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Alon Beran is looking to break the mould when it comes to property management’s role in his real estate business.
Having recently made the career move back across the bridge from the eastern suburbs to work within his home market on Sydney’s lower north shore, he’s now at the helm of the new Sydney Sotheby’s x Lower North Shore agency.
In a conversation with REB, he detailed what he hoped would set his business apart from the rest, stating his belief that “there’s a lot of the same in property management at the moment”.
Observing the “separation that exists” between both business functions, he quipped “I don’t really get it”.
From his perspective, “it’s all property”.
Within his own business, Beran would really like to bring sales and property management closer together.
Considering sales as ‘relationship managers’
“The way I want to structure my property management business is have my sales guys who refer the business in very involved in the property management side of the business as well,” he outlined.
“These are their clients, these are their customers, these are people that they’ve sold properties to, who are now leasing out their properties, and they’re going to sell for them again in the future.”
Beran has said the idea that a sales agent sells a property and refers that property management over to a property manager who deals with them for the next 10 years before being handed back the property for a sale “doesn’t make any sense” to him.
That’s because he believes “the interaction needs to continue to happen between the sales agent and the landlord”.
“I want my sales agents to be relationship managers for our landlords,” he said, flagging that it’d be a win-win for his property managers, who would be relieved some of their usual workload through the setup.
From a service provision perspective, Beran is of the belief that “nobody’s going to do that better than the sales agents who already have relationships with the landlords. And so I’d very much like them more involved”.
“And then from a property management perspective, the property management in the back-end will do the maintenance, the rent collection, the rent reviews, and then hand that back to the sales agents to have that conversation with their client,” he outlined.
Emphasising customer service through technology
Even with this approach, Beran is making the work done by his property managers as light-touch as possible, thanks to technology.
Through leveraging the Managed App, Beran said much of his team’s tasks had moved away from the “busy work of property management”, such as trust accounting, transfer of funds and the end of financial year statements.
With all of these things taken out of the team’s workload, the business leader said: “We can then focus on spending that money on customer service.”
“Our customers are getting a better product because the busy work is somewhat taken out of the transaction,” he shared.
It’s part of a broader push by Beran to utilise tools that make their work more streamlined, revealing how “technology is going to play a big part in our business”.
“In the industry moving forward, I think it will be more of a support … I hope it will be more of a support, rather than replacing us as real estate agents,” he continued.
Stressing “personal connection with human-to-human interaction can’t be replaced in what we do”, Beran said “if technology can help us do that better for people, because we’ve got more time to do it, then it’s got a great place in our industry”.
Going for growth
Sydney Sotheby’s x Lower North Shore agency will be focused on growth in its property management business, but Beran knows it’s not going to happen overnight.
Numbering just himself and two other team members at present, Beran said: “The next 12 months of the business is most likely going to be focused on sales. I want to get that sorted, and then the property management business will follow as a result of that, because the property management business comes hand-in-hand with the sales business.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Ormsby
Grace is a journalist across Momentum property and investment brands. Grace joined Momentum Media in 2018, bringing with her a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) from the University of Newcastle. She’s passionate about delivering easy to digest information and content relevant to her key audiences and stakeholders.
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