and this is one of the unmeasurables with using sensor is how many lives we do actually save moving forward, because the system isn't always on scenario. It's connected 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, so a property manager can tell exactly what's going on within a home. That technology they've never had access to before. It's always been. If they get testing done once every 12 months, you only know one day at a 365 exactly what's going on. So, yes, the tenant has, you know, put back into place that smoke alarm that they've had sitting on the kitchen bench or sitting in a cupboard for the last 364 days, and I know that you and your team have seen countless scenarios in your time and, as you mentioned before, you would have loved to have seen this, you know, when you were a property manager. Uh, once upon a time when jesus was a boy, but, um, it's just one of those things, that is, it's actually going to change the way in which, uh, property managers work day to day. It's just one of those things that is actually going to change the way in which property managers work day to day. It's going to provide a safer environment for tenants and it's going to protect the landlord's biggest investment, which is that investment property. So there's probably a number of reasons, but first and foremost, it is to obviously save tenants' lives and foremost, it is to obviously save tenants' lives. Also, yeah, it's giving property managers access to information that they've never had before. They'll know when a tamper actually occurs with a tenant.

Speaker 2: 3:16

So here's said smoke alarm. As soon as I open that up as a tenant, hopefully you can hear that beeping. Did you hear that? No, no, it actually beeps. Uh, that'd be the noise suppression within zoom, but but actually what happens is the both the tenant and the property manager get an sms notification to say hey, shannon, we know the tenant at 10 Smith Street has just opened the alarm in the hallway. There's an audit trial that gets created. It gets stored in the back end of the census software which, should you need to go to court and have a discussion around a notice of breach by the tenant because they continually open the alarm and play with things, you've got that audit trial there to protect the property manager as well.

Speaker 2: 4:06

Um, the other thing is that the pm can get notified when the alarm actually goes off. If it is a faulty alarm, if the battery within the alarm even though they are typically hardwired, they do have a 10-year lithium back battery backup in them if the battery is getting low, if the chamber of the alarm is dirty, there's a whole series of different alerts and notifications that can occur. Yeah, even if the property loses power, the system will tell the pm hey, there's a power outage at 10 smith street. So the the tech behind this ecosystem is really, really cool and it's not just smoke alarms.

Speaker 2: 4:43

We've now got the next device off the rank is water leak detectors and you know, every property manager either has their own horror story when it comes to flexi hoses bursting or appliance hoses popping off, or they know someone within their agency or you know their best friend's had a story, whatever it may be. But these water leak detectors now will simply be placed. They're not plumbed in, they're simply just placed under a kitchen sink, where a flexi hose may exist, under a dishwasher, under a washing machine, maybe an ensuite vanity, and they're designed to pick up pooling water. So the moment that happens, the um, the pm gets notified, the tenant gets notified and they can act quickly to then, you know, turn off the water to that particular part of the home, which will save a lot of damage moving forward as well. So it's pretty much we're building out a complete compliance and risk mitigation solution for not just property managers but for tenants and also landlords at the same time.

Speaker 1: 5:43

Yeah, definitely. I think it's like peace of mind for agencies, right Like you're in bona fide control of those properties. You've got to make sure that you are compliant. So massive peace of mind if you've got something like this in place. It's not just once a year when your electrician's going or whatnot. So yeah, I think it's great. I mean, unless there's a tenant that consistently is a bad cook and sets the alarm off, but hopefully I'm sure you've thought about that for turning those ones off or not?

Speaker 1: 6:17

Or at least you know, at least we know, At least we know.

Speaker 2: 6:21

Well, that's exactly right. So you know, the sensor solution is the only solution that will tell you when something is wrong. So you then do know. You know it's the only way you're going to know. And, bad cooking aside, we've actually got in development some version 2 of the smoke alarm as such, which will determine the difference in cooking smoke. So someone that burns the bacon every Saturday morning when they're making their bacon and eggs compared to actual smoke from an Inferno, so it will actually have that differential between the two and the other thing with.

Speaker 2: 7:00

You know the one-day-a-year test. Well, sensor actually allows you to test it as many times as you like throughout the year. Um, the defaults once a quarter. Yeah, if you think that's going to be too often, um, it's much the same as your routine inspections. How often do you want to do those? You know, is it once a quarter or once every six months? Whatever it may be, you can set the frequency of testing with sensor to be as often as you like. So if you wanted it every single day, you could do it.

