Speaker 1: 0:28

Well, hello Today. I welcome Rachel from Homely. Rachel, thank you for coming to my podcast today.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Rachel, would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about who you are?

Speaker 2: 0:43

and what you do, sure, thank you. My name is Rachel Stipkiewicz and I'm an independent property manager for Homely Property Management. I live on the coast, on the sunny Kapiti Coast in Waikanae Beach, and I provide residential property management services from Levin to Paekakariki and beyond.

Speaker 1: 1:03

That's amazing. Thank you so much. How long have you been with Homely? I've been with.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Homely now, for it must be around 18 months. Yeah, but we officially launched Homely on the coast about a year ago.

Speaker 1: 1:13

That's fantastic, so Homely. Where's the company started?

Speaker 2: 1:16

from so Homely was founded nearly three years ago by Vili Tosi in Palmerston North and he just really wanted a change in the industry, just to kind of shake things up and just change the way that property management was done from the traditional way, and just changed the way that property management was done from the traditional way. So we're now a team of six. So Amanda Weepo came on as a co-owner a few months later and now we have four independent property managers.

Speaker 1: 1:42

That's amazing so in three years. They've grown so massively. That's right. And what made you think about joining the property? Have you had experience in property management before?

Speaker 2: 1:53

So I, for the last 20 odd years, have been a general insurance broker or as a financial advisor now. So I was level five qualified and I did that all over the world and I really just wanted a change in what I was doing. And property management was such a great fit because I'm still that intermediary between two parties, yeah, and so sort of fostering a great relationship, making sure that you comply with laws, and all of the very, very similar things to what I was doing as an advisor. So I just and I loved just the fact that I could get out there and meet so many new people and really help people as well wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 2:41

That sounds really inspiring, because I mean that is a bit of a change, isn't it? Because I mean, obviously I do insurances as well, so I know what's involved in helping people to obtain house insurance, landlord cover and all the beautiful things that come from owning an investment property, and to go from that to actually managing those properties. That's kind of exciting. So, in your mind, where is the industry heading? What are you seeing with all the changes in terms of healthy homes, et cetera?

Speaker 2: 3:10

Yeah, so that's one of the big things that's coming up next year. So that deadline for private landlords to be healthy homes compliant is by the 1st of July. So from that point on next year your home has to be healthy homes compliant. You don't have a grace period of 120 days, like you do now, from when a tenant moves into the property to get things up to scratch.

Speaker 2: 3:32

It has to be 100% before a tenant moves in, so that's a really big thing that we're facing at the moment is just making sure that we are on track to having all properties compliant by that point, and that's something also that private landlords need to be really aware of that they do their reports, that they're making sure that their homes are fully compliant, and you can use a third party provider for that to produce that report for you, and they're so well experienced in doing that. They can go around your home really quickly and determine all of those data that you need and then advise you on what's compliant and what's not. Yeah, and then you can just go away and do those. There's always changes to the Residential Tenancies Act as well, and hopefully next year we'll see some changes come to pass changes in notice periods, changes in terminations for tenancies where there could be a termination for any reason with 90 days notice given and the introduction of pet bonds, which is really exciting. Wow, pet bonds.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Yeah, tell me more. I've never heard of that.

Speaker 2: 4:40

So at the moment, all you can charge for a bond is a maximum of four weeks of rent. That's right. You can't charge any more than that, and with the introduction of pet bonds you can charge an additional two weeks of rent?

Speaker 1: 4:54

Oh wow, yeah, and is it per pet Per?

Speaker 2: 4:57

pet Really, really. Yeah, I believe so.

Speaker 1: 5:00

So let's say if I've got a cat and a dog and I'm getting a rental, I have to pay four weeks bond for me plus two weeks for the cat and two weeks for the dog. I would have to double check that, wow. Yeah, well, you don't. It's an optional thing as well.

Speaker 2: 5:16

Yes, I know, but I just thought it's a, so that landlord can decide to charge. Yeah, I'd just have to double-check whether it's per pet or whether it's, you know, just general.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Just general pet bond yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:30

It seems a bit, you know, yeah, it would beate really fast, yeah, it would really Wow.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Okay, that's cool because I mean most of the New Zealanders. They have at least a pet right. They do. I mean a dog or a cat. Most of the people I know.

