Ep 44. Can Spare Rooms Solve the Housing Crisis?
In this episode, Michelle chats with Ludwina Dautovic from The Room Xchange. Together they explore what The Room Xchange offers in the rental marketplace.
Here’s what you’ll learn from today’s episode:
How The Room Xchange works for both the homeowner and renter.
The importance of having difficult conversations when starting out with home sharing.
What are the benefits to using the Room Xchange.
Ways in which the rental market could be improved by showing compassion and empathy.
Speakers in today’s episode:
Michelle May - Michelle May Buyers Agents
Ludwina Dautovic - The Room Xchange
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This podcast has been produced and edited by Snappystreet Creative
Please note that any views or opinions presented in this podcast are solely those of the speakers, and do not necessarily represent those of any business. These views and opinions are general in nature, and do not take account of your personal objectives, financial situation and needs. Please consider whether it applies in your circumstances and seek professional advice wherever appropriate.
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VIEW TRANSCRIPT
Michelle May: Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Buy Your Side podcast. The property podcast that helps you make smarter property buying decisions. My name is Michelle May and I am the principal of Michelle May Buyers Agents here in Sydney. Let me pronounce that correctly. And today I want to talk about solutions about the property crisis that we have at the moment. Rental ,buyin; there is a real short supply all across the nation, I am very fortunate to have Ludwina Dautovic here, the CEO and founder of The Room Xchange. Ludwina, welcome.
Ludwina Dautovic: Hello. I'm so happy that we're speaking again, Michelle. It's been a while.
Michelle May: I know. So we spoke, we were just reminiscing, we spoke a while back, a few years actually when I was doing Sydney Property Insider Podcast, and The Room Xchange is still very much in its beginning stages, I don't want to say because you've been hard at work at this for such a long time.
But now we are in 2023 and I am so, so incredibly pleased for you because you've won so many awards since then and you've gone from strength to strength, with The Room Xchange, but for those who don't know what The Room Xchange is and what it's all about, can you please run us through this amazing concept.
Ludwina Dautovic: Thank you. So we're in year six and we're having a laugh before overnight success. People laugh, it's like, oh my God, you've come at such a great time. And it's like, well, yeah, we've been working at it for a while. I founded the company, originally, picture this, so my eldest son was 22 at the time and he left home and as most mothers do when that happens at that stage in your life, I walked past his room and I had tears in my eyes.
But a year later, the tears started to dry up and I was seeing this very nicely dressed guest room that had barely been slept in a very different light. And I started to see it as a cost centre and this bedroom was costing me $200 a week roughly when you think about square meterage of your house and how much your mortgage is and, potential ways that you can monetise that room.
And I was thinking, I need to do something better and smarter with this room. And, eight housemates later, roughly, The Room Xchange was born. And, obviously there was a lot that transpired in between that, but I had rented it to a number of different people over that time and I had a particular system and process that I would put in place to ensure that it was a successful and enjoyable experience for me and my husband and my adult daughter was still at home at the time.
And we just had such an amazing time with all of these different people that came and spent different amounts of times with us. Some were three months. Someone the longest we've had is 18 months. And they really became part of our home, part of our network, extended family that come to Christmas events.
And, one of them helped me with my 50th and one of them was there when our dog passed away. There's like all these really significant moments that occurred over that time. It had such a positive impact on us and it helped us around our house as well. So there was a win there for everyone.
And then my friends started to say, this is a great idea. Where can I find someone? And being an entrepreneur for 29 years, when I hear something, is a good idea three times, it's like these antennas start going out of my head and she's like, Oh, curiosity is peaking here. And I thought, Oh, I think there's a business model here.
And I did some research and did, how do you say that word, due diligence. I realised it's like, look, it's not a completely new concept, but nobody has actually built technology around it. And I've been in tech since the analog day, so I understood technology. And I thought if I could build a solution around this, that is tech driven, so digital when you want it, but then having some premium services around it, so people, when you don't, if anyone needs hand holding, they can pay for that. But if they're happy to go and just completely use it from a digital format and access all the features on it themselves, they can, we might have something there and a very simplistic answer to your question.