Speaker 2: 7:26

Um, but you know, even once a week or once a quarter, the system notifies the tenant to say hey, shannon, we're going to be testing your alarms this Friday at 10 am. Is this convenient, yes or no? If it's not, the tenant can then reschedule that time of testing for any time that day, especially if they've got a sleeping newborn or something like that, and they know that they're going to be down at 10 am. Well, they can push it back without any PM interaction to later that day. The test happens and what actually happens is the test occurs, it sends a signal off and I'll just grab these seats and see what it looks like.

Speaker 2: 8:04

This is the sensor smart hub that's hardwired into the home and that's actually the conduit between the tenant's home and the sensor software, which is integrated nicely and seamlessly with PropertyMe, propertytree and Console Cloud at this point. But it allows that testing to occur and within five minutes there's a compliance certificate generated from that test, which is then, you know, sitting within the sensor dashboard. But it's also pushed back up into the trust system along with the last test date as well. So you know the PM doesn sensor dashboard, but it's also pushed back up into the trust system along with the last test date as well. So you know the PM doesn't even have to lift a finger. The tenant inconvenience is taken away from that physical inspection perspective as well.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:46

And you're going to have increased tenant satisfaction, along with the fact that you've got that paper trail from every single test or event that's occurred throughout the year. So if, in the event that there is a fire, you can say, hey look, we actually tested those alarms, you know, not even three months ago, and they came back as being fully functional and everything else, and obviously the tenant or the occupants have been able to get out and they're still alive. So that's the biggest thing from our perspective is, yeah, making sure that they're working 24, 7, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and and tenants are aware of you know they're living in a safer home yeah, having that system in play that's what I was going to say like the tenants just knowing that this is in their property that they're renting, surely would be a you know, a positive for a landlord.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Um, if obviously the cost is with the landlord. I assume anthony is that right.

Speaker 1: 9:45

So that's exactly right so for the landlord to be putting these things into a property, their property is going to be more desirable to a tenant as well. I know it's obviously a crazy rental market out there at the moment, but if we can do more to look after tenants as well, I think that is going to help in the long run. Essentially too. Have you had any sort of property managers that have been, I guess, trying to encourage landlords to use sensor? And maybe they've the landlords have sort of pushed back and said, oh no, let's just keep it the way it is with our standard electrician. Do you have any sort of you know, tips or help to educate the landlords? Help the property managers educate the landlords to use sensor?

Speaker 2: 10:33

yeah, so, yeah, so it's look, it's certainly a new solution.

Speaker 2: 10:39

So, there's a lot of people that haven't been exposed to Sensor whatsoever and we'll be doing a big marketing push in the coming weeks to get people better educated about what it is, how it works and so on. In terms of the people that I've spoken to so far, you're always going to have a landlord that turns around. There's always one or two um in every portfolio. There could be a few more, but there's always going to be one or two that turn around and say you know what? I'm happy with the process that's being done at the moment. Um, they're landlords that you normally struggle to get them to spend money on normal repairs and maintenance anyway, and those people shouldn't be landlords in the first place. I don't have to explain that to you.

Speaker 2: 11:21

But there are others that go. You know what I do care about my tenants. I do have an investment property. It's my financial nest egg for when I want to retire or I want to expand a portfolio or live off the income whatever it may be in future that are prepared to spend money and say, hey look, you know, this is a good thing and as we build out this ecosystem, you know we're only going to be adding more and more. They're called IoT devices and IoT stands for Internet of Things.

Speaker 2: 11:52

But, you know, we've got smoke alarms at the moment. We've got water leak detection devices. We're going to have a water shutoff valve in six months that will allow um, the moment a leak is detected, it will engage the shutoff valve to then cut the water to that property. Okay, so water damages from an insurance perspective, which I'm sure you're well aware, shannon you know they're the biggest pain in the backside for everyone involved, because you've now got a tenant that needs to be rehomed, a landlord's going to have to, you know, look at getting repairs done through their insurer, which they're never easy to deal with. You've, you know, you're in the middle as the property manager and you're trying to juggle everything else that you're doing within your own portfolio of business as well, and then you've got trades involved. So there's all these different stakeholders in an insurance claim. But these water shutoff valves are designed to, you know, limit that damage from water leaks, from water leaks.