Speaker 2: 5:42

Yeah, that's right, and often tenants look after their homes really really well when they've got a pet because they know that, you know they want to make sure that the pets look, you know, bound a home as well. That's right, Because I know it's really hard for them to find rentals.

Speaker 1: 5:58

I'll tell you a funny story. So when I was renting out my house, he and Mike and I and we had 11 parties come through. It was through a property manager at the time and he rang me. He said look, we had 11 parties come through to look at your house and there's four parties really interested. Three of them are families with young children and one is a couple and they've got two big dogs. You know, one is a husky, one is a German shepherd and if you're listening to this, you know who you are. And I chose the tenants with the dog, with two dogs, because, being a mom to four children, I know that sometimes, to be honest, kids do way more damage to the property than the dogs. Yeah, funny enough.

Speaker 2: 6:40

Yeah, maybe there should be a kid bond.

Speaker 1: 6:42

No, Honestly, let's not give the government some ideas. No no, no, you're right, yeah, yeah, have you noticed something similar through your career so far, like what's the okay, let's talk about this. Yeah, what's the most damage you have seen and how?

Speaker 2: 7:02

The most damage I have seen. I've been really lucky because I have, you know, comparatively short time in the industry. I have really wonderful tenants oh, that's good. So, yeah, there has been no damage that I've seen so far. I have seen some incidents with other properties that we have in our general portfolio within. Homely where there has been damage to carpets throughout the entire property from an animal, yeah, yeah, excessive damage to walls and things like that. So there has been, you know, compensation from the bond having to be taken from that.

Speaker 2: 7:41

Yeah, so that was. You know that was A hard situation as well.

Speaker 1: 7:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:46

Yeah, just a hard situation with what had happened in the tenancy.

Speaker 1: 7:50

It does, because usually those sort of things happen towards the end of the tenancy as well, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 7:56

Often, when furniture is pulled away from walls and things like that, you can see some damage. But you know, honestly, keeping up with your inspections, those three monthly inspections, if needed you can make them a shorter time, as every four weeks. That's sort of like the shortest time you can make it, but just making sure that you look out for all of those things, yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:21

And I guess this is where your role comes in as a property manager versus private landlords, because not many private landlords, I think, are very what's the word for it, you know consistent in terms of going every three months and checking up on the status of the property.

Speaker 2: 8:39

So can you tell me?

Speaker 1: 8:40

a little bit about how you guys do your thing.

Speaker 2: 8:43

Yeah, sure, so we have an app called Inspection Express and that takes photos and we write our reports from that. So they've just brought out some awesome technology with 360 cameras and AI technology as well, yeah, of course. So it can pick up. You know where there's damage on a wall. You know we obviously go through and check all of that, because it's still quite new.

Speaker 2: 9:13

But that's really, really exciting. So we use that app the initial inspection, which is before the tenant moves into the property, that can take a couple of hours to do because we are taking photos of absolutely everything inside cupboards, you know, inside the hot water cupboard, and checking for, you know, leaks and all of that kind of thing. We're documenting absolutely everything. So it's quite a long document to start with including photos as well. Yeah, so you know there may be technology out there as well that private landlords can use, but we have that.

Speaker 1: 9:50

The right tools. The right tools at our hands.

Speaker 2: 9:53

We use that same app for our three-monthly inspections as well. We'll do an initial inspection after a month just to check that the tenants moved in, if there were any issues with the oven or whatever it may be but we obviously want maintenance to be told as soon as possible.

Speaker 1: 10:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:10

And then yeah, just continue on that three-monthly schedule.

Speaker 1: 10:13

That's fantastic. So do you help your landlords as well with the maintenance schedule?

Speaker 2: 10:19

We do, yeah absolutely Part of the appraisal process is going through the property and seeing if there's any maintenance that may be required or just things to look out for as well. If there is, we can write up a plan for maintenance just to kind of ease the burden of that cost over time and then, just with the ongoing maintenance, we have trusted trades that we work with and if a tenant tells us there's some maintenance required, we'll have a look into it, find out what it is and then send someone around as soon as we can. We want to get on top of that kind of thing as soon as possible.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Yeah, and I mean, as a landlord myself, I know how expensive things can get if you do leave them, let slip. So you do need to stay on top of those things and I think, having a property manager looking after that, because we're all busy, right, we all have full-time jobs, and my full-time job is helping people get on the ladder and your full-time job is to help, I guess, investors to stay on top of their investments. Yes, that's right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:23

And I think that you've got a great point that you know you have full-time jobs. You really want to be looking after that side of things as well with your property investment.

