PIA embraces change to offer new service linking investors and developers

Justin Wang: PIA connects investor demand with developer supply

Established in 2005 by Justin Wang, The Property Investors Alliance is one of Australia’s leading property investment and supply platforms. The company brings together over 7000 ‘investment ready’ purchasers with leading Australian developers who supply high quality residential stock for purchase. Through its unique vertically integrated model, the company also provides investors with property and rental management services, mortgage broking, quality assurance and settlements services. The company generated $1.75 billion worth of sales in 2015 and represents over 7000 clients.

Do your research. If you’re looking for someone or a company to guide you through the process – do your research.  Talk to friends and family about who they used. Research the property market to understand the basics: capital gains, negative and positive gearing, rental returns. Look at those companies that have long term, happy investors. Look at the long term prospects for investment.

This is about relationship building and trust.  Who do you trust to give you the best advice?

We encourage new customers to attend a (free) PIA investment seminar – we’ll share insights about the market, about overall investment strategy, the key steps and how to choose a property that will assist you in achieving your financial goals. Our sales consultants then ask customers about themselves, about their needs, any concerns and future goals.  We get to know you personally so that we can provide you with the best recommendation. Our property sales consultants will undertake a needs analysis and talk to customers about financial goals. 

This is all before we talk about properties and budgets.  It’s important to build a rapport – it’s a big investment in your future, you need to trust the person and company you’re talking to.

How strong has the response been from the Middle East investor community to what you offer?

PIA has a long history with the Middle Eastern community; myself personally and the company as a whole.  Many of our developer partners are from the Lebanese community and these relationships were forged through mutual respect over the past 10+ years. Our developer partners have supported us in our journey, and we, in turn, assist them in bringing their project vision to life and achieve their objectives.  We support the Lebanese community through our participation in the Australian Lebanese Chamber of Commerce – supporting our partners and direct company participation in industry events and sponsorships. We support our developer partners through their charitable foundations that directly impact the lives of Australians, including The Wiping Tears Charitable foundation. Through our partnerships and work with such organisations, we achieve exposure to new business and investor connections. PIA’s investor customers came from a diverse range of cultures and spoke a variety of different languages; in a recent study, 21 cultural backgrounds were identified in PIA’s customer base. Our business has three distinct consumer facing arms: investment consultation/sales, finance broking and property management.  The solid partnerships and relationships we have built throughout the Middle Eastern community are strongly reflected in our diverse customer base through investors, renters and finance customers.

You pride yourself on market analysis.  Is there a single trend that you can see emerging in the Sydney property investment market over the next five years?

PIA is constantly evolving its service offering to meet the needs of its customers. The company has undertaken such an evolution over the past 10 years; from its establishment as a real estate agency to the introduction of an asset management division to service its investors a few years later and, more recently, the introduction of sister company Zenik Finance, a mortgage broking service. The company will continually monitor its customers through surveys and the purchase process to ensure it maintains a relevant service offering into the future.  Additionally, PIA is uniquely placed to benefit from an industry that has strong ongoing market fundamentals. A substantial housing requirement will stem from a growing population and the shortage of housing stock in turn underpins an attractive investment opportunity. Despite ongoing market fluctuations, property investment will remain an attractive asset for the average Australian to secure their financial future now and in five years’ time. Customers will be able to leverage these market fundamentals more effectively into the future by utilising the integrated PIA model, which makes property investment a far less daunting process for the average Australian. This more rational based approach to investment is becoming the norm in Australia whereby Australian investors are now delivering much needed rental housing supply. Home ownership is not the primary goal; financial security through property investment is the future goal.

We have identified that 70 per cent of our customers are long term, repeat investors.  By increasing this statistic, we will ensure we remain relevant in five years’ time.

What do you see is the major difference between what you offer and what your competitors offer?

We have several major differences from our key competitors, of which none can be replicated easily.