And there was a capital raise that happened to kick it off. There were a lot of no's. I think I got 80 no's, I got around that. And then I would just went, well, stuff it. I'll just hire a pub and put on my own pitch event. And that's what I did. And I raised $600,000 in our seed round and have raised more since then, and, a lot of challenges along the way, building technology to the magnitude that this is, because it's not a website, it's a platform and it's a two-sided marketplace.
So we have two customers, two messages, and two headaches and, being the first to do something like this as well, there's a lot of learnings in that, that you're not aware of when you begin. So we got to scale up and then COVID hit. Everything changed, but what we did through that time, and I think this is really pertinent, probably more for people who are listening and might be in business, actually, anything else, but you know, often when these curveballs are thrown at you, we had a choice; we could fold at that time and I don't think anyone really would have faulted us due to the circumstances around it because no one, nobody was opening up the front doors. Or we could take the time to reflect and pivot. And when we first launched the business, it was based around, purely what we called an exchange model.
So, somebody would live in your house, help out two hours a day in exchange for food and accommodation. That was great, but it was also quite niche. And a few people were asking about, well, what if we could have part rent, part help? And so I used the time to really look at how we could pivot the model, but then also what would life be like?
What's the property market, the housing market, the rental market going to be like post COVID. And I've always considered myself a futurist. I thought there's going to be a problem in the rental market, there's just not going to be enough stock. What if we brought rent into it? There's going to be some financial burdens that we're all going to be hit with because all of this money that we got given is going to have to come from somewhere and I think it might end up being a duality there in terms of need.
And so we made a decision to do rent and rent offset instead of exchanging.
Michelle May: When did you start that? When did you start the renting?
Ludwina Dautovic: 14 months ago.
Michelle May: Gosh, the timing of that.
Ludwina Dautovic: I've got to tell you, Michelle, we have just hit over 6,000 on our database in 14 months, and we got to 3,000 just before COVID.
So this has been, it was a gift for us in disguise. Very costly one, but it was a gift. And we also realised that we always had mandatory verification, but we never led with that. And so we now say, this is, these are three things. And then I'll pause there for you. We are Australia's first and only verified house sharing platform.
We partner with Digital ID, Australia Post Verification Technology when we first launched, so we lead with that. Nobody else has it as a mandatory requirement. So everyone is safe, everyone is who they say they are, and people who have got ill intention will not complete our process because they don't want to be identified in that way.
Our algorithm matches you based on personality, values, and lifestyle, so you feel like you're coming home to a friend, and we want our homeowners who are our main supply to feel like that they're adding some value to their life and to their home, not losing something. And the third thing is that you can choose rent or rent offset, or a mix of both.
So it's completely up to you which model that you want to utilise. So if you need help around the house, you can offset part of all of your rent. by requesting help around the house and that can be negotiated on a week by week basis. And considering there's over 13 million unused spare bedrooms in around 10 million homes across Australia, that's a big lot of supply.
And a lot of those homeowners are struggling now with multiple interest rate hikes. And the reflection of that is that this is the first time in six years we're getting as many homeowners signing up as we are people looking for a room to rent.
Michelle May: That's mind blowing that no one has thought of this before because it makes such sense. It makes such sense to me. You're helping both sides of the equation. People need extra income. People need somewhere to live. Let's put those two together. It's so simple yet, I think it's an amazing thing that I mean, I can only see that grow more and more. I mean, because there's so many different aspects to this that will help, one of the things that I see as a buyer's agent, for example, is that we don't get enough of the empty nesters downsizing because there's not the properties there, right? So the young families can't move up into the three plus bedroom houses because the boomer generation don't have the smaller property. So they're still living in these massive properties and quite often, they're also getting to a point where it may be quite lonely for them, so there is adding that they're having companionship in their life.
Even if that other person is out working every day, there's still that in the evening, in the morning, that connection with another person, and they're generating an income potentially, having a bit of extra income over and above whatever they've saved and have a pension for. And the younger person will have somewhere good to live which I mean, in a first world country like Australia, it is quite amazing how abysmal the rental accommodation is that I've seen firsthand. I had to rent for a while and, with my two children and I was going through houses where I was just shocked, like you wouldn't even put an animal in them and they were charging $900 a week.