Speaker 2: 12:56

We've also got a heat alarm that's going to come to market shortly. That is simply installed in the garage of all places. It's designed to pick up not smoke but change in temperature, and when that temperature gets above 55 degrees, say in the garage, someone's charging a lithium battery for an e-bike or a scooter or something like that, where there's been a lithium battery for an e-bike or a scooter or something like that, where there's been a number of fires caused by those particular batteries and and charging systems. Um, the heat alarm will then be interconnected with the smoke alarms to notify everyone in the home.

Speaker 2: 13:27

Hey, we've got an issue you need to get out yeah, so you know there's there's a whole host of different devices that we can build out within this ecosystem moving forward. So it's going to become a lot more compelling from a landlord's perspective to basically look at sensor as a solution. It is also going to share some insurance benefits for landlords as well. So we've got an offer on the table through an insurer that will allow a landlord to get an obligation-free quote on a combined property and landlord insurance policy. Right, and should the landlord take that policy on, the insurer is actually going to cover the sensor commitments for that landlord so they can get it at zero ongoing costs which is fantastic and yeah look for those of you that do want to know.

Speaker 2: 14:23

It's zero upfront costs to the landlord initially, so there's there's no money up front for the equipment or the installation of said equipment it's simply a subscription plan moving forward of $14.99 a month. So $14.99 a month including GST, which is also 100% tax deductible. Yeah, and that covers the installation of the sensor smart hub, which I showed you before, is the conduit between the home and the software, along with up to three smoke alarms, depending on the legislative requirements for that particular home and also a pair of water leak detectors.

Speaker 1: 15:00

Perfect, I was just going to say that. What's included in that? So it's the three smoke alarms and the two water leak detectors, essentially at this point in time, and then obviously, as the services expand out, would those potentially be additional costs? Or you're sort of still working that at this stage?

Speaker 2: 15:20

No, so for each additional device. So when it comes to market, whether it's the heat alarm or the water shutoff valve, if a landlord that's already taken part in Centre wants to add additional devices to their monthly subscription, it's simply just an extra $5 per device per month Okay.

Speaker 2: 15:41

So instead of us saying to a landlord right, we've now got a water shutoff valve, the retail on that device might be, call it $150, then it's going to be another $100 to install it, we're simply just saying we'll cover that cost and it's going to be an extra $5 a month if you wanted to have that particular device installed in your home. So yeah, it's a very unique offering. And as that ecosystem builds out. It's going to certainly, you know, just create more and more interest from an owner's perspective.

Speaker 1: 16:13

Yeah, absolutely, and with that insurance, I guess collaboration that you're talking about are they covering that just for the first year or how long do they? That's ongoing? Got insurance with them? Yeah, okay, yeah, so as long as you?

Speaker 2: 16:27

maintain. Yeah, as long as you maintain the interest in having sensor you know within the home and you maintain that policy with and the insurer is SGUA. And as long as you continue to insure with SGUA, they'll continue to cover your sensor commitments moving forward.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Yeah, fantastic, I think. Obviously, just circling back to that question before in, like how to educate landlords, that might be sort of oh no, I'm happy with what I'm doing now. You can't really compare the two, right? I mean, what you're offering in Censa is completely different to what an electrician does when they go out and just check the smoke alarm or the RCD essentially. So I think that's one of the biggest things is for property managers to understand that they have two very different things that we're looking at here. It's not necessarily a comparison. Maybe it might seem like that to begin with when you first hear about what it is with the smoke alarms, but with these water leak detection, your electrician is not going to be doing that, obviously. So, yeah, it's a completely separate thing and I think I've just sort of really understood that now myself is you can't compare them. They're completely different.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Yeah, and that's why the smoke alarms was just the first point of entry for us into the market. We're not a smoke alarm company by any means. We're not an electrician, you know either. We are a prop tech solution. So we are essentially a software solution which involves these IoT devices and, like I said earlier, we're a compliance and risk mitigation solution. So, yes, smoke alarms are part of the compliance side of things. But then when you talk about water leak, you talk about water shutoff valves, heat alarms, gas leak, gas shutoff valves, carbon monoxide alarms. There's a whole array of different devices that are there and designed to reduce the exposure of risk to a landlord and provide a safer environment for tenants, and this is not just in the in the permanent rental space. This is also in short term. So airbnbs, all that sort of stuff as well. You know where you might want to have a decibel reading device. There's potentially a cigarette and vape detector, you know you name it.

