David Faulkner is back partnering with Harrison Vaughan and Samantha Arnold in the new Property Management show where they discuss all things relevant to Property Management in New Zealand. We do not discuss rent roll growth or compliance, we discuss the relevant topics that affect our industry
You Can’t Blame an AI: Tal Meser on Tapi, Maintenance and the Human Bit
David Faulkner and Harrison Vaughan are joined by Tal Messa, co-founder of Tapi and principal sponsor of the PMC, with the conference now a fortnight out.
Tal tells the origin story properly for the first time on the show. Dropping out of uni, the Creative HQ incubator, an investor asking what on earth he knew about property management, and the answer being nothing. So he and Florian booked forty hours of rental viewings a week until Wellington property managers started asking them to please just take the house or leave. The idea was called Flatfish. Harrison, one of the first doors they knocked on, politely told them to get lost.
Nine years later Tapi sits on just under 600,000 active properties, an estimated 95 percent of New Zealand’s managed stock, with Australia growing fast and the UK and Ireland live since March.
The meat of the conversation is AI, and Tal takes a position that cuts against the hype. He walks through the shift from systems of record to workflow to action to coordination, then argues the next move is back toward the human. Tapi announced a voice agent a year ago and deliberately pulled back from it, because that was not the future they wanted to build. His case is about accountability: a landlord hands you their biggest asset and wants someone to answer for it, and you cannot blame an AI. There is a drive thru comparison that makes the point better than any slide would.
8 Oct 2026
Changing of the Guard: Jason Colbey Joins Sam Arnold as PMC MC
David Faulkner is in Wellington with Harrison Vaughan at Tommy’s, and joined from Melbourne by Jason Colbey, head of community at Tapi, for an announcement. After six conferences on the bounce, David is handing over the microphone. Jason will co-MC the PMC with Samantha Arnold on 29 and 30 October at the Pullman.
Jason has MCed BDM summits, PMP awards and industry conferences across Australia, plus charity work with the Starlight Foundation. He also lasted two years and nine months in property management himself, after telling a manager that only a pathetic person would quit inside three years, and he has never forgotten it. That experience is behind the message he wants to bring to Auckland: property managers are the most important people in this industry, and he will die on that hill.
The conversation gets pointed on value. Why management fees in Victoria sit at five to seven percent while Tasmania runs at eleven to seventeen, what that does to a rent roll multiplier, and why cutting fees to chase doors leaves everybody poorer. Why property management is still treated as a stepping stone to sales rather than a career. And what Jason thinks New Zealand does better than Australia, which comes down to competing brands actually talking to each other.
Also: the Wellington market lifting after a dead winter, what the election is doing to owner decisions, Labour’s flip on interest deductibility, and the PMC Awards judges revealed, eventually.
2 Oct 2026
Pressure Doesn't Break You, It Reveals You: Rico Gomez on Burnout
David Faulkner is joined by Rico Gomez of Neurofit, a Christchurch based neuroscience coach who works with elite athletes and business owners, and who keynotes day two of the PMC.
Rico came to this work the hard way. He and his wife went through serious mental health struggles about eleven years ago, and after nothing else worked he went looking for answers in cognitive neuroscience himself. What he found changed both their lives, and it became the basis of the rewire process he now runs with clients.
His core argument will challenge how most of us think about burnout. The answer is not to remove pressure. Pressure is the hand squeezing the toothpaste tube, and what comes out of you under pressure was already inside you. What determines whether someone lasts forty years or five is not the performance itself but where their head is three days afterwards.
For property managers caught between landlords and tenants, and for the managers leading them, there is plenty here that lands straight away. Why your hard conversation should never be your first conversation, and what relational equity means in practice. The trust box and the performance box, and what happens when a leader lives in only one of them. Why scrolling and outsourcing your thinking to AI is quietly making you less resilient. And a story about imposter syndrome that turned into the most important yes of Rico's career.
Who has been a guest on The Alternative Property Management Show
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Jeremiah Antipas
Sara Green
Brittany Ross
Samantha Arnold
Sarina Gibbon
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