Kenslee from Inspection Express on the Future of Property Inspection Reports using AI features
Jul 22, 2024
Ashleigh Goodchild
Discover how AI, specifically ChatGPT, is transforming property inspection reports with Kenslee from Inspection Express. Learn how this groundbreaking technology analyzes 360 scans and automates base reports, cutting down the generation time from hours to mere minutes. Kenslee shares fascinating insights into the sizable time and financial savings that property management businesses can achieve with this innovation.
Find out how AI is making waves in property management by easing workloads and enhancing report quality and consistency. Explore the practical implications of AI, including making junior staff appear more experienced and enabling efficient collaboration through 360 inspections. Kenslee underscores the importance of accountability, ensuring that even with AI, the property manager remains the ultimate decision-maker.
Don't miss our discussion on the beta testing and feedback phase of this AI integration. We shed light on how virtual tours are enhancing transparency and accuracy in property inspections, leading to significant profitability boosts. By participating in product demos now, you can equip yourself to tackle future challenges head-on.
The team at The Grout Guy are the leading experts in regrouting, waterproofing, and tiling services nationwide. Property managers find comfort in their 10-year waterproof warranty on all full shower regrouts. Visit thegroutguy.com.au to rejuvenate your properties tiles and grout now!
www.thegroutguy.com.au
Inspection Express and Paperless Office is the leader in innovative, time saving property Inspection Software.
Business owners are building their rental portfolios faster than ever and Property Managers can’t possibly do it all!
Keep your property managers doing what they love and outsource the things they don’t to a company that thrives on positive feedback and guarantees a premium personalised service
Discover how AI, specifically ChatGPT, is transforming property inspection reports with Kenslee from Inspection Express. Learn how this groundbreaking technology analyzes 360 scans and automates base reports, cutting down the generation time from hours to mere minutes. Kenslee shares fascinating insights into the sizable time and financial savings that property management businesses can achieve with this innovation.
Find out how AI is making waves in property management by easing workloads and enhancing report quality and consistency. Explore the practical implications of AI, including making junior staff appear more experienced and enabling efficient collaboration through 360 inspections. Kenslee underscores the importance of accountability, ensuring that even with AI, the property manager remains the ultimate decision-maker.
Don't miss our discussion on the beta testing and feedback phase of this AI integration. We shed light on how virtual tours are enhancing transparency and accuracy in property inspections, leading to significant profitability boosts. By participating in product demos now, you can equip yourself to tackle future challenges head-on.
The team at The Grout Guy are the leading experts in regrouting, waterproofing, and tiling services nationwide. Property managers find comfort in their 10-year waterproof warranty on all full shower regrouts. Visit thegroutguy.com.au to rejuvenate your properties tiles and grout now!
www.thegroutguy.com.au
Inspection Express and Paperless Office is the leader in innovative, time saving property Inspection Software.
Business owners are building their rental portfolios faster than ever and Property Managers can’t possibly do it all!
Keep your property managers doing what they love and outsource the things they don’t to a company that thrives on positive feedback and guarantees a premium personalised service
Today I have the lovely Kensley from Inspection Express joining us so we can talk about AI in Inspection Reports. Kensley, thank you for joining me. Thanks, Ash. Good to jump on. It's school holidays at the moment, so any excuse to jump on the computer and not have to handle the kids is always a good thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
Totally Just the school holidays that never end, the June, July ones.
Speaker 1:
Exactly exactly. My kids only have the two weeks, but I think July is always the time where a lot of families also have three weeks, so that would, yeah, the more you pay in fees those people that do have kids on three-week holidays. Well, that's the punishment, isn't it? That's me, oh, is that you? Very long for you? So we're going to talk about the AI Inspection Express, which I actually don't know a lot about and I'm very excited to hear because it's such a for me. It's like such a futuristic thing that's about to sort of happen. But has this started or is it about to be launched? I actually don't even know that.
