Proptech Pulse: Nick Boyd on Data Strategy and Workflow Efficiency

In this episode of Proptech Pulse, you will discover how a robust data strategy transforms your brokerage into a high-performance machine. Kyle Hunter welcomes Nick Boyd, CEO of Belle Property, to discuss the critical intersection of technology and human connection. The key lies in leveraging clean data to build trust faster and secure long-term client relationships in any market condition. 

Nick explores the power of the "universal contact record" and explains how streamlining complex workflows can significantly increase your team’s per-file capacity. We delve into the concept of "compression selling" and why removing redundant administrative steps is essential to keeping your agents focused on what they do best. These insights provide a practical blueprint for maintaining a premium brand position while navigating the complexities of modern real estate. 

As the leader of a network transacting $20 billion annually, Nick offers unparalleled expertise on scaling a business through operational excellence. With industry dynamics shifting rapidly, mastering these efficiencies is more vital than ever for your sustained growth. Subscribe to PropTech Pulse for weekly insights and visit our website to explore tools designed to help you thrive. 

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Transcript

Kyle Hunter Welcome to the Tech Pulse podcast. Your inside look at the world of real estate technology. I'm your host, Kyle Hunter, here to guide you through the latest trends, expert insights, and game changing tech shaping the real estate world. This is your go to source for staying ahead of the ever evolving industry. Let's dive in.

Kyle Hunter All right. Welcome to Tech Pulse. I'm, super excited to have a very special guest today. Nick Boyd, the CEO of Belle Property all the way from Australia.

Nick Boyd Thank you so much for having me.

Kyle Hunter Oh, yeah. We were just talking about as a long ways from Australia all the way to Las Vegas.

Nick Boyd Yeah, it's a long, long way.

Kyle Hunter Good deal. Nick. I'd love to hear a little bit about, you know, your experience in Australia and and being running a very large company in, you know, Down Under. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Nick Boyd Yeah. So it's, it's a company that we've been around for about a little over 20 years in Australia. It's been grown across sort of a dining room table by our founder, Peter Hanscom. And then, I joined Dean at about 11 years ago, and we now fast forward, we've got 211 offices, about 3500 people. The great thing is, is that we're now, the largest national premium network in the country. So we've got the highest average sale price where we're transacting in the vicinity of about $20 billion per annum in a day. So but ultimately, those numbers are driven by our philosophy, which is what we call fewer, better people. And and that's really something that we've championed from the very start. It hasn't changed through that growth. But what it comes down to is productivity. That's really the game.

Kyle Hunter Yeah. So yeah, I've had the pleasure of meeting Peter a few times. Unfortunately not in Australia, but he always comes here. Yeah. But, yeah, he's, definitely grown a great company. And so, you know, obviously, this being proptech pulse, I'd love to understand, you know, what are some of the differences, like, what are some of the technology tools, that you use in, Australia on your real estate brokerage? You know, different than maybe what's in the U.S.?

Nick Boyd Yeah, it's a great question. I found it really interesting because, that's why I really have come here to kind of really explore the differences. The thing that stood out to me is that there's a lot of talk around AI, and that's very true. What I'm sensing is, though, it's it depends on the data you're putting in. And is it meaningful? Is a complete. And so I think the the lesson that we focused in on about five years ago was completeness of data. Because it doesn't matter what tool you put in place if the data is not complete. So we've really focused in on the, the, obviously the CRM world to say, how do we actually have the universal contact record, like one individual view of, of of an individual. That's something we've focused on from the very start as soon as we could. Then we were also driven by, you know, big marketing sort of platforms. So, you know, Canva enterprise is upon our social size. We also have, another marketing platform, that that's in play, that's on the proptech within Australia. And that allows our agents and us to scale at a really rapid rate for, for both print brochures, sign boards and everything. It's all in one house. So there's a lot of similarities to America in that sense. But I think what it's what's really resonating with me being over here is the fact that the importance on data is becoming such an integral conversation, at an agent level, whereas before it probably wasn't. So like, because I think agents are very much 90 days focused, sort of like do a deal, get paid. And I reckon I resonate with that. I was an agent for nine years. So I appreciate where they're at. But it's then second to that to go, okay, well they're starting to have a longer view. And the longer view is if I can't do a deal with you today, I need to be ready to do a deal with you in the next decade. And I think that's the world we're moving into.

