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Principals should consider hiring a BDM before buying a rent roll, one attendee at the Residential Property Manager Executive Roundtable has claimed.
Michael Conolloy, head of property management at McGrath Estate Agents, said that while his company doesn’t discourage the purchase of rent rolls, he suggests principals assess their reasoning first.
“What we do look at is ‘Is this a strategic move?' It might be a strategic move because they want to break into an area," he said.
“One of our franchise offices desperately wanted to get into a new area very quickly. A very cliquey tightly-held enclave and the strategy was to buy a rent roll in the area and it’s worked beautifully for them.
“The strategy might also be about bringing on board some new great sales agents. So we don’t discourage it, but we want to look at the strategy behind why they want to buy a rent roll.”
Kayla Bishop from Harcourts added that blanket rules across a network don’t work, and that rent roll purchases should be taken on a case by case basis.
"I think you need to look at it on an individual basis,” Ms Bishop said. “You can’t overall make the decision to buy rent rolls.
“Staffing obviously plays a big part; Do they have a BDM? Have they bought a rent roll in the past? These sorts of things need to be addressed before jumping into a very large investment.”
However, Amy Sanderson from LJ Hooker believes a BDM has advantages over simply purchasing a rent roll.
“The thing I like about BDMs is that you have control over it. You don’t always have control over whether there is a rent roll available to buy, you don’t have the control over having the cash to pay for it or if it’s appropriate,” she said.
“But with a BDM, you can go out there and chase what you need to.”