Speaker 2: 11:33

There's so much to take into consideration. There are so many laws, um, you know I often see ads go out, uh, with you know someone must be employed and that right there is a, you know, breach of the human rights act. You can't sort of put that thing on ad. So there's all of those little things that you have to really watch out for right from the get-go as a landlord, and so we're across all of those laws, as well as the Residential Tenancies Act, just to make sure that everything's compliant and we're dealing with those people in the right way, yeah, and I was just thinking, as you were talking about damages and stuff like that and doing the reports on time and I guess also being in your past industry in general insurances, you would know with insurance providers.

Speaker 1: 12:20

Tell me a little bit more. I don't want to step over here, but do you find that having that background in insurances has also influenced the way you work today? 100%.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Yeah, I've just had a recent incident where there was some water coming down a chimney breast into the garage of the property. So it wasn't a huge deal, thankfully. But I knew then that I could go back to their insurance policy, which we have a copy of, and have a look at the gradual damage extension on that policy and find out whether there would be any cover for that under there. And I know that there wouldn't have been anyway. I just wanted to double check just to make sure, either for the resultant damage to the property or what had happened. The roofing company confirmed to me that it was a gradual issue, the damage that had happened on the roof causing the chimney breast to leak. So I knew straight away that I could advise my client that unfortunately there wouldn't be any claim to be had underneath the insurance cover.

Speaker 1: 13:21

Yeah, and that's the thing. Right, you've got to catch things at certain point as well, and I know, for instance, with landlord cover, there are certain things you can get covered for and certain things you can't. So it's really advisable, I think, for people to also pay attention to what sort of covers Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 13:40

I think a key thing is also your loss of rent cover, just making sure that your cover has that extension to it, because that's really key.

Speaker 1: 13:49

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I want to get to know you on a bit of a personal level as well. Sure, so do you have a family here?

Speaker 2: 13:58

children, yes, I do yes, I do yeah. So I'm married to Andrew and we've been married for nearly six years, but we've been together for About 11.

Speaker 1: 14:10

Wow.

Speaker 2: 14:11

Yeah, and we have a nine-year-old daughter and she goes to school locally here. We also have a Labrador called Ziggy and he's nearly five. So yeah, he, you know, gets us out and down to the beach and yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:30

So our family live in well. His family lives in Wellington and mine are up in Palmerston North, so we're sort of halfway between them, but we've got lots of friends and things here so we love it here.

Speaker 1: 14:40

What do you do in your spare time? What are your hobbies? What do you enjoy doing?

Speaker 2: 14:43

I love doing workouts and things. So I get up in the morning and that's one of the first things that I do is I'll do workout with weights or stretching or yoga or something like that. Take the dog for a walk, yeah, get him out, get his energy burnt off for the day. Uh, we love going for walks as a family as well. Um, and then obviously just between, like our sort of large extended family, there's always something on the weekends to do. Um, and then just obviously fitting in time to see friends as well nice.

Speaker 1: 15:13

Yeah, sounds like you lead a very busy life, but very well balanced life. Do you have any tips for people out there that are sort of self-employed, because in a way you would be self-employed. I guess, yeah, I deal with a lot of people, especially mums, busy mums out there that are self-employed, and I'm finding that for a lot of them it's really hard to find that balance without hitting that burnout wall and crashing. So what would be your tips if you could share in your wisdom that you've found?

Speaker 2: 15:41

in the last 18 months Brian.

Speaker 2: 15:45

Yeah, I think it's really. It's one of the wonderful things about Homely and that is, as an independent contractor and building my own portfolio I have I can just integrate my work and my life and you know I can find that balance, as I need to, and Homely are huge on making sure that we do that for ourselves, on finding those moments in the day where maybe we just take ourselves to the gym or take ourselves for a walk or, yeah, making and it's part of, you know, our regular team training is well-being and looking after ourselves. It's really wonderful and I think you know in my past life, especially corporate jobs, I just worked every hour that I possibly could and I really didn't look after myself at all. You know I was working some big hours, yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:33

And.