Speaker 2:
Yes. So I feel like most of us. We all feel that AI is the biggest buzzword at the moment, and it's not technology that's unfamiliar to us. I find that a lot of agencies are already using AI or ChatGPT somehow in their business, right? So we've just integrated that AI into our software and with our integration for the software, basically what we will be utilising AI to do is read those 360 scans that your inspector or your property manager has captured, and out of that we've set some rules and just asked for it to report on what it can actually see, so it gets rid of that monotonous brand new property condition report where you have to just start breaking down carpet floorings, skirting boards, painted white walls are painted green, mine screen behind my screen, and so therefore it is eliminating hours out of the report writing those things that are just common knowledge from the image, right yeah, and so if we were to?
Speaker 1:
I mean, I know this is going to um, it's always sensitive to talk about how many hours it takes to do an ingoing report, for example. Um, out of curiosity, if someone asked you, how long does it like would it take normally to do, and what would you say?
Speaker 2:
Well, I think I'm well experienced in knowing how long a property condition report takes from my background. So, yes, on average, a very quick, fast inspector, you know that then types it. They're probably going to spend a minimum four to five hours on a four by two property. That includes going out, taking the photos, then, you know, typing the report from the photos. So in that initial trial we worked with one of our good friends in PM Collective. She kindly allowed me over to her property, which was a large four by two in Greenwood with a theatre and a pool, so the total time on site was a little bit slower just because I was also showing them how to use the 360 camera. But the total time on site was 40 minutes. That was making sure that we weren't missing anything. We were taking close-up photos of, you know, model numbers, things like that, and the 360 scan and then the actual AI generation part is only about two minutes. So it will completely type all of your base reports in that two-minute timeframe for all areas.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so let's just quickly just break that down. So 40 minutes and ultimately we're doing that's the time taken to do the 360 photos in the property. Is that doing any text, just for the newbies, any text? Or letting AI do all of that?
Speaker 2:
So I would say the best practice or best process for it is, yes, to add some of your field notes, anything specific. So we could have got AI to go off on a tangent and write these long, lengthy things, but I feel like you'd be spending more time editing it, so we've just got it to do, you know, 80% of the report and then anything that is subjective. We all know property condition reports are subjective, so anything subjective like as in there is dust in the corner or there's a chip on the left-hand side wall, like left-hand side, just because AI can't generate where it is. So anything like that you want to add to your report, to, you know, boost it again. Yeah, that's only going to be another 10 or so minutes really.
Speaker 1:
So what's really exciting about this and one of my bugbears I've had in the industry is that we don't necessarily charge or recognise what we're charging versus our actual staff expense and hours correct. So, and I try to teach as many people how to work this out, but to give people a bit of a brief summary on what I think is that if you have, let's say, traditionally, a property condition report or ingoing report takes four hours and you are a property manager and just don't crucify me on this, I'm just doing it to make it easy for my numbers let's say that you earn $30 per hour. Really as a business you should be. I feel personally that you should be charging out three times that hourly rate. So you've got a property manager who gets paid $30 an hour.
Speaker 1:
Now that fee to the client is $90 per hour for services that that property manager is doing, hour for services that that property manager is doing. So $90 per hour times four hours is $360 for a report to be done. So if I was to go, how much should a property manager charge for a report that costs that takes them about four hours? I would say about $360. Now there will be some people charging that, but that's like such at the high end, where on average it's quite a bit less than that, and this is really exciting because it really means property management businesses are going to become so much more profitable simply by this one change in their business.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, correct, exactly. And also to the feedback. I've been out on site with a couple of new officers, even with my most recent trip. They are excited, like this one inspection person. All she does is all the inspections, and I find that a lot of offices are moving to that larger teams, that they're starting to have inspection teams underneath the property managers. Um, and she goes this will just change the way I do it, because if I can get it done quicker, then I don't feel the stress that I have to stay back to finish this report because we all know that they're time sensitive, right, the reports, um. So yeah, it just allows them better breathing room and also it might allow them to also focus more on the detail than the light fluffy stuff, exactly.