Culture

The most important strategy that PIA has in place is the maintenance of our unique culture. We have worked hard to develop a culture that centres on nurturing positive, happy and transparent and honest relationships between our business and our customers. Unlike traditional market entry barriers like reputation, B2B relationships and digital platforms that can arguably be purchased or copied by global competitors, it is the cultural ‘soul’ of the company that cannot be copied. Without this key ingredient, competitors cannot compete with PIA.

Integrated Model (End-to-End process)

The entire PIA service offering is a completely unique offering in the NSW property industry. Unlike traditional real estate agents who only offer vendors a platform to sell their property and purchasers a platform to buy property from, PIA’s platform offers a completely vertically integrated service to both parties. PIA customers only have to engage with one party to manage their entire investment property portfolio, whereas traditionally they would be engaging numerous parties. Our platform offers an end to end service for investors, from property investment consulting, finance solutions, settlements management and property management and leasing. We assist our customers with the management of their asset, from selection and purchase, arranging strata through to finding suitable tenants.

The Customer Experience - Relationship Building

The PIA’s central vision is to help customers secure their financial future through property investment. To deliver this vision, PIA designed a customer experience strategy that is centred on education. The company runs a regular seminar program designed to demystify the property investment industry and holds one-on-one consultation sessions with individual customers to help them fully understand the sometimes daunting processes behind investing in property. We don’t sell products or apartments to our customers.  That is a short term transactional approach that doesn’t take a customer’s needs into consideration. Instead, we assist our customers in achieving their financial goals through property investment. This builds trust in the PIA brand and develops long term relationships between customers and their sales consultants, which result in repeat and referral business.

Risk Minimisation

PIA’s exposure to offshore sales has traditionally been very low (less than 10 per cent of sales are made to offshore clients). This has been a deliberate risk mitigation strategy employed by PIA due the high settlement risks posed by offshore purchasers as well the changing parameters from government regarding foreign investment legislation. This in turn protects our developer partners seeking settlement security.

The PIA model example

For property investors: Traditionally a property investor would deal with multiple stakeholders to manage the purchase of a new property. PIA’s unique value proposition is that offers its clients a vertically integrated property investment solution; through PIA, clients can purchase an apartment, arrange finance for the property, manage the settlement of their property, resolve defects and even engage PIA to manage the property once it is rented.

For property developers: For its developer partners, PIA unique value proposition is that offers access to a vertically integrated platform that allows them to focus on their core business – delivering outstanding property developments. Through PIA developers can quickly achieve the pre-sales required to commence construction of their project via direct access to a market of 7000 ‘investment-ready’ customers and a highly networked sales force of more than 300 staff. Additionally, PIA provides developers with an in-house marketing function, contract exchange, a defect resolution function and a settlement management function. Traditionally developers would need to deal with a number of stakeholders to manage these functions, but through PIA they only need to deal with one party saving them time and money.

What motivated you to pursue a career in property?

“After migrating to Australia from China in 1993, to make ends meet I worked hard in a variety of different roles, from restaurant waiter to Chinese language teacher to door-to-door salesperson for a large telecommunications company. Yet I struggled to ‘get ahead’ in Sydney. After 10 years of hard work, I felt I needed to find a new path. I had to secure a better future for myself and my family, not dissimilar to the experiences of many Australians, including migrants. My local community was expressing the same concerns and fears - people were continually concerned about their future and were struggling to navigate a path forward.”

Justin turned his hand to real estate sales and soon found that whilst an appetite to invest in property existed, there was still a lack of confidence in the market and a general lack of trust in real estate agents by consumers. He began marketing and selling developments in Sydney, and set about assisting his community in navigating the property market. Justin received his MBA from UTS, and studied sales and marketing techniques. Having been a secondary school teacher in China, he drew upon many of his teaching and education skills when talking to customers. A strategy that he employs today in his popular Property Investment Seminar program.

Empathising with the average consumer’s plight purchasing property, Justin set out to create a property investment platform that was not only highly transparent, education and consumer orientated but also one that focussed on securing the future wealth of prospective investors and achieving their long term wealth creation goals.

What inspired you to start PIA?