Speaker 2: 19:27

You can just about turn it into a device of some sort and we can tap that into our ecosystem and offer it to landlords and property owners down the track. The other thing we will have in time will be a owner-occupier solution.

Speaker 2: 19:41

So you know you can have this gear installed in your own home to help monitor things like water leaks. And you know, if you go away for holidays and you come back and you've got a burst plexi hose yeah, the unfortunate thing is, with flexi hoses they can potentially pump out 600 litres of water in an hour.

Speaker 1: 20:02

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:02

So they can be quite destructive, and it's not always just under a kitchen sink. It could be in a bathroom or a laundry or, you know, in a unit block. You know.

Speaker 2: 20:13

Yeah, exactly, you could have a unit high up in a high rise and all of a sudden it starts to impact levels below and so forth. So there's some some big things. Um, and just recently there was a gas leak in a in a government housing complex in sydney. I'm not sure if it made the the news in wa, but um, yeah it. It levelled two or three townhouses and unfortunately someone perished. They were crushed and it was in a government housing estate.

Speaker 1: 20:47

So you know yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:51

With tragedy. You know it's very unfortunate, but that's why things like this are starting to evolve to prevent those tragedies happening in the future. So yeah, it's not whoever has sort of seen or heard about sensor in the past, because smoke alarms were our first step. That's generally what they think we are as a smoke alarm provider, but we're not. We're actually a software provider with devices um tacked into it yeah, yeah, perfect.

Speaker 1: 21:20

No, I love it, I think it'll. Once you obviously launch and you've, you've launched the offer is out there. But once you start pushing the product, I think, yeah, you'll, I think it's just going to take off. I think it's a no brainer and I've always said that to you the last few months that we've been chatting. I just wish I had it as a property manager. So I think it will definitely make everyone's lives a lot easier. And in terms of $14.95 whatever you said per month, like $14.99 it just seems like very reasonable.

Speaker 1: 21:54

You know, you add that up over the year, it might be slightly more than what you're paying your electrician to do one thing and just check that smoke alarm. At least you're checking other things while you're doing it. So no, well done to you guys. I think it's great. I think honestly, I think you'll definitely make some waves over in Perth as well.

Speaker 2: 22:12

I think it's needed, and we like to take up tech over here too, so'm sure people yeah the feedback I've had shannon is has been quite good, like there's plenty of people that are very interested in in um, knowing more about it, understanding how it works, and it's just having that two-minute conversation with someone to say, right, this is, this is the concept, this is how it works and this is what it creates for you. Um, it's, it's going to make people's lives a hell of a lot easier. Yeah, it will tell you when something is wrong. That's the only only time you have to pay attention to it. If everything is going along swimmingly and you've got tenants that aren't, you know, opening alarms for the sake of it, or or turning things off or, um, just, you know, being pests as such, you're going to be fine.

Speaker 2: 22:59

Yeah, and we even had a community housing provider on the east coast that thought the alarms in a particular property were faulty because something was happening at 10 o'clock every morning and then at 4 o'clock every afternoon, and it turns out that the tenant was actually turning the smoke alarms off at 10 am, doing whatever they were doing in that home until 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and then switching them back on. And there was a regular pattern occurring with this particular property. And, yeah, it turns out the tenant was doing something untoward.

Speaker 2: 23:39

They ended up getting served some breach notices and and basically because the pm had the audit trail there which is automatically created, they were able to, um, yeah, serve some some notices to this tenant and um yeah, the rest, they say, is history. So look it's, it's there to protect um property as well.

