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Ashlea Merlo co-founded The Property Collab five years ago with a vision of creating a growth agency from scratch in the highly competitive Northern Beaches and North Shore region of Sydney.
Today, The Property Collab has established itself as one of the top start-ups in real estate, placing ninth in the inaugural REB Stellar Agencies 2025 ranking.
Merlo, one of the panel speakers at the upcoming REB Masterclass on the future of real estate payments in April, reflects how early key decisions helped give her agency the edge.
“Having been in real estate for a long time, I felt that a lot of the processes and technologies were outdated,” she said.
With more than two decades of experience to draw on, Merlo made a bold decision to bolster her deep understanding of property management and the local market with a new property management platform built around automated payments. That meant no trust account, end-of-month or manual reconciliations.
The business, which has two property managers and one support staff, has organically grown its rent roll to almost 300 through word of mouth from clients and referrals from professional partners, including mortgage brokers, buyer’s agents, accountants and financial planners.
Staying ahead of the game with tech
Speaking to REB, Merlo said a core part of her business is using cutting-edge technology to enhance the client experience by being agile and providing quick and timely communication.
“[The way property management traditionally worked was] it wasn’t necessarily what a landlord or tenant wanted or needed. We felt we could remove some of the time-consuming elements by using technology.”
This tech-driven mindset led Merlo to look beyond the traditional trust account and operate with a property management platform built around automated payments.
The Property Collab chose Managed, an end-to-end property management system and the only platform exclusively built around secure digital rental payments.
In 2022, Merlo merged her business with Spade Property, which was run by director and long-term colleague Stephanie Livoti. While Spade Property previously operated with a trust account, the merged company transitioned to the digital rental payments platform after amalgamating their portfolios.
“I wanted software that allowed us to work remotely. I wanted to have a business that wasn’t necessarily strapped to an office space,” Merlo said.
“Managed gives us the ability to work anywhere in the world 24/7. Moreover, speed is the new currency, and as such, we wanted a software platform that allowed us to work at speed but with accuracy.”
Giving clients 24/7 visibility into their finances
Importantly, Merlo continued, her goal was to enable her landlords and tenants immediate access to their money. Her property management platform facilitates instant transactions for her clients as the money paid by the tenant is dispersed immediately to the landlord.
“Our job as property managers is to focus on maximising returns for our clients. I would much prefer our clients’ money to be in their account versus in our trust account until the end of the month,” she reasoned.
The software lessened the burden of mid- or end-of-month reconciliations and improved efficiencies in the business.
“The platform gives our landlords and tenants access anytime, anywhere in the world. They can see their finances in real-time,” she said.
“Because of this immediacy, we’re very proactive and ensure that any invoice we receive is entered within 24 hours.”
Using technology has also allowed the business to comply with legal requirements and tailor processes to suit the modern client’s needs, she said.
“Property management has always been done the same way for a long time. We felt that we could use technology to offer our clients a positive property management experience,” Merlo concluded.
A spotlight on secure digital payments
REB will host a masterclass on Thursday, 10 April 2025, to unpack the future of property management and how progressive agencies are leveraging secure digital payments solutions to enhance efficiencies and compliance while established agencies are increasingly switching to these platforms.
REB editor Liam Garman will lead the discussion with a panel of experts including:
- Grant McKay – director at NU Management
- Ashlea Merlo – director at The Property Collab
- Rohith George – chief operating officer at Managed
- Alex Whitlock – commercial director at Managed
Click here to register for the masterclass and don’t miss out!
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