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HOW TO SAVE HOURS OF TIME ON YOUR PROPERTY INSPECTIONS
There is no excuse for consistency when it comes to delivering property and inspection reports to your clients. Let me introduce Inspection Express, which is currently used by over 20,000 property managers across three countries, and it provides tailored comprehensive property reports and integration with your property management software. It also provides paperless office software, and its newest feature is a 360 degree inspections, which reduces the need for thousands of photos when conducting an entry condition report, for example. And it also provides a great marketing tool in the form of a virtual tour of the property for potential tenants or property owners who may live overseas or interstate or haven’t seen their property for a long time. All of which provides amazing points of difference and allows you to take your customer experience to a whole new level. Oh, and did I mention it also saves you hours of time. It’s been designed to provide a seamless approach to property management as Kelly Dickens, the head of sales and partnerships at Inspection Express shares as a young investor, Kelly has had a passion for property from an early age, and she stepped into the industry working for property data companies. Now she’s the driving force behind the tech company’s epic growth. So let’s dive in.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AND HOW YOU GOT STARTED DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW?
“In terms of our company, we started about 10 years ago. Our awesome developer had a vision to improve or help property managers improve workflows and processes across Australia. And now we have over 20,000 property managers using the platform in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and even the US. So, in terms of our company, we were founded almost 10 years ago now. So we’re coming up to our 10th birthday. Our awesome developer had a vision to and improve workflows and processes for property managers across Australia and now we have over 20,000 property managers on the platform across Australia, New Zealand, the uk, and even the us. For me, it started when I purchased my second property in my early twenties. I loved the whole buying and selling process and I knew this was an industry that I had to be a part of. I didn’t end up going into real estate. I ended up taking a sales role for a property data and analytic analytics company in New Zealand called Property IQ, which was soon acquired by CoreLogic and years later in various sales roles within CoreLogic within New Zealand and Australia. That led me to Inspection Express where I’ve been for the last seven and a half years now. I get to lead an awesome team of sales reps around Australia who are very passionate about the industry and helping property managers gain up to 10 to 20 hours back in their week.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR INSPECTION SOFTWARE? HOW DOES IT ALLOWS PROPERY MANAGERS TO DELIVER THE NEXT LEVEL OF CUSTOMER SERVICE OR EXPERIENCE TO THEIR CLIENTS?
“So, we’re all about saving property managers time and offering them that higher level of service that they can be providing to their landlords and tenants. And since launching 360 inspections back in August, we’re seeing some huge time saving opportunities there where to inspect a four bed two bath. Since launching 360 inspections back in August, we’ve seen some crazy stats come through the system, which have allowed property managers to a gain more revenue. They’re now receiving costs for marketing that they haven’t done before because they’re allowing landlords or they’re, asking landlords to pay for virtual tours for marketing. So, you can use 360 inspections and virtual tours for routine inspections. And ongoing inspections, your final inspections but also utilize that SANE 360 inspection for your virtual tours. So if you were perfect putting the property up for lease, you’ve got a great walkthrough of the property that any prospective tenant can go on and have a look at the property and have a look at any surrounding properties, whether it’s fully fenced, where they might like to place their furniture, all that sort of stuff that they’ve got access to within the virtual tour. So, part of property managers lives is inspections. They’ve got incomings outgoings routine inspections and I like to think of them as an extension of the customer experience that we deliver for our clients.”
HOW CAN YOUR INSPECTION SOFTWARE HELP PROPERTY MANAGERS?
“One thing we absolutely love to do is help property managers gain back more time in the week so they can spend more time on customer facing. But also with our inspections and our 360 inspections, especially just offering that higher level of service to landlords, they can now be in the comfort of their living room, receive their routine inspection from their property manager. There’s a nice little video there from their property manager that they may never have met before, just introducing themselves, letting them know that they’ve been through the property and just directing them to any maintenance that was reported at the routine inspection. That’s probably one of my favorite features out of the whole inspection app, is that agent video really wish more property managers would use it. And then they can walk through their property, their investment property, so they might not have seen the property for a few years. They can walk through as though they’re there from the comfort of their own home. It just really allows that high level of service that any property manager can use and help promote themselves in their area.”
