EP. 1269 Landlords and tenants: Is your agent's condition report letting you down? Here's why.

What if you could transform the tedious task of property management into a streamlined and efficient process? Join us as Cleo opens up about her daily struggles with ingoing condition reports and the repetitive nature of her duties. We'll share the innovative strategies her office employs to make these tasks less daunting, and dive into the effects of school holidays on traffic patterns and home life, adding a touch of humor along the way.

This episode doesn't just scratch the surface; we explore the real potential of technology in property management, from body cams to transcription software, to ease the burden of inspection reports. Cleo contributes valuable insights on the importance of professional cleaning and timely communication to avoid disputes between landlords and tenants. And don't miss our discussion on how Novak Properties is setting a new standard with video documentation for property inspections, despite the challenges of garnering tenant agreement. Tune in for a wealth of actionable advice to revolutionize your property management approach!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Making routines great again, the biggest pitfall in property management that a landlord or a tenant can fall into. Stay tuned, I'm the ringleader, so I chill out. Alright, claire, how are you this morning? The property manager of the year 2023, according to me. Morning.

Speaker 2: 0:50

How are you? I'm good. I'm good today. We're coming closer to the end of the school holidays, so we can kind of see a little bit of you know, the distance, the sunshine in the distance.

Speaker 1: 1:05

There's a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, you reckon.

Speaker 2: 1:08

For sure, for sure. Oh, it's okay. It's good having you know my son home as well, but it's just hectic. I want my house back.

Speaker 1: 1:17

Yeah, and I get traffic back when the school holidays finish. What is it about school holidays and no traffic? That's just. That's so good, but I still can't. It must, it just must be a shit ton of students and parents congesting peak hours yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2: 1:34

And you know people um take longer to get ready. When the kids are around and you don't have to be anywhere, so you're not leaving the house till about 10 or 11 and then you go out and do all your stuff, you know, whereas, like you said, in that peak hour you've got to get everything done and everyone's in the same boat and everyone's doing it at the same time and I reckon I saved 25 percent on time in traffic but anyway over over to the over to our topic.

Speaker 1: 1:59

um cleo, the biggest bugbear, the biggest time-consuming thing that you do and you started the morning off having a whinge about it Can you tell us?

Speaker 2: 2:11

I know I did, I know I'm so blessed and I'm complaining, but it is one of those things where, when you do something so much and it's so repetitive and so mundane, that you look at it and that's how we've changed a lot of things in our office in our procedures, where we've gone like this is dumb, why are we doing this? You are often the catalyst and say why can't we just do this? And then we think, why can't we? You know, and um, the ingoing condition report is something that's a bane in my professional life. It's just, I just feel like it could be done better, um, and more efficiently and save time. And yeah, it's one of those things where, as soon as you get, you know, like a new management or something and it's a big house you're like, oh, my god, I've got to do this ingoing now, you know, and it shouldn't be so. It shouldn't be something that you don't want to do, you know, it should be something that you can do quite efficiently and then get back to what you know you need to do.

Speaker 1: 3:19

So for people, for the lay people in terms of skills in terms of property management, in terms of the lay people in terms of skills in terms of property management, in terms of the everyday people, when a tenant moves into the property, they've got to sign something saying yeah, I agree, this is exactly what I'm taking. When the tenant leaves that property, the tenant goes yeah, yeah, I agree, this is how I've left it. When there's a massive difference, that's more and beyond wear and tear, then that report gets ripped out and compared in a tribunal situation. So it's sort of the landlord's bible for property management. They rely heavily on this ingogoing report and out-going report. How long will it take for you to put together an in-going report for a house?

Speaker 2: 4:14

It could take up to four hours. If you're doing it properly, if it's a house that's new without any damages or nicks and scratches and things like that, you can get in and out pretty quickly with just the photographs and then you can type up the report later. But if it's an all-star house and you're not just doing internal, you've got to do external, you're doing under the house, you're doing eaves, gardens, like it can take forever to do a house. So when we're renting property and the property manager gets a house, you're like, yes, I love it. And then you're like, oh, I've got to do the report now. You know. So it's one of those things.

Speaker 2: 4:47

But the written report is what I find confusing to me, because I have forever been writing the same thing White paint, downlights, roller blind, venetia, blind, this, that that You're recording information over and over again. That's the same. And then you're also photographing the same thing that you've written. So you're doubling whatever it is that you're reporting on, first you go to take all the photos of the same thing and then you've got to write and describe and I'm like well, every time I'm writing out these reports I'm like can't you see from the photos? You know it's a down light. It can't be a chandelier. If you're looking at it, it's a down light. Why do I have to write down, like when I've got 10 photos of the down light? You know something like that that, um, I feel that we can do better. There's got to be some kind of I wouldn't say shortcut, but just better way.

Speaker 1: 5:46

I'm feeling body cam, I'm feeling chat, gpt. I'm feeling transcript uh, like you know, automatically transcripting what you're saying. But it's pretty incredible that, you know, in the 70s and 80s and 90s, people heavily relied on only the written report. Then everyone came and went aha, alas, we're gonna take photos as well. They increased their workload. They probably doubled their workload in an era where technology came so far and this is an industry-wide thing. So I guess something that's really important for people to at the moment, because, okay, this is for real estate agents, right, but for the landlord and and for the, for the tenant, what are the tricks that you want to point out for them to watch out for with these reports? Because there's people every day moving into real estate, rent for rent and moving out, and there's often broken hearts. What's your chief, your number one recommendation on ingoing reports?

