Natalie Hastings
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EPM: Ask The Expert
Should you buy or build your rent roll?
To buy or to build? That’s one of the age-old questions on many a principal’s mind when it comes to property management. Should they build their property management division from scratch, or will purchasing a rent roll offer the potential of sales and income stability that’s worth the investment? If you’re considering acquiring a portfolio, there are many factors you’ll need to think about that go well beyond your monthly fees invoiced. …
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EPM
Is there a quick fix?
It’s a delightful concept, the idea of the ‘quick fix’. Yet when it comes to property management life is rarely a romantic comedy. We work with people, with real estate, and unfortunately there’s no magic spell to make your property managers thrive or your business fizz with productivity and good vibes. However, there are a handful of key values and internal systems to take you most of the way there. …
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Elite Agent
Spark Joy: Natalie Hastings
Summer holidays – so far as they exist for property managers – are good for two things: enjoying long days on the beach, and air-conditioned nights bingeing Netflix. …
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EPM: BD & Growth
Is it the right time for you to change roles?
You can’t say when it began exactly. You were happy in your role, and the culture of your organisation felt a perfect fit. But somewhere along the way a nagging sense of discontent has crept into your daily experience at work. Sunday nights feel depressing, and you might be feeling bored – or worse – angry. If this sounds familiar, it’s likely you’ve reached a stalemate in your professional growth. …
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EPM
Why networking can be the key to success in real estate
Do you know an estate agent who’s a curmudgeon? They might be old or young – but they’re grumpy and the opposite of a team player. They think events are a waste of time. They tend to be dismissive of coaching and training, thinking that they know it all. For them, networking with other estate agents is tantamount to giving away their secrets to the enemy. …
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EPM: Productivity
How healthy is your PM department?
Cough, cough. Splutter and sneeze. It’s not only your property managers who need to up their dose of Vitamin C and ensure they get their flu jab this season. Unbeknownst to you, your property management department may be in less than tip-top shape. A sickly rent roll may be underperforming for many reasons, potentially losing you money each month, causing you to bleed clients and even putting your business in a toxic position of non-compliance. …
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EPM: Leadership
What property managers can learn from great entrepreneurs
Inspirational quotes from famous entrepreneurs and the thought-leaders we admire might add flavour to our daily Instagram trawl, but placing great people on a pedestal can be counter-productive. Instead of adopting their wisdom we hold it apart from ourselves. Whether we use their smarts to improve the daily operations of our real estate businesses or to create a product that disrupts an industry doesn’t matter; …
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EPM: BD & Growth
Property Management in the Year 2058
Cast your mind back forty years to the real estate industry of 1978 in Australia. Being a relatively youthful industry, you might not remember the ‘bad old days’. They were light years from the profession we know and enjoy today. Whilst some things remain the same about success in real estate – prospecting must be part of every day, timely communication and great customer service is everything – much of the agent or property manager’s ideal day has changed. …
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EPM: BD & Growth
Natalie Hastings: Should They Stay, Or Should They Go?
Property management is a people business, best suited to those natural problem-solvers with a positive disposition and a flair for collaboration. But what happens when you do your very best time and again, yet find your days disturbed by an aggressive landlord who is impossible to please? Many principals are loathe to ‘sack’ a landlord – even if their behaviour is atrocious and damaging to team culture. …
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EPM: BD & Growth
Natalie Hastings: How to Set Your Property Management Team’s KPIs
From financial goals to client satisfaction, here is your cheat sheet for setting team KPIs. When it comes to setting goals and KPIs, the sales side of real estate practice is familiar with the process – successful at it, even. To be fair, goal-setting in sales departments is a streamlined deal in comparison to the complexities of property management. My advice is commit to taking a full day out of your property management department to set your goals for the next 12 months. …
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EPM
Beyond The Discount
WHEN IT COMES TO INCREASING income into property management departments, the industry can be its own worst enemy. Often sales-focused principals apply a volume mentality to their rent roll asset, chasing relentless growth because they believe bigger rent rolls are the only way of increasing their overall bottom line. But a focus on value-adding could be a better way to amplify revenue, …
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EPM: Productivity
Are the riches in the niches?
