🚘 47 garage questions, the 5,000-property rent roll, and contract survival

GOOD MORNING FROM ELITE AGENT 👋

TODAY'S FEATURE

Why your rent roll is worth more than you think

For twenty years, rent rolls have been valued the same way: at an average multiple of 4x annual management fees. David Highland, CEO of Highland Property, says that formula is already being rewritten for agencies running property management as its own business, not a support act for sales. His portfolio has doubled to 5,000 properties in two years by treating it that way.

What you'll learn in the full article:

• The silo structure: why splitting property management and sales into separate P&Ls, cost centres and leadership changes how a rent roll performs.
• The quote-chasing bot: what happens when AI takes over repair quotes and reference checks, and what your property managers do with the hours back.
• The grandfathering effect: how a looming tax deadline is quietly making rent rolls stickier, and why that changes what yours is worth.

Read the full article →

TOGETHER WITH CRAYONS CRM

The agency that killed 47 weekly tenant calls with AI

A Brisbane principal got so sick of paying $900 a month for software that still couldn't answer "is there a lock-up garage?" that he built his own fix. Russell Peter and Milo Holmes spent 18 months creating Crayons CRM, a chatbot that reads listing photos, answers tenant questions instantly, and just took out the People's Choice award at REACH's Top of the Props pitch night. If 47 identical phone calls a week sounds painfully familiar, take a look at what they've built.

Learn more →

DEPT OF DATA

Hotspotting names 10 affordable suburbs with real growth potential

Carlton units start at $321,000 and Gungahlin's from $440,000 – but Hotspotting says price alone doesn't make a suburb investable.

Tim Graham's list of five capital and five regional markets is built on population growth, infrastructure and tight vacancies, not just a low entry point.

"Cheap doesn't mean investable," Tim said.

Read the full article →

DEPT OF SALES

Why this isn't shaping up as another GFC

Prices would need to keep falling at July's pace for another nine months, to April 2027, before the annual decline matched the GFC's 7.9 per cent, says Ray White's Nerida Conisbee. She's not forecasting that – she's showing vendors what it would actually take. Undersupply, rising build costs, and improving investor yields are the reasons she thinks buyers return long before then.

DEPT OF DISPUTES

Evergrande founder gets life for $112bn fraud

Hui Ka Yan built China's largest property developer, then a Shenzhen court found he'd overstated Evergrande's revenue by roughly $112 billion between 2019 and 2020 alone. He's been jailed for life and stripped of his assets, with more than 50 others sentenced alongside him. The fallout will shape iron ore earnings, and by extension buyer confidence in Australia's resource-linked towns.

HOW IT SOLD

A tenanted terrace sold in one day flat

Private inspections only, tenants on side, and a $1.22 million result – Phill Healey turned a Mango Hill constraint into a selling point. The four-bedroom Capestone terrace attracted out-of-area buyers who'd done their homework on the street's reputation for quick sales.

Find out the story behind how it sold →

Stories like this build your online reputation long after the sold sticker comes down. Want yours told? getailsa.com →

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Real REMAX Group marks global milestone

The US$880 million merger between Real and REMAX Holdings officially closed this week, creating the newly named Real REMAX Group – but REMAX Australia managing director Joel Davoren says nothing changes for franchise owners here. Joel has led the local network's push for independence and member-first systems, and says that approach continues under the new global structure.

Ray White WA honours top performers amid market shift warning Eight consecutive years topping the settled commission ladder is a rare run – Vivien Yap and Ray White Dalkeith | Claremont added another at the network's annual awards, with Vivien also named Top Principal for Settled Commission. Stephen Cole of Ray White Broome swept the sales honours, while Georgia Higgs and Doug Corby led property management, as CEO Mark Whiteman flagged a shifting market ahead.

Monika Doyle returns to Barry Plant as Chief of Staff A brand refresh across roughly 70 offices, delivered in a matter of months, is what Monika Doyle is best known for at Barry Plant – and it's part of why the network has now created a Chief of Staff position for her. Monika joined as Head of Marketing in 2023 and led the rebrand that went on to win silver at both the 2024 Melbourne Design Awards and the 2025 WORLD Design Awards. Six months after returning from maternity leave, she steps into the newly created role at head office in Doncaster East, working across strategy and cross-department alignment as the network moves through its next stage of growth.

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House hunting is aesthetic, contract writing is survival 🏠📝

TRUE OR FALSE:

In Queensland, hundreds of houses a year are cut into pieces, loaded onto trucks and driven to a completely different address – the house sold separately from the land it was standing on.

And the answer is …

Yes its true! Timber Queenslanders on stumps are essentially flat-pack, and settlers were already shifting them in the 1860s. The industry never stopped – one Brisbane family firm reckons it has moved more than 7,500 homes across three generations. You can buy the house at one address and the block at another, and introduce them later. Everywhere else "the house comes with the land" is a law of nature. In Queensland it's a preference. via State Library of Queensland.