Kyle Hunter Yeah. We were just having a conversation about the importance of data, you know, garbage in, garbage out, just like you said. You have to really have it in a location. And for nowadays, the for AI to to be effective, you have to really, you know, the system has to use data. And so having that in one place is very important for the brokerage. And, you know, as agents come and go. The ability to kind of contain that and have all of that in one place, you know, is, you know, it's obviously very important.

Nick Boyd Yeah. We've been and we've been working on that sort of individual record view for the best part of 6 to 7 years. So we've now got sort of established, currently over 3 to 4 million individual contact records. But they've got 14 relationship points that that's identified to each. And so that's allowing us to be able to provide to our agents really meaningful insights, so that when a buyer walks through an open home bit different from America, where it's sort of through the buyer's agents mainly, but with our open homes, when they walk through, our agents are able to be, to know a little bit about you before you enter, so that you can have a more meaningful conversation, building trust faster. And in our eyes, if you build trust, you get a better premium result.

Kyle Hunter Yeah. No, that's that's super important. Speaking of open houses and buyers, you know that, obviously in the US there's MLS and Australia, there's not MLS. So, but you do have portals. Oh, you have portals also. But I'd love to understand, you know, how your, your buyers and sellers like how are you find them connect to how do you make that work.

Nick Boyd So I think we need to fundamentally break down first how our market works, where buyers agents are becoming a more integral part of our our environment button. Ten years ago, buyers agents did not exist roughly, so an agent would look after both the listing and the sale side. For the buyers. So that's been historically our environment and working very well doing that. But probably 20 years ago we were mainly in print, in advertising. And as an industry, all the agents we were up in arms prints too expensive. And then there was the birth of portals. And so they came in and the pricing of portals at that point in time were pennies on the dollar in comparison to print a lot cheaper. Yeah. But with digital scale and the demise in some markets of print, there was a monopoly emerging. And so we've got two major portals in play right now in Australia. And you know, you can have a listing that has to be put up online that can cost up to $6,000. Wow. To put a listing online in. And if you look at that, compared to anywhere else in the world, it's very different. Now, the only reason that that is possible is this beautiful word called VPI, a vendor paid advertising. The vendor pays predominantly. The vendor is picking up the bill of the marketing, and agents in Australia have got very, very good, at selling not only their services, their strategy, their skill set to get a great price, but it is as much about getting a vendor to invest in the process as well, which is again, very different to America. I think that's been one of the catalysts. Why in with Bill Property and Hocking Stewart, our other brands, we've been very focused on our own guardrails, our own data set. Because I look at it saying, if we're selling 16,000 homes a year and we're meeting physically 55,000 people every single month, that walks through our open homes, there's a huge pool of people that we're not selling to but are interacting with us. Why don't I introduce them to our future sellers and starting internally? Like, why can't we? And so we've been actively pursuing that sort of strategy to to provide choice to our vendors. We've been in a situation with our scale now that it's it's been quite successful. But we still definitely see value with portals. I still think there is a value with portals where they do want to come back, and, and create a listing to an open market. And so there's, there's value there. But we're now saying to a vendor you've got, you know, a few stages to go through. It's up to you. Your choice. If they're needing to expedite time, fantastic. Let's just cast a wide net. But if you want to be a bit more strategic, let's just actually introduce some people we know. And it's been very successful.

Kyle Hunter Yeah, that's a lot of people. 55,000, going through open houses. So there's a lot of, a lot of, interest there, I guess. Yeah.

Nick Boyd Australians are property obsessed. So it's it's it's like there was a stat I was writing in a paper in Australia, and it was like there were three conversations across most dining room tables. One of them is at a dinner party. It's definitely property. Second is schooling and the third is you holidays. So, it's always been up there, and it's something that, you know, we're an expensive country. If you look at it from the outside, because I think people have such an affinity to property right now in Australia. It's more it's becoming more, unfortunately, more than just bricks and mortar and home and and shelter. There there's investors flooding into the market still, but inflation still has its problems.

Kyle Hunter Enjoying the Proptech Pulse podcast. Don't miss a beat. Hit the subscribe button and stay in the loop with all of our latest episodes. And hey, if you're loving the content, leave us a review! It really helps us grow and reach more real estate pros like you. Also, don't forget to follow us on our social channels. We're sharing tips, trends, and behind the scenes content you won't want to miss. Find us on all the social platforms at Get Off! So, what are you seeing? Your buyers and sellers, they're transacting. Like, what kind of technologies are they using and interacting with? And how does that relate to, you know, your agents doing business?