Quite often a lack of trust exists between consumers, traditional real estate agents and property developers. PIA challenged the established norms in the property industry by introducing a new integrated concept that brings vendors of product (property developers) together with consumers (property investors) in a transparent environment without this lack of trust. Its platform instils confidence back to the consumer and its developer partners by investing in education that demystifies the sometimes daunting process of investing in property.  Unlike many other real estate sales channels, PIA focuses on educating its customers about the fundamentals of property investment before they commit to making an investment.

Additionally, through the PIA platform, developers are now able to leverage a wealth of market data and consumer insights and ensure their product suits the demands of consumers more effectively. Property developers often design products that are not targeted at their customers, resulting in low sales rates, but by working with PIA they are able to mitigate some of this risk. PIA is using this model to challenge the traditionally ‘product driven’ industry and alter it into a ‘market driven’ industry that takes into account consumer’s needs more effectively.

What are your thoughts on partnering with Design and or construction businesses?

PIA work with a select range of suppliers and partners to ensure that we deliver quality and excellence in our project marketing and delivery. PIA’s model is flexible and saleable, we undertake our own developments, we also partner with developers (fully integrated go-to-market process), and we act on behalf of developers (as a selling agent).

Where do you see property investment going as we head to 2020?

There are a number of significant cultural and demographic trends that have the potential to change Australia’s housing mix. These include an ageing population, a shrinking house size and an increase in demand for housing due to a growing population. As demand for housing has grown, affordability has been constrained due to significant undersupply of housing in Australia. In NSW alone between 35,000-57,000 homes will be required each year to satisfy this demand. As a result of these changes, PIA has focused its product offering on multi-unit dwellings (apartments) rather than traditional detached housing. Apartments often present a more affordable alternative to investment in property. PIA has encouraged its investors and developer partners to contribute to housing supply (i.e. rental accommodation) by investing in this type of housing. PIA has long held the view that high density apartments will secure Australia’s requirements for additional housing product and help solve the affordability crisis. Finally, the uncertainty around superannuation laws and social security schemes combined with the changes to retirement ages and social security has led to a growing concern around securing one’s financial future. 54 per cent of PIA’s customers are focused on long term property investment. As a result of these changes PIA has focused its business model on creating opportunities to support the long term financial security of its customers.

How has technology assisted your business?

Technology plays an integral part in PIA’s business model. Central to our operations is a custom built system called MyPIA. The system is used by all employees and manages the company’s workflow, processes all transactions and manages its procedures. The system is used to communicate with all employees no matter where they are. It provides a platform for two-way feedback between the company and its employees and is used to support the creation of an inclusive team-based culture. The system is fully mobile enabled and allows sales staff to access the system whilst they are onsite or out of the office, allowing them instant access to the data they need to make sales and communicate quickly with their customers.

Additionally, PIA’s in-house team of 12 software developers have developed a number of custom platforms that further support the company to focus on what it does best:

PIA Investor Portal - delivers a brilliant, highly engaging customer experience. The system allows customers to log in remotely to manage their transactions, book seminar attendance and consultation sessions as well as maintain their customer details. Customers who have engaged PIA to manage their rental property are able to use the system to view inspection results, and manage cash flow.

PIA Vendor Portal – an online portal that allows PIA’s developer partners the ability to access live information their project’s sales statistics, settlements and project marketing collateral.

iRental – a digital property management portal that allows PIA rental clients instant access to pay rent, request maintenance and download forms. Conversely, PIA property owners can monitor their property and cash flow through this portal.

PIA’s technology strategy has allowed sales agents to operate with complete mobility outside of the office space. They are able to visit customers in the comfort of their own home or in the convenience of their offices using tablets and mobile optimised software.

What message would you like to convey to the Middle Eastern community in Australia?

PIA customers are everyday Australians who are looking to secure their financial future through property investment. We are proud of our long term relationship and partnership with the Middle Eastern community in Australia: including developer partners, ALCC, charitable organisations and our many loyal customers.  Our diverse workplace mirrors the needs of our customer base. Our hiring strategy lends itself to ensuring that we have staff across the business that reflects our customer base. We pride ourselves in offering a high quality service to all our customers.