Speaker 2: 6:55

I like the word professionally cleaned. So if you can get a tenancy approved where there's a cleaner that goes in at the start and a cleaner that goes in at the end, there's usually no dispute for anyone when something's professionally cleaned and you can back it with an invoice. If you've paid a cleaner to do your exit clean, for example, and you're paying $400, say, and you've got that invoice to go with it you can use that invoice for the next ingoing tenant.

Speaker 2: 7:29

This is the ingoing report. This is the ingoing report. This is how it's handed over. It's been professionally cleaned. Therefore, when they move out and they do the same thing, there is no cleaning dispute. There's no going back and forth with photos of the oven and the rain should have this or that. It's done. It's the same with carpets when we used to write professionally cleaned for carpet.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Another thing is being strict on the tenants returning the ingoing within seven days and not giving a word copy, because it is easy for a tenant to just write on the report don't agree, dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty, broken, broken, dirty, broken, whatever. They just just fill it in dispute. Everything you've said and basically at the end, what systems do you have in place to check that? You know they handed that back and those comments within the seven days. Once the seven days expires, the tenants comments aren't really relevant because they haven't handed in that report within that time. So I'm strict on that as well and making sure that there is basically, if someone's written there's a dispute on an ingoing, that you go and sort it out. Excuse me like you go to the property and you say, well, look, I don't agree with your comment like this is clean or this isn't damaged or whatever it is.

Speaker 2: 8:46

Don't just leave it to the end, because then it's a, you know, a mountain instead of a molehill, or whatever.

Speaker 1: 8:54

And this can go. When this goes bad with these ingoing inspections, everyone loads their guns and gets ready, just to lose their shit.

Speaker 2: 9:09

It's true, because it's Bond and it's a lot of money. It's usually to do with cleaning damages like you can't dispute damage. So there's a hole in the door at the start and a hole in the door at the end and you've written hole in the door. It's a hole in the door, fine, it's cleaning. That's always um the dispute with ingrowing reports and people's level of clean.

Speaker 2: 9:28

You could write dusty I like that word on the incoming. It's just a little dusty and that's the property managers way of saying it could be cleaner but it's a dusty. And then the tenant writes dirty. So dusty and dirty, they don't match. So that's where you go to the photographs and you're like well, you know, and not a lot gets picked up. When it's something minuscule it doesn't get picked up in a photo very well, when it comes to cleaning, like a dirty oven or toilet or shower, you can really see. But if the windows aren't clean or the windowsills or the skirting like, you can't pick that up in a photo. So I do understand again, on the flip side, the report. But if we could just like, have the the in going clean, the outgoing clean. You know these reports, I think they're going to die out at some point. There's only so much descriptive words. Like everyone asked in the office, you know, when they're newbies they were like what kind of blind is this? And you, you know you become an expert on describing what you're seeing.

Speaker 2: 10:28

When you've been doing this a long time, you know. You know what kind of blind, what kind of drain. Is that a chrome tap? Or is a polished, you know um brass tap? Some people write gold tap. It's not gold yeah, right.

Speaker 1: 10:44

So, um, basically we're in trouble as an industry where we're investing way too much in in-going and out-going inspections. But I guess it's working for tenants and it's working for landlords. But it can be done. Yeah, it can be done if you could suggest a way for it for that that to be done better, not not time saving, but where would be, where would, where would? Where's the sort of touch point in our industry where what do tenants want to see now and what do landlords want to see now out of these in going and outgoing reports? How do you make it better for the tenant and better for the landlord?

Speaker 2: 11:24

I think the report isn't where all the weight is. If you go to NCAT on a dispute, it's all down to photos. So if we could include a video or photos or something that you know is a way of the you know pen and paper, so to speak, I think that would help everyone because, you know, even in an email you're describing things with the tenant at the outgoing. It's always the photo, it's never the report. It always goes down to the report, comes down to whether or not they've agreed and they've signed that they've agreed on how it looked. But it still always comes down to the photo.

Speaker 2: 12:03

Here's a photo of the grass at the start. Here's a photo of the grass at the end. It's dead. You need to have that fixed. It's always photos. So if we can include the photos and videos and add that, you know, as in the main part of the report, as opposed to typing out a lengthy, you know describing essay, so to speak, I think that would make everybody happier, because then you're spending more time on, you know, looking at the faults of the property, the condition, the actual way to make it better, rather than figuring out what kind of grey it is of the paint to try and describe it and then you have to write it and then, yeah, I don't know, just throw that out there. Gifts is not photos but videos.

Speaker 1: 12:46

Yeah, the thing with a video is, I guess you've got to force a tenant to agree that that's the video done on that property at that time, so that they've got to force a tenant to agree that that's the video done on that property at that time, so that they've got to watch it. Have they watched it? They signed it as clam. I guess it can all be done. But uh, big hole in our industry. Let today be the uh line in the sand for novak properties to uh revolutionize something. Uh, which we did with, with, uh, our routine inspections. But, um, cleo, thank you for coming on and I look forward to finding it, finding a solution for this big problem oh, I'll be.

Speaker 2: 13:22

I'll be in probably about three hours late today because I'm doing an ingoing a big one, and you're not joking. You're not joking.

Speaker 1: 13:29

And you're not joking, and you're not joking Far out. All right, take care, see you.