Ray White Group Head of Property Management Zac Snelling used his keynote at PMC 2026 on the Gold Coast to challenge more than 500 delegates to move away from industry “auto-pilot” and lead with deliberate intent.
Addressing headwinds across Australia and New Zealand, including shifting tenant behaviours, landlord fee pressures and market uncertainty, Zac told the room that resilience comes down to mindset and response.
“There is a massive difference between having good intentions and acting with intention,” Zac said.
“We cannot control external market noise, but we have complete control over how we respond, the systems we build, and how we treat our clients.”
Zac said every core Ray White property management metric had grown year-on-year despite broader industry pressures, pointing to the group’s Make the Move campaign, which he said generated $9 million in new asset value for business owners across a single 30-day period.
To build on that momentum, Zac unveiled four group-wide rollouts. The first is a purpose-built PM AI platform designed to handle daily admin, generate performance dashboards and let property managers rehearse investor conversations through roleplay. The second, the “Water Levels” Profit Project, is a financial framework with more than a dozen asset and income growth strategies aimed at helping businesses identify underperforming rent rolls. The group is also launching a proactive advisory program to help investors manage upcoming Capital Gains Tax valuation deadlines in Australia, alongside leadership roundtables starting in December across every major metro market.
Zac urged the sector to move past checklist-driven property management.
“Routine inspections and rent collection are expected, they are not points of difference,” he said.
“Decide right now what you want from this year. If you’re going to be in, be all in.”
Ray White Head of Performance and Value Thomas McGlynn told delegates the greatest threat to the sector was not PropTech or AI disruption, but complacency.
“The greatest threat to tomorrow is what worked yesterday,” Thomas said.
“It is very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.”
Drawing on tennis great Roger Federer’s 2024 Dartmouth commencement address, in which Federer revealed he won 80 per cent of his career matches despite winning just 54 per cent of points played, Thomas said the margin between good and great was a thin 4 per cent, and that small, intentional refinements in daily practice could yield outsized results. With renters making up nearly 30 per cent of the Australian population, he challenged the room to lift standards for both landlords and tenants.
“Standards rise whether you participate or not,” Thomas said.
“You can raise the bar or wait for others to do it, but it’s getting raised regardless. It may as well be us leading that charge.”
Other sessions tackled the practical side of running a rent roll. Ray White Head of Property Management in Victoria Lauren Macpherson presented a case study on Ray White Werribee, where principals Michelle Chick, Jesse Coe and Marc Tanti uncovered revenue that wasn’t being chased.
“Werribee wasn’t a business in trouble,” Lauren said.
“It was a business doing well that didn’t know what it was leaving behind. If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know what you’re missing.”
Rory Sommerville of Ray White Bendigo also shared four time-saving tools for converting leads into new managements, which Lauren said could be “up and running by Monday” in any office.
The leadership roundtables announced at PMC 2026 begin rolling out to major metro markets in December.