Start of Nothing Special Podcast

Culture is Everything: How This Space Real Estate is Changing Property Management

• DAVID • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Part 1 

Naaman Fraser shares his journey of building This Space Real Estate, focusing on his revolutionary approach to property management through staff retention and workplace culture.

• Former rental department manager who discovered his passion for leading and retaining quality staff
• Grew previous department to seven staff members managing nearly 600 properties
• Achieved remarkable $34 total in rental arrears through strong culture and processes
• Founded This Space Real Estate with mission to "attract and retain genuine and passionate staff"
• Grew from zero to 127 property managements in seven months, 85% from word-of-mouth
• Believes the combination of being both genuine and driven is essential for success in real estate
• Deliberately named company to allow team members to feel ownership rather than naming it after himself
• Champions property managers by featuring them prominently in marketing, unlike traditional agencies
• Views culture as the foundation for business growth and client satisfaction
• Believes genuinely investing in people creates loyalty that transcends monetary incentives


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Speaker 1:

G'day guys, and welcome to another episode of Start of Nothing Special. I've got an incredible guest with me, naaman Fraser. I'm very excited for you to hear his perspective on what he's been through, where he is right now and where he hopes to be one day. So please take a moment and join us in this conversation. How are you going, naaman? Good man, good, good. Thank you again for joining me.

Speaker 2:

Of course. Thank you very much for having me Good, good.

Speaker 1:

Thank you again for joining me, Of course. Thank you very much for having me Good, good, good. This space real estate offers a unique and innovative approach to the property market. Founded by Naaman Fraser, with over 11 years experience in managing investment properties and managing large rental departments, this space offers a bespoke and particular service servicing northern Tasmania. I'd like to read your company's mission statement from your website Yep. Our mission is to attract, retain genuine and passionate staff, ensuring our clients experience long-term quality service. Passion and integrity are our core values. But before we get into the main topic, I just wanted to take a moment to look at your mission statement the part about staff retention. Please explain to me why. Is that your main focus?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, pretty much, because in my opinion, in my experience, it's been the biggest struggle that most agencies have around. I thought it was sort of Launceston, the greater region, and then my understanding grew that it was the whole country basically. So that's basically it and the story kind of goes back a little bit and I'll try not to give you the long story. No, wanted to start an agency about four or five years ago it was originally and I'd just finished my diploma, which is what's required before starting an agency, and then life sort of gave me this opportunity to go and run the rental department at another bigger agency. That was life sort of saying hey look, you've got big dreams but you're not quite ready, and what I mean by that is it was an opportunity to manage staff, lead staff and run budgets and understand the biggest stuff, basically. So I took that opportunity for a lot of reasons, mostly professional, but also personal. It helped me buy my dad's unit, which is another side story Running this larger team, five of us in property management at about 450 rentals, and that was a huge opportunity to learn. I was looking for experience in running more than just myself. I learned so much in that world, which is great, but I actually found my why, which is interesting because I thought I already had my why. I wanted to do business and create something big, but the why that I found was staff retention.

Speaker 2:

I found out that it's extremely hard to attract and retain good quality property managers. It's industry wide and national, but it's a huge issue. On average I think the stats are roughly every 12 months a property manager leaves their role. Usually they go to another property management department or another real estate agency and the problem with that is that then that property manager who was great at that agency goes to another one. All of the clients that they looked after, you know, are used to that person and they knew the property and the tenants. That's the biggest cost and the biggest downfall for most agencies. I pretty much rectified that issue in my little world when I was at this other agency. I found a love for leading people, welcoming people into the industry, and that was my why.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, about two and a half three years went by managing that department. It was already in a pretty good stage when I got there. There's nothing really wrong with it, but we grew it quite a lot. We got it to a point where it was seven of us in total and we're managing just under 600 properties. Well done. I think one of the biggest achievements, apart from the staff retention, was getting to $34 total owed to our rental department at the end of one of the financial years, which a lot of people won't understand, but to have only $34 owed to a real estate agency is insane. It's really big success. So that was great and that was three processes, but the people more than anything.

Speaker 1:

So I think it's interesting because by you focusing on staff retention, you've solved another problem. Like you said, clients moving and jumping. By making your employees happy and making sure they have a good workspace. They're not going to go, they're going to stay. Therefore, you keep your clients when you go, but if they don't feel happy and they leave, then your business is just stagnant. There's no growth.

Speaker 2:

There's no growth. You might climb a little bit, but you drop or lose someone.