Our industry’s past was all about the big-brand dominance of real estate generalists – those one-stop-shops that offered everything from commercial property management to private sales, owners corporation management to holiday letting. The future of real estate is about developing a reputation for excellence in a specific niche. Your property management department may already have begun the process of specialisation, whether in the form of outsourcing various functions such as condition reports or trust accounting, …
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EPM: HR and Recruitment
Losing It: Perspective and the Property Manager
Times of stress and demand, such as the start of each new year and the close of each financial year, can take their toll, both psychologically and physically, on even the most experienced of property managers. Choosing to power on without time for recuperation can quickly lead to serious illness and depression – all of which take you out of your team for much longer than a week off! …
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EPM
Heeding the Warning Signs of Fraud
Doubts around misappropriation of trust funds is one of the things that causes some people to distrust the real estate industry. It’s also a major concern that keeps principals up late at night because it could happen to anyone. Natalie Hastings highlights five signs to watch out for. Principals tend to be particularly alert to fraud when their property management portfolios are in their infancy. …
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EPM
Boxing Day Accounting: What Can You Claim?
THOUGH THE FESTIVE SEASON and its excesses feel far behind us, it’s only now that many agencies are accounting for their holiday expenses. Client Christmas party? Tick. Landlord gifts? You know it. Company Christmas party? That’s there too. How much can you claim? Natalie Hastings has the answers. Rather than nursing a sore head over your necessarily generous seasonal expenditure, now’s the time to focus on accounting for these costs to benefit your business – and gaining a better understanding of the tax implications of gifting and hospitality. …
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EPM
Movin’ On Up: Natalie Hastings
As real estate professionals, we spend our days helping people move on from properties that no longer fit: too big, too small, too old, too far from the places they need to be – you name it. But what about our own needs when it comes to professional premises? Natalie Hastings shares some of her learnings from a recent office move. …
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EPM
Cloud Nine: Keeping Your Agency Safely Online
From database and administration apps to major accounting and file-sharing platforms, Natalie Hastings looks at the cloud technology that is moving the industry forward. Remember the advent of the internet and mobile phones, and the technophobe principals who thought the internet and real estate portals were just a fad? The ones who believed newspaper adverts and letterbox-dropping would continue as the best way to advertise property and market their brand? …
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EPM
How To Win Friends And Influence People: The Real Estate Edition
Dale Carnegie’s Seminal Work How to Win Friends and Influence People sits on the bedside table of many an agent. Named one of Time’s 100 most influential books, it has sold over 30 million copies and has lessons for all of us in the industry. How to Win Friends and Influence People has undoubtedly helped plenty of real estate professionals improve their communications and relationship skills. …
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EPM
How To Lose Your Licence In 5 Easy Ways
Think it could never happen to you? Poor administration, lack of diligence and a few loose ends mean that losing your licence is only too possible, as Natalie Hastings explains. Have you ever seen How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? It’s a laugh-out-loud rom-com starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson which depicts an array of classic relationship faux pas – guaranteeing the characters a one-way trip to singletown. …
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EPM
Bringing Them With You: Implementing New Technology As A Team
Keeping your team up to speed can be difficult when it comes to implementing change. Natalie Hastings demonstrates how to lead from the front to achieve a smooth transition. The real estate industry has been changing at a rapid pace, with technology giving smaller teams the ability to handle greater workloads while offering their clients superior property experiences. For those of you who are industry veterans, …
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EPM
Making Your Small Business Appear Bigger
You’re scrolling through Instagram or driving along a local street when you see a shiny new real estate office appear. As a brand, they’ve been in the market for five minutes yet they’re dominating the local market. How is it so? Natalie Hastings investigates. WHO IS THIS force come to take over your home patch? Check out their incredible on-point branding! …
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EPM
How Much Staff Training is Enough?