Whereas if you're tying them up with a current homeowner, they're going to have a pleasant accommodation and you're helping both sides of the equation. So it makes total sense to me. My question is, so you've obviously done the amazing pivot both sides of the equation have access to this platform,dDid you say an algorithm matches them or do you get to, I mean, everyone's swiping left and right nowadays if you're in the dating world, is it a bit like dating? Is it a bit like Tinder for property finding?
Ludwina Dautovic: Oh gosh, it's so funny.
I did an interview on radio in Canberra on Saturday morning and they were saying it's like Tinder for house sharing. I think this is just going to end up being my new tagline. Yeah, look we have search criteria and of course, once more and more information is inputted, there's going to be more that will be able to be reduced down in terms of the search results.
But you can select age range, gender, personality types, like there's food type, there's a number of different things that you can search for. But there's one point I just wanted to just pick up on that you mentioned before, because I think there's an assumption around this that, and we can get back onto this point. You mentioned, young people and empty nesters, they are two demographics that we do attract, but interestingly, our housemates, so we call them households and housemates, but we'll say homeowners and renters just for the sake of conversation, our renters range from 25 up to 70. So when most people think that house sharing is kind of like the flatmates type conversation, right?
And when, I don't know about you, but when I'm 57, when I think of myself as a young flatmate, I do not want to live with someone like me, like who I was. That's not happening. People that register on our platform for somewhere to rent, understand that they're stepping into somebody's home with their things, their bedrooms are usually furnished, most of the time they'll have a bathroom or an en suite for themselves, or the most share it with one other person, they're tapping into somebody else's network, resources, community, there is a lot that's being provided for that person just by default, it attracts a certain type of person because the person is going to move into somebody else's space, and know that it's not going to be thier own, there's a level of respect that's required for that, and at the same token, our homeowners are anyone from single person who maybe wants to buy a house and just need some additional funds to help with the mortgage, to professional couple, to young families, we get a lot of elderly people who sign up, whether they're single and their husband or wife has passed away, and they're lonely. There's a whole range of people. Women over 50 are a big part of our rental market at the moment, and also our homeowner's market. So there's a massive range, which gives you the opportunity to think about what kind of person you would like to live with.
And we're not attracting backpackers or people that are just sort of looking for a room and then they don't need to talk to anyone else. This is really about creating micro-communities in our homes. And it's really important that people understand that this isn't about, okay, there's your room, you can use the kitchen from six till seven and that's it. We don't want to see you, it's not that. We're actually sharing our homes and sharing our lives together to the degree that happens is up to every household. In our home, for example, we have some meals where we share together and then some days where we just take care of ourselves.
We go to our own spaces to watch TV. But sometimes we'll sit out on the deck and have a chat. One of our housemates likes to do afternoon tea on a Saturday and make a cake. Everybody's different. But you negotiate that as you go through. But it's very important, I think for your listeners to understand that this really is about adding value to your life, not losing it if you're choosing to open up your home to share.
So, and I forgot your original question, so I'm sorry.
Michelle May: I think it's good that you pointed out that there's all these different parts of society that, are benefiting either whether they're homeowners or renters. We spoke about this in a previous conversation, because we've been chatting for a while about how you set this up, because obviously you're inviting someone into your home. Just from a legal standpoint, what kind of paperwork, what kind of documentation can people expect from either side of the equation? And secondly, if you are a homeowner, can you actually make this work towards your mortgage? And if yes, how does it work? If not, why not?
Ludwina Dautovic: So I'm a homeowner as well and the 12 interest rate hikes are costing me another thousand dollars a month or something to come up with and a spare bedroom is worth that. So there's your problem solved right there, in terms of contributing to the additional costs.
