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Flexible set-ups where people operate partially from home and partly in person are becoming more widespread in the real estate sector.
Speaking on a recent episode of REB’s The WIRE podcast, Chantelle Collin, the leader of the property management team at Bresic Whitney, acknowledged that while remote work was on the cards prior to COVID-19 and lockdowns, it’s become more commonplace.
“We did have remote work prior to COVID and lockdown. We’ve always had that, but now it’s certainly a lot more prevalent,” Ms Collin stated.
“Now we have the entire team taking advantage of that rather than just a couple of people that used to do that pre-COVID.
“A lot of our team do three days in the office and two days working from home.”
Ms Collin’s sentiment comes as many real estate employers have realised that a flexible work plan is crucial for encouraging productivity and attracting and retaining new agents and clients.
Many have taken note of a recent study conducted at Stanford University, which found that businesses allowing employees to work from home increases productivity by 13 per cent while also reducing turnover by 50 per cent.
With new ways of working now well and truly entrenched within the business, it also had a flowthrough to the way real estate professionals engage with consumers when it comes to showing properties.
Drawing on her own 24 years of experience, Ms Collin said that “for many, many years, it was really rigid around the Wednesday open and the Saturday open”.
She continued: “It was just the tried-and-tested formula, and I never really thought about how that suited people’s lives and the strategic approach to that.”
Now, Ms Collin’s team takes a much more flexible and tailored approach to how they show property.
First, they spend some time qualifying prospective tenants before taking them through. In today’s world, they are no longer required to do a walkthrough inspection of the property, and so there are videos that tenants may watch in order to have a visual tour of the property.
“I think you certainly have to think more about the property and the type of client that you are looking for as well,” she advised.
“We certainly won’t go back to that Wednesday-open, Saturday-open model,” the leader concluded.
Listen to the full conversation with Ms Collin here.
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