Nick Boyd Yeah. So when, when a buyer comes through an open home, with us, because we run basically 30 minute open homes. So it's what I call compression selling. So if we're releasing a property onto market, we'll advertise it. It still might be print, might be portals, might be our websites, our emails, our distribution lists. We then say, okay, on Saturday I'll be there from 10 to 1030. Come along and the buyer comes direct. But also buyers agents come direct. So we'll have buyers, buyers, agents, everyone walking through an open home that lasts for 30 minutes. So we can condense ten, 20, up to 70 people in a home for 30 minutes. Wow. And that compression selling creates competition. Now, when you think about having to manage that amount of people, we do it through an app that we can then basically just take records and cases, whether they exist in the data already so that we can expedite that saying, you know, great. Fantastic. Welcome. Come on through. I've already got your details. We then go we we rely heavily on the CRM. So we then, you know, come a Sunday or a Saturday afternoon, the callbacks start. We're starting to actually, build a relationship of interest. Do they hold interest or not? If they don't, we send them down another path to work out whether they, actually serious or not. Are they just window shopping, or are they actually going to be purchasing in the next 30 to 60 days? If they are, then we take them down a pathway that's a bit more, focused around their tailored needs. If they're still in the window shopping phase, it's going to be a bit more softer sort of journey that they go down. So we're starting to get to an enterprise level now of how we actually communicate to them, and where we're going in the future. It's to really expedite that, and help our agents from a corporate level.

Kyle Hunter Yeah, that's that's neat. So really giving them tools and helping them, put the right person on the right path, for marketing to get them to come back and actually do the transaction and, and business with you.

Nick Boyd Because the worst thing is, if you think about it like 210 offices, there's multiple millions of people in the, in the databases. Now, originally those databases were individual. So if you're looking at it going, what's the probability of a buyer that is sitting in upwards of ten of our offices databases. It was a high probability. And then you've got ten lots of problems. There's ten lots of communication. And so now we're moving to a world that we believe our corporate role is to uphold the trust value of the brand so we can communicate, to segmented markets of buyers or sellers or whoever to demonstrate the value of our brand. And that can be done through content creation. We've got a content creation business as well. And then second to that, what, what we want our agents to do and what they do very well is formalize the relationship. So get close to them, get to know them as an individual so that when you are in front of them, the agent is still the core focus and the core of the, I guess, the the industry. We just see ourselves now in a, in a world where, where the support act. And I love that because if I can have more agents walk in and have more meaningful conversations, I'm going to beat my competitors. I'm doing.

Kyle Hunter Your job. Yeah, I mean, and that's you know, what I kind of picked up is data governance. Like making sure that things are, you know, being done. Right. Yeah. I'm back to the earlier conversation about it's only as good as the data that you're using and playing with. So if you are, you know, have a great set of data, you're able to help, curate that from a brokerage standpoint. You know, you're getting allowing the agents to go out and do what they should be doing and what they do best anyway, making those relationships, having a tight you know, understanding of what the buyer and seller needs are. And, so ultimately, you know, selling real estate.

Nick Boyd Exactly, exactly. I think the worst thing you can ever do is get in the way of a real estate agent of what they are designed to do. So everything we do or everything we think about doing is a future, future project. It's going to be measured by that. It's got to say, is this actually helping the agent or the broker, or is it is it just creating another step? Because if it creates another step, it's a fail. It's about and so, my entire corporate team, it's constantly focused around, okay, what's happening to an agent today? What are the challenges and pain points they have? How many steps are involved in those challenges and pain points, and what can we do to solve it? If you look at it through that, whether it's tech or anything, I think you'll find a solution that's quite meaningful. And then it also has to just be measured by the consumer. What did they require? And so far we're on that. We're on that journey. And, you know, the results are starting to speak, which is fantastic. But I still think we're only getting started like it's, where we're heading next is going to be very exciting.

Kyle Hunter So let me pick up on that. When you are looking around and at kind of the problems you're looking at, today, what kind of technology that are you missing or what do you think that if you were a coder or you were to pick a great AI and say, I want to build this, like what? What kind of thing could help go and support the direction, that you're going in?

