Tara Bradbury went from zero to a 400-property rent roll in just a few years, but she measures her growth by whether she still enjoys the business at the end of each year.
The Active Agents principal licensee and principal leasing agent started from scratch with no inherited book when she established her business in 2019 in Hervey Bay, Queensland.
In The Property Management Excellence (PMX) Podcast with REB director and Managed co-founder Alex Whitlock, Bradbury described her journey as one shaped more by what she chose not to pursue than what she chased.
Elaborating further, she said she was clear from the beginning that she was not in a race. Noting that Hervey Bay has other large operators with rent rolls approaching 700 properties, Bradbury said she could have pursued the same volume if growing at any cost had been the goal.
“I could be a business that gets to 1,000 properties,” Bradbury said.
“There’s no stopping that if it grows in the same way it's growing now – absolutely open to it. But it’s not going to be a race to that for me.”
She said that agencies that take on growth because they feel they have to rather than because they are structurally ready for it, creating problems that compound over time.
“If that’s not your plan and then you just take on growth because you think you have to, that’s when you’re creating massive problems in your business, because you’re not ready for that proper growth process.”
“You don’t have the provisions in place to be able to assist with that.”
The provisions Bradbury refers to are operational, not aspirational. She has structured her team into two pods – an eastern pod and a western pod – each led by a senior property manager with two support agents. A remote professional in the Philippines handles administrative work across both pods, from preparing lease agreements to management agreements for new landlords.
Bradbury said she focuses on business development and leasing, with a dedicated leasing support agent who joined at exactly the right moment.
“Within a couple of months of her being here, we’ve gone from maybe having two or three listings to finishing the week this week where we’ve got, I think, nine or 10 on the go ready for next week,” she said at the time of recording this podcast.
The Hervey Bay rental market shifted rapidly during this period, with available rental properties in the area jumping from roughly 110 to more than 230 within a matter of weeks. Bradbury said the market shift reinforced the importance of having the right capacity in place before it was needed, rather than scrambling to catch up.
“It is a roller coaster ride of great enjoyment, great highs, sometimes lows, but you just get the enjoyment that you keep going and I still really love it.”
Managed was built to help next-generation agencies win market share fast. It is the only comprehensive property management platform that exclusively delivers secure, instant, and automated direct payments from tenant to landlord, eradicating the need for a trust account.
If you’d like to find out how Managed can help power your growth, call Conor on 0452 298 394 or book a discovery call today.