The how to make it work and what's required; so it's up to each individual arrangement to decide the best set up for them. We're a marketplace, so we provide the opportunity for people to actually create those connections. It's up to them how they make that work afterward. What we would recommend, and this is based on my experience, Everyone again has to make up their own mind, we have a house share agreement, that over the years I've created a template for and once the homeowners have actually found someone that they want to live with, if they notify us of that, then we will actually, we provide versions of that, whether it's a light version of it that they can utilise themselves, whether it's a full version that comes with a video of instructions and how to actually facilitate that, or whether they want to hire one of our client managers and do a three way video call, and we can help them to facilitate that together, and then they co sign that. It's what we would call a civil agreement; it's not a tenancy. The beauty of this for renters is that they can go in on a month by month basis. If something comes up that they want to then move on to, they can. They've got the flexibility of that. And also with the homeowners as well, it's like we say month by month because initially, when somebody does this for the first time, it just gives them a bit of peace of mind to know that if they commit for a month and they're committing to that up front and if it doesn't work out, they can end that, then make that clear with their housemate, then everyone's on the same page.
But what generally happens is that the first month is kind of like the settling in time. And if you have some empathy, patience and understanding, and if you utilise some of our tools that we've got in place, it can really help to set up the boundaries, expectations, house rules, what to do with food and when the rent's supposed to be paid and all those kinds of things.
And then also too, we encourage people to talk about their exit plan. And we also encourage people to talk about things that may not be happening now, but could happen in the future. So what if you meet a special lady and you would like her to come over every now and again, can you imagine bringing that conversation up? A couple of months down the road, but you've never brought it up at the beginning, it might feel a bit uncomfortable for the guy or girl, whoever, right? So, we encourage people to have those conversations up front. So I always say to my new housemates, look I understand you're not seeing anyone now, but should the time come, and you want to have your friend over, what we would like you to do is invite them over for dinner.
Let's all sit down, break bread together, have a chat, have a laugh, and then everyone gets a feel for each other. And then, if we're all happy and we feel comfortable, then once every two weeks is fine. If they want to sleep over, then you can go and sleep over at their house once every two weeks. they're our rules around that. And I've not had any conflict with that, so, and it's please don't wear shoes on the carpet, it's just a house rule. There are absolutely no smokers in our house because I can't stand the smell. I don't mind if you have a drink, but I don't drink, so I don't want any drunken behaviour in my house. So it's just, it's very simple. What are your house rules? And often you don't think about that when you're a homeowner because you just have this organic way that you all live together and you have an understanding of your own home, right? And the other thing is that homeowners don't buy a house with the intention of being a renter or renting it or sharing it.
So they don't understand the processes of that. So we have those resources in place and lots of information on the website to help them. And again, they can do it themselves utilising that information or they can hire us to help them through it.
Michelle May: Yeah. It's always best to have those uncomfortable situations or those conversations upfront, right?
I mean, I work, for example, different aspect, I work with first home buyers and sometimes the bank of mum and dad is involved, and I say to them, do you actually know the strings attached to this situation? What are they expecting back from you? Because is it a gift? Is it a loan? If you sell the property, do they want the interest on the loan? Do they want a share of the profit? Same ideas. And I think people tend to shy away from difficult conversations, but especially if you are moving into someone else's home.
Ludwina Dautovic: That's a really great point, Michelle, that you bring up because there are some people, homeowners that we speak to, go, Oh, look, it'll work itself out.
And I was like, please do not have that cavalier approach to it because you are going to end up with some problems because you just don't ever want to make assumptions about anything. And, like we've all been house sharing from the moment we're born, right? It's not a new concept to any of us.
It's just, we've done it with people that we've come to know. We didn't know our parents until we were born. We got to know our kids. We've had family come and stay. We've had friends, maybe stay for a while. We've all done it. It's just, there's, when it's a couple of weeks, you kind of put up with people's stuff, but ongoing, it will become an issue.
So it's just much better. And it's much easier to have those conversations when it's not awkward. It's only awkward when you get to know them. When you don't know them, it's much easier to bring it up, I find anyway. Yeah. And it's just all documented. Everyone signs it and it's there.
Michelle May: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've learned, there's nothing as queer as folk and people never cease to amaze me. I mean, I'm in the people industry, a lot of my job has nothing to do with property. It's about people. And yeah, you can never fail to be surprised. Do you actually give them a list of the top 10 awkward questions?
Ludwina Dautovic: Well, we've got a PDF of interview questions to ask.
Michelle May: Yeah. Oh, perfect. Yeah.
