Real Estate Institute of NSW (REINSW) General Manager, Peter Griffin, spoke to ASSOCIATIONS on the organisation’s resilience, growth and ability to adapt during the global health crisis.
Since the onset of COVID-19, REINSW has seen a strong growth in membership as agents look to us for guidance on restrictions and changes. There have also been some major changes to mandatory training requirements and rental tenancy legislation, which means we have become even more relevant to the market, since a core part of our role is to help our members to navigate these changes. Non-members want access to this guidance too, so our membership has become more attractive.
Fostering membership support and growth
REINSW has worked with the State Government to clarify any confusion about the COVID changes for auctions, open inspections, meetings and workplaces – and then we passed this on to our members in plain English! We also clarified any ambiguities with the NSW Government. We have offered members extra discounts on our products and offered non-member agencies a free membership period if they have been doing it tough. REINSW has also offered non-members a limited-time opportunity to access our information and helpline to let them get some help and sample what membership could be like.
Adapting to the ‘new norm’
We are evolving our services to stay relevant to the new and changing environment. From now on, we will provide virtual training that is live and interactive, in addition to our traditional face-to-face and eLearning options. We will also look at our membership pricing. This is currently a fixed price, but we are going to investigate whether tiering on size of member organisation or on a package of benefits might be more attractive and how that might affect our revenues.
Going forward, we will also increase the ability of our own people to work more easily from home for part of the week by supplying extra technology. What really helped us make this transition was that most of our software systems were already in the cloud and could be readily accessed from home.
Thank you to Associations magazine for the use of their article.