Speaker 1:
And isn't it funny you say that Because I used to always. I know I haven't done a property condition report for a long time, but I remember going through and having to mark you know how many PowerPoints and all of that, and I used to always think why do I even have to mention PowerPoints? I mean, they're not going anywhere, like, and if someone puts in an extra PowerPoint it's not really a big drama. And I actually get quite frustrated about having to mention those real simple things like PowerPoints or light switches as well, because it's like there's nothing. They're nothing, nothing's going to happen to them, they're not going to change. And I'd rather focus on more of those subjective things, like you said, like the scuffs or the chips or the wear on the property as well.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, but also, too, we have to keep in mind that our state legislation says text is king. This is Western Australia, specificia, specific, so, unfortunately. And photos only supplementary. But um, the ai, they will write that for you, white faced, um PowerPoint. So yeah it, it covers the agents a lot better. Now I think that what we're talking about is, as I said, not unusual.
Speaker 2:
People are already starting to use AI within their business, whether it is to help them type that email to that difficult client. We've all seen and cringe at the AI when they try to use it for advertising but forget to get rid of the AI. We've cleverly hidden it in our software so that you can't, as the user, the end user, the tenant or the landlord, see that it's been generated by AI. Another best practice and a fail-safe that we've left is the check boxes for the clean, undamaged working. We still want the inspector to do those, so it forces the user to basically read the text because ultimately, at the end of the day, it's still the agent signature on the report going out yeah, I was just having a quiet chuckle to myself, making sure, like that, you know, if there was a summary that I didn't say something like let's delve into the lounge room, or yeah those words because that would be a nightmare to.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, to have a report. I mean, I get a bit frustrated when I see the chat GPT and people using it for some posts and it's like there are a couple of chat GPT words that you have to remove every single time and one of them's called delve and I can't remember what the other one is. So as long as it doesn't sound like that, then we're going to be fine. So ultimately, we are going to be able to have more profitable businesses. We'll be able to reduce the time on site, and not only reduce the time on site but potentially spend more time, if that allows, to be more accurate with those other subjective bits and pieces. I also love seeing products and advancements in programs that allow our rookie and junior property managers to actually look more experienced with those reports. So it's great when you've got your newbies in the industry now being able to use this technology to be able to look as good as a senior you know what I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1:
And I mean, and then probably in reverse, if you think about it, seniors could potentially start getting a bit lazy, maybe in regards to the reports as well. So it's going to allow them to do better reports, but as a business, it's going to allow you to really provide consistent reports as well to your clients, especially when you might have a team where they're all potentially doing them a little bit different. I mean, you've got some people that you know do more photos than text and you know everyone's a bit different, aren't they, with how they do it. So hopefully this provides much more consistency from a business owner's point of view with those reports, which is something that I'm like focused on at the moment, especially because we've got juniors and seniors in our office. I'm all about that consistency now, so I think that's for me, what I am most excited about.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I find that also too, using the 360 inspections which we kind of covered before having a junior do the onsite the actual physical part of it, but the feedback from senior PMs. That then can look back at the report from the office and can clearly see everything that's going on. It just allows for a better team collaborative approach. And you know, if the junior is wondering, oh, what should I say about X, y, z on the wall over there, they can obviously leave comfortably from site and then ask for a senior property manager to review.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's really good. Are you coming across? I'm throwing you under the bus a little bit with this question, but I am interested to hear are you coming across anyone that has a negative opinion on using AI, and what has your response been to squash those thoughts that they have?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I have heard some negative feedbacks on it, the facts that maybe that they will like a tenant might complain that they've got an AI generated report. I think it feeds back to what I kind of covered before. It's the same as if you do outsource, right, it's the's signature on the report going out and the ultimate liability is back on the agent and the licensee as the business owner, right. So it's not like we're encouraging you to do an AI-generated report and send out the minimum. That's not what we're trying to do and that's not what we're trying to achieve here. We're trying to give your agency or your property managers a tool to eliminate the time and actually try and help them create some better reports, because again, they're focusing on the issues there yeah, that that's perfect.
Speaker 1:
That's exactly what it is. It's about having the time to focus on the issues instead of having to rush it because it's taking you four hours and you just do not have time for the day 100 yeah, exactly, and we, we all know that with the newer generation it's like 90 minutes attention spend max, like on anything.