And so in terms of just practicality, do people sign up for a period of time with you? Do they pay like a success fee or how does it work from your end? Because obviously, this is a business from your perspective, obviously it's a fantastic concept, but how do people actually pay for this service?
Ludwina Dautovic: Yeah. So while we rebuilt post COVID, we've allowed people to use the platform for free. And we're looking at various different ways now to monetise that from a listing perspective. What we're starting to realise is that the making it as easy as possible for people to actually get to that point of connection and then providing them with the resources they need with our premium services is something that we're testing at the moment.
So that's working well. And we've also got partnerships with various different organisations. We haven't announced one yet, so I can't say it, but you know, there's a couple of them that will have some financial, referral sort of benefits for us too.
So there's a number of different ways that we can kind of utilise that, but also surprisingly, we are getting approached by a number of different councils. government, businesses in the private sector, hospitality sector even housing, big development, housing development companies. Can you help us with our accommodation problem for our staff?
For our workers, for our peak seasons coming up, regional areas, a lot of regional areas are having to say no to particular events and festivals and things like that, because they have an accommodation problem for people coming into town when they're on, it's a lost opportunity cost there, and we have the technology and means to be able to help them solve that.
So there is a bigger conversation that's happening around or behind the scenes, I guess, in terms of what The Room Xchange can do, because first and foremost, we do not remove housing from the rental market. That's a core value and rule that we have. We are not going to ever be part of the problem. So, if there is an opportunity where we can support a regional town by helping, homeowners open up their space for a while to provide accommodation for someone to come into town to attend that event. That is a positive outcome, getting local communities involved in actually helping to improve the local economic growth and to accept opportunities that otherwise might not be.
And, I can't actually talk a lot about other things that are popping up, but here's one that, the government should right now be coming and knocking on our door and saying, Hey, how can we use your technology to help solve this problem? Because I tell you with over 13 million unused bedrooms, let's just say we got 2 percent of them.
That's a massive amount of rooms available for rent that can help them remove people from the rental market, making more of the actual rental properties available for couples and families. And this will put a massive dent in the problem right now. And one of the things, and I haven't said this before, so I'm going to say it on your podcast, and I hope our listeners will take this with the right intention, the government cannot solve this problem. Even with this 10 billion budget that they've got, the 1.2 million homes that they plan on building in five years, which really, is that gonna happen with the current state of the building industry, with the cost of bills, with... I don't need to rant.
Michelle May: Oh, that's a whole different conversation.
Ludwina Dautovic: Well, what about the problem right now? What are they doing right now? If we don't start and we, I'm talking about you and me and whoever's listening, that's you. If you have a spare bedroom. And you have the heart and the means to be able to open up that spare bedroom and share it with someone.
You are not only enhancing your life and helping to solve financial burdens in your own home, but you are also becoming part of the solution to this housing crisis. And I believe, and I say this because I live this myself, that I know that if we don't do this as individuals in this country, we are going to see a very different Australia in 12 months time, because most middle class households are only two paychecks away from losing it. We talk about homelessness. We are not a solution for homelessness. We can certainly prevent it. But right at the point when people are actually looking for, if they lose their home, they don't, a lot of people don't have options now. To go and find a rental and if they don't have options to find a rental, what's the next option? Their car in a car park, a DFO or somewhere like that.
Michelle May: And look, I live in the inner west of Sydney and in my local park, Enmore Park, there are tents out, and it's not just the single male. It's women with children and there's a huge segment of the new, the new homeless are actually the invisible homeless, they're couch hopping from friend to friend, that's no way to live. The biggest section of people becoming homeless now are women over 50 with dependents.
I'm in that bracket. And it's absolutely frightening that this is happening. So, what other obstacles do you see with the current rental crisis? Like what do you think, what else is contributing to this? The fact that all of it, not everyone says all of a sudden, but obviously it's been building and building and building and now everybody's talking about it and now we need a solution now. But what do you think besides The Room Xchange, contributing to providing people with rooms to live in? What else would you say would contribute to easing this stress?