HOW CAN IT BE A MARKETING TOOL?
“Any 360 inspection you use on or create on Inspection Express can be used for marketing. So, you’ll go through, and you’ll capture your 360 inspection and you’ll tag closeup items of, wear and tear or stains on carpet. All of that can be captured through the 360 imageries, but the system allows you to remove those tags and use the well-presented property 360 of the well-presented property for your marketing as well. And we are seeing a lot of clients now charged for that as part of their marketing package. So they’re able to recoup a lot of the costs and even gave them some additional revenue from it, which is awesome.”
WHAT ARE ALL OF THE SOLUTIONS OR FEATURES THAT YOU OFFER FOR PROPERTY MANAGEMENT?
“We started 10 years ago with a basic inspection app that integrated with a lot of the property management software platforms on the market. And we’ve evolved over the years. So it was 2017 that paperless condition reports was born, and we saw that really change the industry and how we conduct inspections or entry inspections. And in fact, I doubt many property managers could really live without paperless condition reports these days. And then it was August last year that we released 360 inspections. So again, really cutting down the time it takes to do an ongoing, we’re seeing some crazy stats come through the system. In fact, we had an ongoing completed from start to finish, key formal, taken paperless condition report, sent four beds, two bath property, took as little as 27 minutes, which is insane. So, a property that would commonly take well over an hour or two to as little as 27 minutes, it’s amazing.”
HOW MUCH MANUAL LABOR IS STILL REQUIRED WITH THE 360 INSPECTIONS?
“So, it’s really cutting down the number of photos that we take at an inspection. We might go through now and take thousands of photos and we’re capturing the floors, the skirting boards, the walls, cornice and ceiling. Whereas now everything’s captured in one go. So we’re really eliminating the amount of photos that we need to take. We then go through and capture closeup photos of anything like scarf marks, holes and walls, stains on carpet, or even maintenance items can be tagged as closeup photos as well. So it’s really eliminating the amount of photos that we need to take for an ingoing inspection, before we might go through and take thousands of photos, whereas now we’re really reducing it down to the 1 360 image. And then we would go through and take any closeup photos of any items that are already damaged and already wear and tear throughout the property.”
ARE THERE ANY OTHER PRODUCTS THAT YOU USE?
“We’ve also got the paperless office. So, that allows you to send documents out electronically your lease agreement, your agency agreement with the landlord, and any other documents. It can be basically used as, an electronic signing platform. You upload a document, create your merge fields and send them out electronically.”
WHAT IS DIFFERENT OR ADDS MORE VALUE THAN WHAT THEY CAN ALREADY FI THROUGH THEIR SOFTWARE PROVIDERS?
“I think first and foremost, we do have a lot of property me clients and they’re using our software just for that higher level of service that they can provide their landlords, but also their staff to really reduce the amount of time that it’s taking to conduct inspections. We saw initially a lot of property me clients come on board with the launch of paperless condition reports. Property me is one of our integration platforms. We have many of our clients utilizing Property Me and Inspection Express as their preferred tech stack, and it allows them to send condition reports by the paperless condition report solution. That means no more printing, it’s all electronic signing, it’s very interactive with the tenant. And we can then use that condition report for the final inspection where we just pair everything up nicely and go out and conduct our final inspection. Paperless office is another reason why a client of Property Me might use Inspection Express or that electronic signing component. And also now the 360 inspections, which is really changing up the industry again. And as I keep saying, reducing the amount of time it takes to conduct our inspections, which is what everybody is looking for at the moment. We’re all very timed poor. So, wherever we can save time is always a bonus.”