Speaker 1: 23:58

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:59

And the $14.99 a month. You know zero upfront cost from a landlord. So we supply the equipment, we have it installed, all that sort of stuff as well. It doesn't cost the landlord anything. We're actually going to give them six months free as well upon signing up. So, they'll have that first six months at no cost.

Speaker 1: 24:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:17

And the $14.99 is actually invoiced quarterly, so it's, you know, just under 45 bucks a quarter. Um, it works out to be no more than three dollars fifty a week and if you break it down it's 49 cents a day. Yeah, and then if they do, if they do happen to, you know, show any interest, uh, in the sgua proposal and they take on that policy, sgua are going to cover that cost moving forward. So it's, you know, doesn't cost them a cent and they get a reduced premium of sorts through SGUA and, you know, a great outcome for all.

Speaker 1: 24:53

Yeah, that's fantastic. Honestly, I love it. Thank you so much for sharing everything. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you wanted to sort of add in? I think that's about it.

Speaker 2: 25:05

No, pretty much watch this space. So, as you know, time goes by. Like I said, we'll have heat alarms shortly.

Speaker 2: 25:11

We'll have water shut off valves in the next six months you know, probably somewhere around Christmas time Plenty of other devices and the thing is it's a set and forget mentality from the property manager's perspective.

Speaker 2: 25:25

Once the integration has been set up with Propertymetry or Console Cloud, it updates daily. There's nothing else for the PM to do. So any new properties that have been signed on and set up, any changes to landlord or tenant contact info are updated automatically. And then, once the testing has been completed, we push the compliance certificate back into the trust system, we push the last test date back in there as well, and even the invoicing once a quarter. It's pushed straight back into their pending payments or pending bills section for immediate disbursement come end of month or, you know, mid-month depending on when it falls. So even their trust accountant within their organisation doesn't have to think of anything else. They just click pay at the end of the month and away they go. So we're streamlining everything to make sure that PMs, even though it's a new tech product, it's designed to make them or help them work smarter, not harder, when it comes to, you know regular compliance and risk.

Speaker 1: 26:26

Yeah, you're not giving them something else to do, which we don't want at the moment. We've got plenty to do. So I think it's great and you're very right and I think you've hit the nail on the head with that. It's just organising it all for them and providing what they need to be able to take it on.

Speaker 1: 26:42

I think that's important, so yeah well done on that point I think, like I said, all of us love tech but they don't have the time to learn it. Essentially and I guess that's sort of, yeah well, why our business is still here as well, it's because so much involved in what they have to do day to day and, yeah, it gets tricky, so well done in looking after it all.

Speaker 2: 27:04

but yeah, yeah well, we're trying to add value and save them time. You know, um, because property managers have enough hats to wear day to day, there's never enough hours in the day as well and, yeah, this system system will save them time and cover their backsides as well. Automatically, like everything is automated Once they set it up for the testing.

Speaker 2: 27:26

it's automated, notifies the tenant Tenant, can you know, reschedule whenever they like and the PM just gets alerted to stuff when it actually happens instead of you know, not knowing that a smoke alarm has been taken down by a tenant because it was beeping while they were cooking bacon or you know they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing. Whatever it may be, but, um, especially with the, the water leak stuff and everything else that's coming, it's, it's pretty neat yeah um, and yeah, the idea is just to educate more and more about it.

Speaker 2: 27:56

Um, and we'll have all that information you know brochures for new business, emails for landlords, information for landlords. Also happy to do these videos with agencies that you know want to put together little snippets of stuff to feed to landlords as well. But it's all very, very simple and straightforward at the same time.

Speaker 1: 28:18

Yeah, I definitely think it's a good offering for a BDM Over here. Obviously, we're all increasing our rent rolls hugely at the moment with the investor market. So I think, yeah, to add it on to a little BDM spiel while they're out talking to a landlord or on a Zoom, I think easy enough and you've got that paperwork or that sort of sign-up form that I know you've showed me as well, and they have to always get that sorted and, yeah, cover themselves.

Speaker 2: 28:42

So no, I love it Well done.

Speaker 1: 28:44

Well done to Censor.

Speaker 2: 28:46

Yeah, thank you very much, and it's great to be partnering with someone like yourself, shannon, who offers so much more to the property management industry in WA.

Speaker 1: 28:56

Thanks.