Ludwina Dautovic: Oh jeepers. So, I am a self managed landlord. So we have an investment property, which was our family home and we rent where we live. Okay, so I experienced the housing market from all facets. This is a really interesting point, and at the age of, well, when we moved into this place I was 50, I'm 57 now, I was 54. So at the age of 54, with two very healthy incomes a seven year, 100 percent rental history, it's spot on, yes, you want to rent your house to this couple, to owning a property in Newport, Melbourne, that is positively geared to my online profile, my business reputation. Like you think about all the things that I mean, you probably only require maybe a quarter of that and you'd be pretty comfortable with renting. But with all of that, I could still only get a one year lease. And I said to the agent, and we've been in there three years and I negotiated a two year lease after the first year, I said, oh, can we get a three year lease? And she said, oh no, we've got to do one year first. And I said, well, why? What else would you need? Would I, do I need to own another house? Like, what else do you actually need for me to be able to confidently put roots in the ground, literally, build a garden, get to know the neighbours, hang my paintings, hang my family photos?
What do I need to do to have housing security? At this stage, so from a rental perspective, I would never imagine that this could happen where somebody of my standing, I guess is probably the word would still have to jump through hoops to negotiate a longer lease. Now our lease is coming up early next year.
And even though I'm pretty confident we'll get another two year lease, I still have this insecure feeling of what might happen. And so imagine if you weren't someone of my standing or if you didn't have all the additional benefits or privileges that I have. And you are say a single mom with a child and you had to go and find somewhere to rent.
So like you got no hope. Absolutely. No hope. And I don't blame them, I want to be really mindful of not blaming the property managers because they're in a predicament. Their first priority is to the owner of the property. But there goes another problem. How is it that 75 percent of the investment properties in this country are owned by Mum and dad investors who, by the way, are not professional service providers.
Now we look at when my, the tenants in our place, for example. They spend $26,000 a year with us. I look at this as a business arrangement. They're a customer that spends $26,000 a year. I'm going to make sure they're happy. If it was any other business and the customer was spending that much money with you each year, you bend over backwards for them. You would be making sure they're happy, that they've got everything that they need, they would appreciate that. Majority of the people in the world, I believe, are good people and they will look after your place. If you treat them with dignity and respect, even more so, and I just don't think that we look at this relationship, the landlord tenant relationship in the way that we should be looking at it because if we did, and if the landlord and the homeowner and the renter were having more conversations together.
I know that they go through an agent, but why can't they also speak? Because a lot of the times I think of this friction that occurs is because there's misunderstanding or their decisions that are being made that are not in the best interest of either party. So it then creates problems and I know this happens because it happened to us when we had to use an agent to rent our property through COVID. And it was just like this guy was going through some health issues, he had to go away for a while, he had to cut his lease short. I just connected the dots in my head. And I went, okay, we need to make this as easy as possible for this guy.
The agent wanted to make sure that they paid out their lease. And I went, no, I want to have a conversation with him. No, uou don't want to do that because he'll try and get as much out of you as he can. I said, no, I think this conversation requires empathy and I just want to find out exactly what this guy needs and then I want to work with him to help make it easy for both of us.
It turned out I ended up taking over the renewal of the negotiation of all this. We were only out of rent for one week. That was it. The entire house got spotlessly cleaned. His sister came in, got involved. We had a 20 minute conversation. Done. It was all done.
Michelle May: Isn't that interesting? Because really we're going essentially back to what we were talking about before, which is the uncomfortable conversations and bringing back humanity in the whole equation. Because you, by going no, I am going to talk to him as a human being and forget about what you think is going to happen.
Sometimes we put the fear of God in us, because of what this person is trying to get out of me, the worst of things. But I'm like you, I'm a believer that essentially most people are good and trying to do the right thing. So what you're saying resonates with me tremendously because it is about, essentially the human needs to come first.
And then how do we work this out where it is, of course, it is a financial transaction. And it needs to work for both sides of the equation. And then security is a huge thing, not having, because what I'm hearing is great fun as well, like, I'm working with a lot of property managers, with clients who buy an investment property and then we're working with a property manager and passing on the client, so to speak.
They're saying, well, what we're coming across is that, when we get these tenancies previously managed by other property managers is that these tenants are actually so scared to say anything, say the air conditioner has broken or, the kitchen's falling apart or there's, water coming through.
