"What We Got Wrong About Fees"

THOUGHT LEADERS
REAL ESTATE REIMAGINED

What if your property managers could earn 50% more – and actually enjoy their jobs again?

Ben White believes it's not just possible, it's inevitable for agencies willing to embrace his "third wave" of property management. After building Ray White's PM division into the country's largest, Ben co-founded Ailo to prove a radical idea: property management isn't a back-office burden – it's a goldmine of untapped service opportunities.

In this week's episode, Samantha McLean sits down with Ben to unpack his 20-year journey from that fateful 2005 conference moment to today, where his platform processes transactions for nearly 250,000 users who've embraced a completely different way of thinking.

"Someone was on stage talking about fees," Ben recalls. "This person said they'd had this innovation – they just changed everyone's statement fee from $2.50 to $5, waited for complaints, and when only five people called, they apologised and changed those back. Everyone started clapping."

Ben says he sat there thinking: Imagine if your landlord was in the room listening to how you talk about them.

That moment sparked a 20-year journey from building Ray White's property management division into the largest in the country to co-founding Ailo and completely reimagining what property management could be.

You can check out their full conversation here:

Why hit play (in <45 min):

• Turn regulation into revenue streams. Ben shows how to package compliance, bookkeeping, and bill processing as premium services.

• Fix the talent crisis with mindset shifts. Agencies that strike a balance between “pride” and “improvement" are attracting top talent, while others are losing staff.

• Deploy AI to expand, not replace. Forget total automation – Ben's vision puts AI to work helping PMs serve everyone in the community (renters, owners, even owner-occupiers), turning property management into the growth engine it should be.

Ready to future-proof your agency? Tap to listen now to discover how to stop fighting shrinking margins in traditional services and embrace a more optimistic third-wave vision of expanded, service-based value creation.

Get the 5-day Third Wave Email Course by Ben and Sam FREE here

Get the summary slide deck for the episode in our community by joining here.

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