Nick Boyd Absolutely. Workflow. Workflow for me. And don't get me wrong, there are some products out there around workflow. We actually have a few that are in play within our network. But ultimately the amount of times I've been I've been sold to saying, you know, this workflow piece is going to reduce the amount of hours required by personnel. And it looks good when that's on an Excel spreadsheet. But when you put it into practice, what usually happens in a brokerage is they put it in, they put it in play, they do the training, the onboarding, and then they have to offshore and get Vas to, to uplift and, and pick up the, the extra steps that were actually involved. So for me, I don't think workflow is there yet, but what we're working on, I think it will be ultimately administration in a, in a, in a business has become so complex. I mean, I've got five, five different sets of legislation that we need to adhere to in different states, which have an impact on the workflow in all of those, those businesses. So if I can provide a meaningful solution around the administration component of any office that that's in our network, in any state, under any legislation where it doesn't require the amount of people, that is actually a really positive thing. Now, it's not saying that, oh, we're just going to go and get rid of people. It's not that at all. It's actually to say, if I can improve efficiency and productivity, I can do more and keep all the people I've got. Yeah. Because when I started real estate 23, 24 years ago, we had like it was one administrator could look after 250 files. Okay. Like in 250 sales from start to finish. Now, now I look at it, I think the industry's gone below 100 because there are so many steps, so much more. Is so much more. Plug this in, plug that in. So I really do feel that the ones who are going to absolutely crush it in the future are going to be the ones that have a really stern, hard look in the mirror and go, you know what, I think we've added steps that we don't need. Yeah. And so I sit down with my team. I did it literally just before I got on a plane here to Vegas, and I spent a whole day with my operations team, and we had this big folder of like 500 points. And I said, great. Do you know, like the back of your hand? They said, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, cool. How much of it's relevant and how much are we going to throw out? And they just had this look of terror on their face. And but I said, because ultimately it comes down to two things. Are we doing this because it's just obligation. Like it's because we've always done it this way? Or is it more to do with like it's strategic and critical to the development of these people that we're trying to serve? If it's if it's just obligation, I'm going to question it and we start going through that process. We're not there yet. But that's I think, the governing step towards answering workflow problems in these businesses.

Kyle Hunter Yeah, I mean, with over 220 offices and the five states and all the different regulations, you have a lot to really deal with. So the the more streamlining, the more ability for you to repurpose some of those folks to do more, you know, revenue generation activities, you know, instead of doing all that paperwork.

Nick Boyd Exactly right.

Kyle Hunter Get it back to two, 50, 100%.

Nick Boyd 100%, 500. That's what I want.

Kyle Hunter 500. Yeah. Well, one last question. I'd love to understand, you know, what do you think the real estate market's going to do in 2026?

Nick Boyd Well, that's a big question because there's there is so much going on like it's you can't look anywhere without some form of news that will either excite you or depress you. So I've kind of shut that all out. Ultimately, ultimately, if I look in Australia, Australia being so obsessed with property, I do feel it is still going to mean completely robust, and actually move through. Our cost of living, though, is a real thing. Like, I've just got to acknowledge that, you know, in some markets, like Sydney in Australia, the average mortgage is now becoming 13 times the average annual salary, like 13 times. It's one of the most expensive markets in the world. So that to me is is a problem is an issue. The one thing, though is the housing supply is so under housed and undersupplied that the pricing it it may not reflect even if they put interest rates up, which they have been doing, the more the interest rates go up, I believe what's going to happen is it's going to segment or separate between the wealth and everyone else. So I'm I'm happy around. Is it going to be a great outcome for the industry? Will they do. Well? Yes. But I, I do want to acknowledge the, the cost of living pressure in Australia and the world, where I think there's a lot that hasn't been answered yet. And I think everyone's trying and trying the best. But ultimately what we can control is what we can control. So I'm just going to basically support agents as best as I can to do their best.

Kyle Hunter Well, Nick, it's been a pleasure having you on, and I love learning more about Australian real estate as well. Some properties.

Nick Boyd Thank you so much for having me.

Kyle Hunter Thank you.

Kyle Hunter Thanks for tuning in to the Prop Tech Pulse podcast. Looking to take your real estate game to the next level? Check out our cutting edge tools. Visit Al wolf.com to learn more and see how we can help you succeed. I'm your host, Kyle Hunter, and I'll catch you next time as we continue exploring the future of real estate together. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and stay connected. Until then, keep innovating and thriving in the world of real estate.