Speaker 2: 16:33

I really didn't look after myself at all. You know I was working some big hours. So to be with a company that really fosters that in you is so refreshing and they're all about it, you know. Yeah, and it gives me some energy to put into my clients and to put into my tenants and to make sure that they're really well looked after, because I'm not having a huge portfolio of properties to look after as well. I have a cap on that and that's purely for that work-life integration and balance.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Yeah, so it sounds like a bit of a boutique type of property management company where you can, as you say, you know it's like going to daycare and you know it's like going to daycare and you know there's five kids to one teacher. That's right. Sounds a very similar parallel where you can, you know, have enough properties to look after, but you're not going too hungry and crashing and burning and not being able to provide that support for your landlords and for the clients and for the tenants.

Speaker 2: 17:36

Absolutely 100%.

Speaker 1: 17:38

So who is your ideal client? Who is your ideal landlord?

Speaker 2: 17:43

Yeah, well, I love the people who love to look after their property. You know they want to keep it well maintained, they want to have it compliant, and that provides them with a great home for excellent tenants, because you're providing a great space for them to live in their home and they're more likely to stay longer. Yeah, because they're being looked after as well and their home is being looked after. So, you know, most of my clients are maybe mum and dad or, you know, like investors and things, so really that kind of space as well. I'm, you know, keen to sort of work with investors as well and try and find opportunities where we can and just, yeah, just those people who love looking after their homes.

Speaker 1: 18:29

Yeah, it makes sense, right it does. Yeah, because it's a two-way street you know, Like, if they want you to look after their property, you want them to also give back a little bit as well. I mean it's not going to work if you've got a property that's being run down or not up to the healthy home standards. You can't get the quality tenants. That's right they're probably seeking.

Speaker 2: 18:48

Yeah, that's right, absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Yeah, that's right, absolutely, so it goes both ways. Yeah, a lot of the time when I deal with investors or when I'm dealing with investors, to be, so to speak, should I say they're always curious about the fees. Right, and that's the first question they always ask you know, what am I going to get charged for? Can you just elaborate a little bit around that? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2: 19:10

So kind of average fees for property management across New Zealand is really between that 7% to 10%, but it can go a lot higher than that as well. It really depends on who you're dealing with. We offer an all-inclusive fee management fee and that's our only charge across each payout that you'll get. We do have a tenant placement fee at the start. We put a lockbox into a property, so there might be like a small amount there that you have to pay, but that's it. What you really have to look out for within your contracts is if you're going to be charged anything extra for maintenance. So some companies may organise an electrician to come around, say, and they'll charge an extra 5% or 10% as like an admin charge on top of that, just for sort of the processing. So we don't have any of that. Also for your inspections as well. So some companies may charge per inspection Per inspection.

Speaker 1: 20:10

Yeah, I've come across that as well.

Speaker 2: 20:11

Yeah, yeah, that's right. People may charge for professional photos to be taken of your property, a video, you know there's a whole lot of things. You just have to really look out for what extras Like that base fee may be a lot less than what say we may charge. But when you add on all of those things that you're going to want to pay for, yeah, you just have to really have a look at those costs as a whole.

Speaker 1: 20:40

As a whole, that's right, and often what I say to my clients is that don't be fees driven as you say. You know it's. You're an investment property game. You want to play a long game. You don't want to go with someone that's probably not going to charge you as much but may not provide you with the same quality of service or place the right tenants and look after your property. So, being an investment and I mean a lot of people are borrowing money to buy an investment property. You know, and it's a lot of money, um could be, you know, 500k, could be a million, etc. So it's you want to make sure your investment. Investment is being well looked after and by saving 50 here you may actually lose quite a little bit more there. Is that what you're finding as well in your experience?

Speaker 2: 21:30

yeah, I think so and honestly like know someone may charge a lot less, but how many more properties are they going to have to look after to create more income for themselves? And then that, where the loss of service comes into it, you're not looking after the property as well. Maybe you're missing inspections and things like that. So you just have to look at. You know what they're doing outside of that. Yeah, just to save a few dollars Exactly right.

Speaker 1: 21:58

So that's what it comes down to, I think, with anything in life is that if you want to save money here, what are you sacrificing in return? That's right I mean some sacrifices are good. Don't get me wrong.

Speaker 1: 22:10

You know, when it comes to cup of coffee, you can sacrifice not having coffee here and there, but I think, when it comes to very important things like looking after your investment portfolio, because for a lot of people it's also their nest egg you know they want to retire and they want to have something, and if you don't look after your property well, you're not going to have much when you do retire Absolutely. Thank you so much, Rachel, as we wrap up. Is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners, any words of wisdom?