I don't know, whatever the case may be, it can be little or large. They're afraid to speak up because they're afraid of getting turfed out, and so in fact, they're afraid of getting turfed out, but also the property is dilapidated. It's getting worse. A small problem may become a huge problem because it doesn't get rectified. Eventually, everyone's a loser.
Ludwina Dautovic: Exactly. And I just want to add that I think that the relationship with the property manager is very important, but there's a lot of undue pressure on them at the moment with multiple amount of applications on properties as well. And I cannot imagine how difficult, I just want to be very careful to make sure that I'm not, here to be, dogging on them because I cannot imagine how tough their job is.
But I think that they're very important in the equation there. And I'm not saying they're not, but I think from a legal and from the document sort of perspective and, maybe negotiating any issues. But then in terms of looking back at the 75 percent of investment properties being mum and dad investors, I think there needs to be a requirement for them to have at least $5,000 put aside that they can put towards anything that needs to get fixed on the house.
I think that should be a requirement. But then, if they're able to have a conversation or communicate directly with each other, with the property manager, they're maybe mediating some of that. A lot of the conversations I think could get resolved. A lot of the issues will get resolved much faster because everybody wants to win.
And if you can give the other person as much as what they want and they can give you as much as what you want, negotiation can then transpire in that. And I think that there's been a big mistake with the majority of the rental housing falling on people who are not professional service providers, that is something that, I think needs to be talked about.
Michelle May: Maybe part of the solution could be that these investors, first time or, secondary, whatever investors. You have to do a course, some kind of certification, like just to know the rules around what their obligations are, what is the best way to manage a tenant, even, looking after a property properly,
Ludwina Dautovic: I like your idea, but then we've got the problem of we've got more and more people leaving the property investment space so there's less rentals. So there's a whole cycle of issues here and they're great things. You look at, and I'm not going to name specifically, but if you look at short term holiday platforms where there's ratings and reviews involved, right.
The person who owns that property that is renting it out for a short term holiday has expectations and requirements to make sure that property is in great standing, not good standing, actually excellent standing right? Now, it's like, well, how is that not parlayed then over to somebody who's providing long term housing?
I think there's something in that, that we can explore a little bit more in the government, reneging on their responsibilities many years ago to build, to continue building and providing social housing and low cost housing has created a massive problem. I think the building of oversized housings in the Greenfields, expecting that the next generation is going to have as many kids as what we did is a massive mistake.
I mean, what are we going to do with all these McMansions? Because my kids' generation are not going to buy them. There's a lot of issues across it. And I think it's just when the home became the bank, you know what I'm saying? When your house becomes a bank, there's a very different experience of that and then when that bank then becomes a service to somebody else who needs housing security. That's a very different conversation. I think we need to be digging more into that.
Michelle May: Yeah. I look it's not a conversation that's going to come up with a solution overnight. That's for sure. Like you said, there's so many different levers that need to be pulled.
And it's very easy for the political parties to just go on one particular agenda and go, this is the solution to it all. But it's not, it's clearly not, but I'm so pleased that you're here today to talk to us through The Room Xchange and what it can actually do to be part of the solution. If people are interested in becoming either a mentor or a homeowner with a spare room that they want to share with someone, how are they best to get in touch with you?
Ludwina Dautovic: So just go to The Room Xchange and that's X C H A N G E theroomxchange.com. Just click any of the orange get started buttons. It'll take you through in the footers, the FAQs, there's a blog, there's lots of articles. We've also got the Room Xchange podcast and we've got lots of helpful conversations there.
Please connect directly with me on LinkedIn if you want to have a conversation if you're a leader of a community or a business that needs a housing or accommodation solution, just connect with me on LinkedIn. That it's probably the easiest. And all of our socials are at The Room Xchange. So, head over there. That would be great.
Michelle May: Well, thanks, Ludwina. You are certainly a powerhouse and I admire very much what you do. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. And if you have any questions, if you've been listening to Ludwina and I, and you have any questions for either Ludwina or myself, you can also get in touch with us through hello@buyyourside.com.au. Hit me up on TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn, of course, as well. Thank you for listening until next time.