Login
iscover
As Queensland’s rental crisis ravages on, one property manager has revealed that personal development and training have allowed her to navigate the mess.
The Sunshine State’s severe post-pandemic undersupply of rental stock has been no secret. Last year, REB spoke to a property manager in Nerang, just outside of the Gold Coast, who revealed the region’s then-0.2 per cent vacancy rate required her team to sift through up to 60 rental applications per property.
Further north, in the Logan region on Brisbane’s southern fringes, Jessica Sutherland, property management team leader for Brookwater and Greater Springfield at Ray White Marsden, has shared that similarly tight conditions, reflected in the market’s current 0.8 per cent vacancy rate, have created extreme pressure.
Adding to this pressure has been the rapid increase in cost-of-living pressures and the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) 11 cash rate increases since last May, leading to owners moving to increase rents in line with rising interest rates.
Within this environment, Ms Sutherland explained that her team is “having to explain within reason and justify the increase [to the tenant]”.
Toeing the line between the needs of the tenant and the landlord is a tricky practice, requiring her and her team to “remain well-educated and have a good understanding of today’s market so that they can make well-informed decisions”.
It has been this emphasis on education that Ms Sutherland has celebrated as a primary driver in weathering the rental crisis storm that seems to have permanently sat over Queensland.
She cited “attending regular training sessions with the head office and outsourcing resources and trainers to educate us, [and] having a supportive team” as major factors in managing challenges thrown at her over the last 12 months.
Her education emphasis doesn’t just reap rewards professionally, with Ms Sutherland highlighting how attendance at a recent session even resulted in an analysis of “who I was as a person”.
“This really showed what I have to work on and adjust,” she said, revealing the process gifted her with “an even better understanding of myself and the areas I can improve on to make my work life a lot easier”.
With her systems in place to deal with any professional stresses flung her way, Ms Sutherland is bracing for a back-end of the year categorised by the introduction of minimum building standards and controversial new rental increase legislation, which limits rent increase frequency to once a year and comes into effect on 1 July.
While these legislative shifts promise to throw more spanners in the complex works of Queensland property managers, Ms Sutherland believes stress can be reduced “as long as agents are continuing to attend training sessions surrounding the changes and can be in front of the upcoming laws.”
“Be proactive rather than reactive,” she declared.
She also acknowledges that increasing complexities and a mass exodus of property managers from the industry in recent months provide the perfect platform for “proven performers to shine.”
At times like these, she stressed that people “resort to the safest pair of hands in the marketplace to manage their properties”.
Newsletter