Speaker 2: 22:40

Yeah, I guess just making sure that you are using a property manager, that's a good one.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Yeah, come on 60 second promo.

Speaker 2: 22:51

Yeah if, uh, and when you're looking at the, the type of property manager that you use um look into whether they're qualified or not, we're an unregulated industry, uh, unfortunately. Hold on, hold on what did you just say? Yeah, unreg, an unregulated industry, unfortunately.

Speaker 1: 23:04

Hold on, hold on. What did you?

Speaker 2: 23:05

just say, yeah, unregulated, unregulated industry, that's right. Yeah, so the government threw out the bill that was being put forward to regulate property management industry. That was earlier this year. So that was quite disappointing because you know we want to sort of hold to certain standards.

Speaker 1: 23:25

Yeah, so hold on a second, let me wrap my head around it. You just threw an absolute bombshell at me. So anyone can become a property manager?

Speaker 2: 23:34

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1: 23:34

Any cowboy out there that decides to go from doing nothing to become a property manager.

Speaker 2: 23:40

Yeah, that's 100% right, do they need?

Speaker 1: 23:42

to study for it. Do they need to?

Speaker 2: 23:44

get certificates.

Speaker 1: 23:50

No nothing, manager. Yep, that's 100 right. Do they need to study for it? Do they need to get certificates?

Speaker 2: 23:53

no, nothing, so they can just rock up, open a company and become a property manager. That's right, that's terrifying. Yeah, it is holy moly. Yeah, and so like with um homely. Which is also a wonderful thing is that we're all required to be qualified. So that was one of the things I did straight away was start my certificate, my certificate for property management.

Speaker 2: 24:09

So I'm qualified. We're also real estate institute accredited, so that upholds us to certain standards. There's a complaints procedure. We're also required to have a trust account for our clients' money, so it goes into that trust account. It's not all caught up with all of our other business expenses, which some companies may do, and then that creates a real red flag there. That's one thing to watch out for.

Speaker 1: 24:38

That's amazing. Thank you so much. That just absolutely opened my eyes to what's going on out there. And again, that could absolutely opened my eyes to what's going on out there. And again, you know that could be that warning message to all the landlords that if they have a new company pop up offering $50 management fee per week, to watch out because you know it could be just anybody wanting to become a property manager and go from there.

Speaker 2: 25:01

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah yeah, you just have to you know, and someone could have experience or whatever. But it just I think having those key things in place it really sort of sets the standard a bit higher. So all of those types of things were part of that bill.

Speaker 1: 25:20

Yeah, I love that about your company. To be honest, I think that's what resonates with me because, obviously, being a financial advisor in a very heavily regulated environment where we can't do many things, we're very regulated and watched out for I find it's incredibly difficult when you come across other businesses that are sort of in the same industry that should be also regulated and they're not, because, as I mentioned before, you know it just opens up that door for all the cowboys coming through and not doing the right thing. That's right.

Speaker 2: 25:55

And we're dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of assets not to mention the weekly rents that are coming in. I mean, there's just so much money being turned over. So just to make sure that you've got policies in place and other regulatory bodies that can oversee that and audit accounts and things like that, is really, really key.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Yeah, that's incredible. Rachel, what's your goal for next year?

Speaker 2: 26:20

Just to keep growing. Yeah, I've had such a wonderful time. I keep growing and every month just gets better and better and I really am truly passionate about this. It's just coming from, you know, insurance breaking, which I did love and then maybe didn't so much. Yes, yeah, it's so refreshing and it gives me. I've got so much energy for it, it you know.

Speaker 1: 26:49

So, um, just to keep doing what I'm doing and growing and learning and developing and, uh, yeah, just talking to great property investors and property owners and yeah, well, I wish you all the best, rachel, thank you so much for coming and talking to with me today and sharing some wisdom, and I look forward to be more in touch with you in the coming months, and we would love to have you again, you know, at some point later on, and then we can have a look at what else has changed.

Speaker 2: 27:14

So thank you so much. Once those Residential Tenancies Act changes come into play. We can go over them in detail.

Speaker 1: 27:21

Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Thank you so much for coming today. Thanks for having me.