Speaker 2:
So, especially when we think about the property condition report, it's probably the second, well, third, most important document in an agreement. Right? So you've got your management agreement, you got your lease agreement and your property report is probably the second, well, third, most important document in an agreement. Right, so you've got your management agreement, you've got your lease agreement, and your property condition report is the biggest.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. Are you seeing a massive difference? Or do you know much about the other states? Like, obviously, like we know WA well, I know WA well, but the other states, are they similar to us?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, some states I've seen uh, texas a little bit lighter, um, probably a little bit different on their fee structure and their legislation. Maybe they accept photos a bit more regularly at their you know um tribunal level. So I think a lot of people are also asking for more text as well to kind of back up those photos.
Speaker 1:
So AI is then helping them beef up their text to support what's in the photos okay, so WA is more heavier on the text, obviously because we need to be, and then other states are potentially a little bit lighter on, are they?
Speaker 2:
yeah, they're correct yeah yeah, I would.
Speaker 1:
Um, I'd love to get to a point where, um we use video and yeah, and I mean I know the 362 is is like it's a good alternative, but um, the videos, I just feel like would be so much easier just to go through and do it, but we just I don't think we'll ever be there, but no, but I do know an agency here in WA who did used to do that.
Speaker 2:
They would also do their property condition reports, but they would also do a video walk through of each of their properties and, uh, close up, say like this is a chip in this corner, um so uh. But they have changed their tune and they're happy with using virtual tours and then pinning the images that they've got issues with inside their report. So that's been a great solution for them, because they were saying that sometimes, even in that they wanted to capture an image, and because it's a video, it kind of gets a little bit blurry and yeah, so it just saved them some time there.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
I have only had one situation and it's not to do with inspections, but when I do pre-purchase inspections and I do a video and I always call it a five minute PCR video, because that's sort of what it roughly is when clients are looking for properties and I actually did have to refer to it once recently with a client that said I was never told about the gaps in the flooring, and I was able to pull that up and say, actually, here's the pre-purchase video that I sent you a couple of years ago when you first bought the property and I did mention it in that. So they do come in handy. But I think, yeah, it would be a bit of double up if you were to do it. Yeah, but I get the concept, but I just, yeah, probably use that bit of double up, yeah.
Speaker 2:
It's coming at the end of this month, but we've already opened it up Australia-wide to about 15 offices for beta testing. So we are feeding the reports and getting feedback from them as well. So the initial AI generation workshop that was a lot of my input and also collating data from reports that you know agencies have created in Inspection Express, and now it's actually really exciting to see some of the feedback that's coming back. Some people, like the minimalism One agency, did say that they wanted more. So we're just trying to find that perfect balance. But I think we also saw Eric. One of the speakers was talking about how they were integrating AI to help them with their client contact, you know, and so she was saying you guys, here's the access to my thing. You are all beta testers right now. I need you to give me feedback. So that's what's that's. The beauty of AI is that we actually still also need feedback from clients as they're coming through with the AI generation, because the more info we feed it, the better overall product it will be.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely so. For clients that have got Inspection Express, is this going to be something that they can either choose to use or not use, or will it be just that's like the only option? How does that look?
Speaker 2:
so it's only for the virtual tour clients and the charge? At this stage we haven't yet figured out a set price for it, but it will be a per use kind of charge on the AI, because essentially how our software works is that once you have the text in the software, you can reuse it again. So you know, to a cost to a business it would be only initially for a brand new PCR, if you really wanted to look at it that way or if you needed to update an old one that was really, you know, a few years old. So it's not a um overly expensive exercise and it is. It will be um available to any of our existing virtual tour clients beautiful and then.
Speaker 1:
But then if there was someone that was like I don't like ai and don't want to touch it, then it's okay, they don't have to yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
I think that, like because I've done a bit of regional trips right now, the assistants, they don't have the luxury of outsourcing, as our metro states cities do, so I think that they are. It's a big need in those regions.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, totally. It's going to be a lot easier for regional and for those that have got those in-house inspection managers to really, yeah, pump them through. So I'm so excited, I can't wait and I am excited to see how our team enjoys it as well. So, yeah, it'll be really good. I mean, for me it's it's all about the consistency of the reports going out to clients. So, as, as a business owner, it means that I know that they are sort of all getting done in some sort of consistency. That's, for me, the biggest thing.