‘There’s a phone, there’s a desk. You do the rest!’ If you’re a veteran of the real estate industry, you may remember hearing these words ring in your ears as a new agent. So today, is training your team just a waste of resources or a business necessity? The answer is thankfully those bad old days of real estate are gone. …
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EPM
Enough’s Enough: When To Let Landlords Go
A difficult landlord can be a strain on resources both physically and psychologically, but making a decision to fire them isn’t always easy. Natalie Hastings helps you decide if a client is worth keeping. IF YOU’RE A property management professional you’ve been there. An insufferable, unreliable, disrespectful or unkind landlord has made your life, or the lives of your tenants or your team, …
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EPM
Above and Beyond: The New Customer Service Normal
In the past a basic level of customer care was considered adequate for both landlords and tenants. Now, thanks partly to social media, a little more effort pays dividends. Natalie Hastings explains why. Long overdue and very welcome, the real estate industry is starting to finesse its reputation with a combination of compliance and an earnest focus on the service they deliver to their customers. …
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EPM
Make Each Day Count: Measuring Property Manager Performance
Improving a property management department so often comes down to measurables: setting your property managers KPIs and following up on their progress. Natalie Hastings from hastings + co offers a technology-fuelled roadmap to measurable success. AS ANY REAL estate veteran worth their salt is well aware, successful property management and sales departments are the result of a numbers game played with finesse. …
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EPM
Right From the Start
Natalie Hastings looks at ways to improve your team’s performance in 2015 through better recruitment and training. A FRESH NEW year lies before you, offering the chance to make 2015 your best real estate adventure yet. Before the year begins in earnest, take time to think about your business and the people who power it. To make 2015 the outstanding success you’d like it to be, …
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EPM
Relax, it’s Christmas!
A bit of R&R during the festive season may well sound like the impossible dream if you are in property management. But with a bit of pre-organisation it is totally ‘doable’, says Natalie Hastings. ARE YOU looking forward to a relaxing and uninterrupted Christmas break? ‘What Christmas break?’ I can hear the property managers of Australia shrieking. As any seasoned real estate professional knows, …
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EPM
Process Equals Protection
This year, a substantial amount of agency trust account fraud cases have come to light. And it’s not only the industry that’s taking note of these unfortunate criminal misdemeanours; the media are reporting widely on them, heightening the public’s distrust of the wider real estate community. PROTECTING YOUR agency from trust account fraud should be a core concern of all principals – primarily to protect your clients’ interest, …
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EPM
Are you collecting what you deserve?
With so much going on each day in a hectic property management department, it can be easy for fees in addition to your basic management charges to go astray. Natalie Hastings, Director of Hastings+Co offers some handy pointers on making sure you’re earning all you deserve from the rent roll you care for so diligently. A well-oiled property management department and water-tight rent roll are the jewels in every Real Estate Principal’s crown. …
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EPM
End of Financial Year: Stress Free
We all know how important planning is to our businesses, but sometimes when we are pre-occupied listing, leasing and selling we can pay less attention to keeping up with the paperwork. So along comes the looming end of financial year (EOFY) deadline and your trust accountant goes into a frenzy at the prospect of getting everything entered and up to date in time for close off. …
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EPM
As Easy as ABC
It’s easy to make your agency even more successful by returning to the basics of good business. To shine in customer service, go back to the classroom and rethink your ABCs. A is for Attitude; B is for Business Knowledge; C is for Customer Satisfaction We all know the essential ingredients of what makes great customer service; after all, we are all customers ourselves. …
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EPM
To Outsource Or Not To Outsource?
Think that “outsourcing” to a virtual assistant is a domain that only belongs to the sales guys? Think again! Outsourcing property management tasks to specialist practitioners is growing in popularity. Natalie Hastings of Hastings & Co discusses some of the things that you should look for. Business owners in all industry sectors are constantly looking at effective ways to contain overheads and reduce costs. …
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