Rockhampton real estate agent implements technology to supercharge his business

When Jason Rayner launched his real estate business six years ago, he was expecting a reasonably measured growth trajectory. As the owner of an independent agency, Jason is something of an outlier (“we’re not part of a franchise group, we’ll never be part of a franchise group”) and his Rockhampton-based business has expanded from residential to commercial rental and sales, and now includes its own body corporate management business. Quite a journey for someone who, until 2000, was working in construction. We sat down with Jason to talk about his business, technology, staff, and his thoughts on the insights from the Optus Business Real Estate Industry Pulse 2022.

“We started off at home in the garage back in 2016, 2017. There was only the two of us (Jason started the company with his wife Angela). Then we hired another team member. We needed another office, so we expanded upstairs. We sold that house and bought a bigger one and went along for another year. By then we had 10 team members,” Mr Rayner says.

“We’d entered the real estate market in sales and we realised very quickly that to become a reasonable size agency, we had to have a rent roll. So, we bought out a substantial agency, and their headquarters. It was quite a large takeover at the time.”

Report insight: over a third of real estate businesses expect to grow over the next 12 months.

In the years that followed, the needs of the business expanded beyond Jason and Angela’s capabilities, and they realised they needed external support if they were going to grow. 

“We came out of the blocks hard in that first year. We thought we'd play the big game and ramp it up. We're not a cookie cutter franchise company that can get help from head office, so we had to be very, very creative in what we were doing and look outside the box to get our information. As a consequence, it's helped us not only compete with the franchises, but actually get ahead of them,” Mr Rayner says.

“My wife went to a conference and met a senior HR representative who said, ‘you guys are growing pretty fast, you might need some help’. We took him up on his offer, he came and looked at what we were doing. It’s been very proactive, now the staff know their jobs back to front. We have a process for absolutely everything, and he's put a lot of that in place.”

Report insight: 85% of real estate business decision makers say that technology has assisted business productivity and 84% say it has improved customer experience and management.

Technology, software and hardware play significant roles in the agency’s success, with Jason again looking externally for recommendations in an area he didn’t know much about. 

“Australia’s biggest real estate conference is on the Gold Coast every year, which we both attend along with our team. My wife goes to accounting and bookkeeping conferences, which always feature new tech. Six or seven years ago we went to our first conference together, when iCloud was first coming in. There was a big screen, probably 30 metres wide, and the guy walked out of the middle of the screen and said, ‘Welcome to the cloud’.

“And I thought, ‘wow, that's a system that will work in our office’.  So we took all the paper out and we went totally across to the cloud. We brought in a lot of simple systems along with our communication side of the business that helps us thrive in any market. We've basically recession-proofed the business so that if there is a downturn, we're probably not going to experience what a newer sole business will,” Mr Rayner says.

Technology has drastically changed the way Jason’s business runs. “We have tablets, mobiles and an office phone system that are all linked. Our keys are electronically coded so they can’t get lost, we have a tool bag of cyber security systems for safety reasons where property managers can check in. They all carry tablets, so we know where they are at all times of the day. Optus offers us a reliable service in Rockhampton, it's affordable, it's easy to maintain and when I call Optus, they take care of myself and our business.

“We also send out texts to the local news reporters about what’s happening in the market, and they interview us. All in all, [success] is about constant communication, using the mobile phones we’ve got... the reliable communication, you know, our logo, our people, their clients, your home - growth comes naturally when people talk about you and there’s no way we could do it without the tech we have.”

Not surprisingly, Jason used Covid-19 and the ensuing lockdowns to find yet another opportunity to do things differently. 

“When we knew Covid was coming, I think March 2020, we had just gone into the phase of purchasing the new business, and for six weeks we didn't sell a house. Rather than panic, we just sat down and thought, this might be the scenario so what happens? And then we started planning around how the future might look. And one of the most progressive things we've done was stay open and keep our team communications going,” Mr Rayner says.

“We made a conscious decision to be very wary of what the impacts were, or were going to be, of the Covid situation. We were taking precautions while we were taking on new work, so we introduced a business psychologist to help our team with mental health. We deliberately created an extended family that would give the team the support they needed to meet the hectic pace.

“Some people found the pressure, the pace too demanding. During Covid, there was a lot of tension with landlords, tenants, business landlords, business owners, over who was going to be paid, who could go work, who couldn't. So that's when we put a lot of these things in place, and we've kept them going because they work fantastically.

“Mental health is a big issue and a part of the modern era that we live in. You can’t not address it, but the way you address it is very critical to your employee’s health. If they're struggling, you've gotta help them to understand, you know, the purpose of their struggle. We do a lot of in-house things where they support each other,” Mr Rayner says.

Report insight: 67% of real estate businesses have employees who have had issues with their mental health over the last year, and 63% of businesses have mental health programs in place.

If the last few years have proven anything, it’s that Jason and his management team are not afraid of change. “We implement a lot of the team’s ideas and new techniques into our business – we’ll try anything, see if it works. If it does work, we push ahead with it. So [things are] implemented fast, acted on quickly and if it works it stays. If it doesn't, it goes. You've gotta create a culture of success and a culture of happiness where the workers can work within and be there every day with a smile on their face. That's what it's about.” 

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