Speaker 1:
And the second thing is just that, saving time. So you know, I will admit, we don't charge that. What did I say? $360? We don't charge that $360 to the, say, 360. We don't charge that 360 to the report. We come in less than that.
Speaker 1:
So ultimately, it would be really great to do some breakdowns in, like my business and, if you're listening to this in your business owner, some breakdowns of how much you're receiving from property condition report. You know, income versus the time you're spending, and and maybe use that as a bit of a focus point as we go into the new financial year of like, hey, well, how can we actually look at just this section of our business inspection reports. How can we reduce the time and make this quite a profitable part of the property management business? So, you know, breaking down each, you know the management fees, breaking down the inspection reports, breaking down your I don't know if you've got a technology fee or whatever it is and just really being specific with what your costs are looking like and making sure that, yeah, you are a profitable business. So it's, yeah, it's really really good.
Speaker 2:
I find that also too. Inspection Express has helped us to yes, look at those identifying line items. But the virtual tours is a point of difference for a lot of businesses as well. So you know, clients will start slowly coming along the lines of it. I think we did a little case study of an office in New South Wales had 500 managements and they decided to do a bring on the virtual tours and they sent an email out to all of their clients saying hey, we have this new technology of virtual tours for one inspection per year. Would you like to have a virtual tour of your property to see how it looks and how it's all tracking? And the cost for this will only be an extra $100 per year. Within 72 hours they had over I think they had over 80% of their clients come back and say yes, so it instantly created an extra profit for their office of increasing that fee. So let me just quickly do the math.
Speaker 1:
And you're referring to them as like the routine inspections virtual tour.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. So if we didn't break it down for that 80% and it's an extra $100, it was already an extra $4,000 added to the business.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, amazing. So that is like we're not personally using the virtual tour for routine inspections, and it's not that we're not going to, it's just we haven't got to that stage, I tend to sort of roll out things in more bite-sized pieces, and so eventually we will be doing that.
Speaker 1:
But I love it for route inspections, because you don't want your property managers to be hiding things and you know, how, like sometimes they just take a picture from this corner, not that corner, so they have to deal with that problem. You know what I mean. Like, and there are property managers that do that. Um, I feel like the 360 photos and tours are really, really good and definitely a value add. And one thing actually um, when I'm speaking at an upcoming event, we're talking about when you have features inside your business, like you know, 360 tours, et cetera, making sure that you actually market that, you do it, include it in your fee schedule as a bonus or as a value add, so that your fee schedule stands out in comparison to other people. We don't do that well enough, I don't think in the industry.
Speaker 1:
So promoting that you do that I think is really important and giving clients the option to have it in their you know routine inspections. For example, you might have routine inspection 88 or with virtual tour, you know 140 or whatever you want to do. Doing that I think is really really good to do. And, yeah, makes your fee schedule stand out and makes you look like more of an expert.
Speaker 2:
I think it also. Obviously we all know that real estate agents are low on the trust level. I think it adds an element of trust back into the transaction as well that the client can clearly see what's going on and that's yeah. Back in the day, do you remember, landlords used to get one trip per year to visit their investment property? Yeah, yeah, not anymore. So I think that if you sell it correctly, that it's almost like the same thing.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, totally yeah. No, that's really really great. Love it. Well, I am very excited for the beta testing to be finished and to getting that in, and thank you for sharing that insight in regards to what Inspection Express are doing. And obviously you need to be with Inspection Express to access these wonderful features as well. So Kinsley is a fantastic point of contact. If you do want to reach out to her, I have her details here for you.
Speaker 1:
If you haven't had a demo, highly encourage it. I actually encourage people to have demos, even if they're not ready to move. Let's say like you're listening to this and you're like I'm not interested in moving. I like the way we do our inspections. I always say to everyone get a demo, because you don't know when you're going to need that, when it's going to be a pain point. So know how Inspection Express works now. Know that you might not be ready for it now, but maybe in three months when you have a pain point with inspections or with staffing, then you go. You know what? Actually, that demo that I did three months ago actually, I do think this would be helpful for me now and then you can make quick decisions in your business. So I always encourage everyone to have a demo, even if you don't think you are ready, just so that you can be up to date with everything in the industry and know what's available should the time come.
