A Queensland property management business has been structured so that senior property managers can focus purely on owner relationships, and it has reaped the benefits.
In The Property Management Excellence (PMX) Podcast with REB director and Managed co-founder Alex Whitlock, Housemark CEO Natalie South shared the structure and leadership model behind one of Australia’s fastest-growing property management businesses.
South explained that Housemark’s prioritisation of relationships and specialised roles has enabled the business to grow rapidly without sacrificing service.
Indeed, Housemark has grown from zero to 3,500 properties under management entirely organically in seven years, starting out of founder Jonny Bell’s garage. South joined the business when it was at 1,000 properties and has overseen the growth to 3,500 over four years. The franchised BDMs now operate across Housemark's Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Ipswich, and Toowoomba locations.
Housemark employed a specific strategy to achieve and maintain this level of growth. Most agencies expect their property managers to be everything at once, from relationship builder and administrator to maintenance coordinator and tenant negotiator. As expected, the outcome is that the industry is filled with professionals who are unable to focus on any single function, resulting in burnout and high turnover.
South said she has taken a different approach, structuring the business so that senior property managers focus almost exclusively on owner relationships, while being supported by dedicated administrative and junior staff.
“When I joined Housemark four years ago, the first thing I did was build all of our processes,” South said.
“Every step in the journey: vacate, lease renewal, pet application, change of shared tenancy – what every step needed to transpire, who needed to do it. Did it require speaking to a landlord and building a relationship? If it did, it sat with the senior property manager. If it didn’t, it went to either the executive assistant or the junior property manager.”
The model, referred to internally as The Housemark Way, rests on three pillars: people, process, and performance. South argues that most agencies fail to scale not because of their people, but because they lack the structural clarity that allows those people to do their best work.
“Structures are so important," she said.
“We believe that a business thrives on people, process, and performance. As long as you fill those three areas, there’s no reason why everyone in each of those departments can’t run their lane really, really well.”
Housemark has embedded a “phone first, email second” culture. Senior property managers are paid more, have more experience, and are expected to take landlords out for coffee, negotiate complex matters, and build long-term relationships. An executive assistant handles tenant communication and administration. A junior property manager manages entries, exits, and routine tasks.
“In the property management industry, we want our property managers to be relationship managers, but we send them out on the road for 70 per cent of the time,” South said.
“They get back to 100 emails and 15 missed phone calls. It’s not that they don’t want to do it – they physically can’t do it in a day.”
South urges agency leaders who feel overwhelmed by the prospect of restructuring to start small.
She concluded with one piece of advice for principals: “Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. If you make 1 per cent better every day, in one year you're going to be 365 per cent better than you were at the start of the year.”
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.