Aussie investors heightening proptech demand

“It’s actually interesting because we are such a small population, and I think we have the best proptech market in the world, and that has a lot to do with the fact that we’re totally obsessed with real estate here in Australia,” Mr Bouris said.

During the same conversation, Mr Bouris noted that this obsession is and will continue to heighten demand for technology when investing in property moving forward.

“We pour all of our consumer and investment dollars into property, and naturally technology and industry builds around demand,” he said.

“If you compare this to America or the UK, home ownership isn’t such a priority — no one talks about monthly repayments, it’s all monthly rent. Even wealthy people rent and they chuck their investment dollars into stocks or managed funds.

“As a result, we see technology growing and evolving around other industries like social media technology like Snapchat and Instagram, meal bill splitting apps like Venmo, micro-investing platforms like Acorns. That’s why America leads that kind of technology; vanity consumerism reigns supreme over there.”

When it comes to local proptech providers, Mr Bouris said there are “tonnes of innovations that are changing the market”.

According to Mr Bouris, these include “property management tools like FLK IT OVER [which] is digitising forms (paperless offices); Inspection Express and Inspect RE, [which] are doing a kick-ass job at managing open homes and routine inspections; [and] AgentBox and Campaign Track, [which] do a great job at managing the sales process and providing insight to sellers along with agents”.

In terms of his own company, Managed, Mr Bouris said it, too, aims to change the market by “automating payments and replacing older trust accounting software like REST”.

“There are a few points of difference that we’re quite proud of at Managed App. But, principally, I would certainly say with the help of our banking partners, the ability to facilitate and automate payments for agencies, landlords, tenants and tradespeople,” Mr Bouris added.

“This is by far the major headache for these parties and is allowing our agency customers to grow and scale their business.”

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