Speaker 2:

So a property manager typically will manage between 80 and 120 properties. Typically if you lose a property manager you've got to spend a lot of money to get a new one. You want to train and that's where that sort of attraction or that staff attraction part comes into it. It's not just retaining, it's attracting, because then when you do have to fill a role whether it be through growth or loss mostly loss in most cases of agencies around the country finding another good one is extremely hard. Who in property management who is someone that is really good in their current role might be great in that role at that agency. But if you take them out of that agency and put them into a new team, that's not to say that they won't be good, but they're not going to be as good as they were because they're going to have to learn new processes, new properties.

Speaker 1:

It's culture. I think as well Culture.

Speaker 2:

And the culture hit.

Speaker 1:

And I think the older I am getting, the more I'm realizing how significant culture is. You know, it's funny You're in a workspace and there is this culture there that you don't realize how good or toxic it is. And then, once you get out of it and you look back, you're like wow, that was really not right. Or you see someone doing the bare minimum and then move into another culture and all of a sudden they're hitting this goal, making figures and stuff and that's it.

Speaker 2:

We ran a zero rears initiative, which is how we got to that sort of 34 dollars owed, and how we did that was essentially with culture, it's processes and systems and talking about it every week. But if you don't have the energy and people actually if people don't, as in the team, don't care about what's happening and the outcome you're just not going to get there, and everything we've built at this space real estate is is based on that. And then it was sort of yeah, the attraction and retention I've been quietly watching, not just you.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of males, females that are, you know, they're incredible that I keep my eye on and I'm just seeing their trajectory and where they're going. I've always been an admirer of how hard you've worked and how far you've come. And that's why I was. You know, initially I was like I have to talk to him at some point.

Speaker 1:

It was about timing you know, I wanted to make sure when I got you it was the right time. That's why it's been this long for me and there's lots of people I want to talk to, but I'm just sort of waiting for the right time. And your business is quite. Your business thrives on word of mouth. So if you have someone like Naaman who is trying to keep his employees happy, satisfied, you know they'll share that to their brothers, their sisters, their family members and you know everyone will feel happy. Everyone will come in, because word of mouth works better than reviews sometimes.

Speaker 2:

About 90% of our growth. To give you numbers, we've grown from zero. Obviously, we launched in October and we're now at 127 managements, so we've grown from zero. Obviously, we launched in october and we're now at 127 managements, so we've grown 127 managements in seven months about 85 percent of that has been a real business just word of mouth.

Speaker 1:

It's quite important very important this is a question I actually thought about last minute like I've gotten interested in now. Businesses and you know companies create their, like their statement, like the business statement when you were coming up with what you said before. Passion and integrity are like the business statement when you were coming up with what you said before. Passion and integrity are core values. Who was there when you were coming up with this? You know how was it developed and how have you implemented that into the DNA of the company. It's funny.

Speaker 2:

We're just waiting on putting it up on the wall here. It's a shame that it's not there yet. I'm glad you asked this question because I put a lot of thought into this. To answer your question who was around? There's a lot of people around and a lot of people that have been around, but those people weren't sort of there at the time. So I was something that's grown over time and sort of been nurtured, and I had to have six months off after I left where I was because I was living out the legal side of things. So that thing's cooled down, which was extremely difficult to do, but that one of the few pros to that was that I had a lot of time to think, to prepare and build things.

Speaker 2:

I built the website myself, thanks. We'll have it revamped. It's not perfect, but it's good enough, and that was one of those things. It's like you know, we'll do this for now and we'll rebuild it later on. But when we were doing that, I was thinking I've got to have a mission statement. Actually, my partner said you've got to have a mission statement and I was like you know, 100%, you can't have a mission statement, but it needs to be something that your people can reflect on and can can sort of go back to. That's the foundations, but so can you, and that's why I made it what it is. So what I mean by my mission statement and our core values is that I'm putting out a bold statement to say that we're all about staff retention, yes, which obviously puts me in the firing line later on We've got five, 10 staff and one's not happy because that's what we stand for staff retention or I lose one, god forbid.

Speaker 2:

So obviously that happens naturally. But if I would lose one to the wrong reasons, that's completely against what I stand for In real estate and any service-based business. If I said paint the perfect staff member, you would probably say someone that thinks outside the box, someone that is driven, does things for the right reasons and is genuine. And so that was it. I think I really narrowed it down to two words, which are genuine and passionate. Genuine meaning good for the sake of being good, that's it. And honest and driven. I think that in real estate especially, you need to be driven. If you just want it to be nine to five and clock off, we don't expect people to work outside of their regular hours, but you've got to be driven right. So I think that's a requirement in most areas of real estates You've got to be driven and genuine.

Speaker 2:

Genuine meaning good for the sake of being good. If you're one or the other, then I think that you won't do exceptionally well in real estate. That's my not for every role, but pretty much most of it. If you're just driven and there's a lot of people in real estate like this but not genuine people can say that You'll kind of go here but then you'll sit here Because people know you're driven but not genuine. And if you're genuine and not very driven, then you know you're great. But you've got to keep pushing and pushing and looking to get success for your clients and be driven, so you can't just sit back and do nothing.

Speaker 1:

Life is about balance, so you've got to get a good combination of both A good and honest man yes, you're good and honest, but if you're not going to work for it, you're good and honest, we're happy for that, but you can't always feed your family. And good and honest.

Speaker 2:

I'm not saying you don't, you're not, but you've got to have that drive to go.

Speaker 1:

I have to create something for not just myself and my family, whatever shape or form that takes. I can think of a few people that I think you're so driven, but then when I sit with them, ethically I can't get along with them.

Speaker 2:

That's it. It's something for me to reflect on too. No one's perfect. It's something I can go back to and be like what I chose to do in that say, hey look, I made a mistake here and I'm going to fix it and I'm really sorry. That's something to look back and go. We've got to be that. And what I sort of envision, in sort of maybe 10, 15, 20 years, is a few offices and I want to be able to go into those offices and whoever's running those offices. If I see someone in that team that isn't genuine and passionate, I want to ask that person running that office why are they in the team?

Speaker 1:

I don't know anything about business at all, sir, but it goes back to the first point culture. You've got to start small and you've got to be. I don't think you should micromanage, I don't think you should be anal, but you've got to focusing on those little things you know it's not about the grade, though your best salesman.

Speaker 1:

It's about who's not doing it so well, because that's what you measured on. It doesn't matter if you've got nine staff members that are happy and then that one that's unhappy can unravel a whole thing. You'll never make everyone completely happy.

Speaker 2:

I'm not putting that on you. I'm not oblivious to the fact that I'm going to make lots of mistakes. There's going to be lots of hurdles, of course.

Speaker 1:

But culture, I would say, would be the biggest, biggest thing to have that where everyone individually keeping each other accountable. Together we're working towards something, but we still have a sense of killer instincts where we do want to thrive.

Speaker 2:

One of the big things is you know, property managers. I had this question a little long ago about advertising property managers and people like, oh, you did a lot of advertising yourself. I got myself on signboards and billboards on Facebook and Instagram. I was really pushing myself out there. I think a lot of people would perceive that as me just loving myself and wanting to push myself out there. And it certainly was pushing myself out there. But the reason I named it this Space Real Estate and not Fraser's realty or anything similar is so that other people can be proud of it and be part of it. Right, and feel like they own it yeah, in a real sense. So I deliberately named it something other than myself.

Speaker 2:

Well, at least that's the goal, right? So what I want to do people? Someone asked me the other day how are you going to promote other property managers? Because the worry with promoting property managers from other directors and agencies is that they'll be poached by other agencies. So if you put someone on a billboard or a signboard all the time and on social media, they'll potentially be poached by another agency because they look like they're doing such a great job, so you're promoting their successes in a big way.

Speaker 2:

Now, property management's salary right for the most part. So you paid a salary. Someone comes along and offers you a better salary. The staff member might leave, whereas sales would be different. You pay a commission, which means you're creating wealth for yourself through commission, but property management is not the same, so you don't have to be advertised. I had that question. I was like are you going to advertise property managers the same? And my answer to that is absolutely so. The question was do you think other directors or other agency owners would be kicking themselves or tightening their belts with advertising property managers? Now I started my business.

Speaker 2:

I think the big thing is that I believe and I stand to be hopefully not corrected. But I believe that if you actually invest in people in your service-based business, I don't think they'll leave, even if they do get poached, even if someone says, hey, I'll give you a bit more money. I think that if you support someone in a real, genuine way that they'll leave. I reckon if you give them good culture, a good pay obviously that comes into it and a good role you know and support and you get them out there and that's what I mean. That's where I'm very different with property management, because property management is typically the ugly step sister or ugly step brother of sales, right. So I sort of I'm like, no, it's just as good I think you're right.

Speaker 1:

I agree, if you invest in someone, yeah, and create a good culture, they will stay and whatnot. So I can see that happening. I'm learning a lot, and it's not always just monetary like you're saying, it's also other things. But not everyone's the same and that's something I learned. The way I manage you is not how I might manage your other colleague and stuff. There's different personnel and different bodies, different engine and things like that, so you've got to cater to each one of them.

Speaker 2:

So yeah and care, that's the thing. You've got to be genuine, you've got to actually genuinely care. If someone's having a situation and it's coming to work which we all see I think a lot of directors will shy away from that and kind of go well, business is business and personal is personal. Look, I understand that's a big conversation.

Speaker 1:

I don't think you want to go into that one.

Speaker 2:

It's very hard. Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying hey, look, are you okay? Yeah, Do you need a bit of time?

Speaker 1:

Yes, I agree.

Speaker 2:

And.

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