McGrath North Lakes: 20 years of growth, one continuous platform

Reapit & McGrath North Lakes

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More than twenty years with the same real estate tech platform is rare - unless that platform keeps delivering. For McGrath North Lakes, what started as Console Gateway, before upgrading to Console Cloud, and today lives as Reapit PM within the full Reapit ecosystem, has proven itself at every stage of their growth.

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The early days - From Harcourts to Solutions Property Management

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When husband-and-wife duo Laura Valenti and David Clair first began their journey as co-principals, it was as one of Harcourt’s first ever franchises in 2001. By then, they were already familiar with what was then Console Gateway, decades before they became a part of the Reapit ecosystem. Laura reflects on David’s days working at a Ray White office in the late 1990s: “Console was the only thing around and so everyone used it. So, when we started our own office, David went with what he was familiar with.”

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After growing into four sales and property management franchise offices, in 2008 they decided to pursue independent property management, founding Solutions Property Management. Beginning their journey with 70 properties under management, Console Gateway continued to be their software of choice, supporting the agency from day one.  

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Early challenges: Breaking through the glass ceiling

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While growing Solutions Property Management, Laura and David quickly realised there was a limit to how far they could scale without evolving. “There’s only so big you can go, and I think 300 properties is kind of a glass ceiling sometimes,” Laura reflects. “Once you get to 300, if you don’t have a really good BDM or one of the principals really focused like I am on property management, you lose as many as you gain.”

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Laura and David knew that they didn’t want to stay small. “We had this vision of growing into a big business,” Laura says. Growth wasn’t just about numbers, it was about building a business that rewarded their effort, offered flexibility, and created long-term value. “For us to have lifestyle and to get paid back for the hard slog in the first 5–10 years, we knew we had to grow. And that’s been our mission.”

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Quickly outgrowing their Burpengary office, they relocated their headquarters to North Lakes in 2016. “We love it here,” Laura says. “It's right in the middle of a busy trade area, and it allows us to service pretty much the whole Moreton Bay region.”

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Scaling the business: PM meets sales

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Post-Covid, Laura and David knew that to continue their trajectory, they’d need to expand into sales. “We felt as a property management company, it would be difficult to attract good salespeople, so knew we had to make a change. We decided to look at franchises again – and we felt that McGrath’s values aligned with ours.”

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After becoming McGrath North Lakes in 2023, the agency now has more than 25 staff across sales, leasing and both residential and commercial property management, overseeing a portfolio of between 1400-1500 properties at any given time. Even amid all this growth and change, Console evolved right alongside them, and at the same time, David implemented what was then Agentbox as the agency’s sales CRM, providing the tools they needed to grow their sales arm alongside property management.

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Choosing and sticking with Reapit

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When Console Gateway transitioned agencies to the cloud-based Console Cloud in 2020, it was a big shift - but Laura and David decided to stick with the platform they trusted to evolve with them. “Console Cloud very much grew with us and enabled us to do a lot of things that we didn't realise we wanted when we were a small agency,” Laura says.

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Today, McGrath North Lakes uses the core Reapit platform - Reapit PM, Reapit Lettings and Reapit Sales. “It’s our total operating system,” Laura explains. “Reapit Lettings takes care of our prospects and leasing, Reapit Sales takes care of our sales projects and Reapit PM takes care of our asset - our current clients.”

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Faced with the opportunity to switch software on several occasions, Laura says it never quite happened. “I had a chance to work with another PM platform because we purchased a rent roll and had access to their program for three months. Everyone kept telling me how great it was, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is a good opportunity to test another PM software.’ But I just couldn’t get my head around it. The things that made sense in Reapit PM didn’t make sense in this program, and I found it very complicated to navigate.”

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She adds, “I think to be simple is very difficult. You can make something complicated easily, but a platform that actually looks and is simple - I can tell a lot has gone into achieving that.”

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Laura also highlights the simple but powerful connections between Reapit’s modules. “I just love the simple connection between Reapit Sales and Reapit PM, where we can send through appraisal requests. It’s such a small thing, but before, you’d have to bring up an email to your sales manager, copy and paste all the details if an owner wanted to sell. Now you just click a button, add a note, and it’s done,” Laura explains.

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“I think Reapit understands that even saving one click, multiplied by a thousand times in a week, becomes a massive time-saver for property managers.”

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Evolving together

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A priority for Laura has always been partnering with a platform that is continuously evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of agencies. “The software has to change because we have to change,” she explains. As an REIQ Board Director, Laura is deeply involved in industry compliance and has led the charge for many regulatory changes in Queensland over the last few years.  

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“I think what we've had to face over the past few years, with legislation and the changing customer expectations, has been extraordinary,” she says. “We've had to adapt so much, and we have a very systemised office - you have to be to manage a large team. Before 2020, we had a process for everything, but all of that had to be reworked for COVID. And even after COVID, things never went back to the way they were.”

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The ability to adapt their processes to the post-covid era is something that really cemented McGrath North Lakes' trust in Reapit. “As an example, the normalisation of digital signing meant all of the leases needed to go into a new workflow. Click, send, sign. Brilliant. It absolutely has to change because if it doesn't change, that's when we as customers go off and look for another software provider.”

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20 years, onwards

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For McGrath North Lakes, Reapit isn’t just software – it’s the foundation of their business. “We couldn’t survive without it,” Laura says. “I take seriously how a product helps our business, and while no system is perfect, the positives far outweigh the negatives.”

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With more than 20 years using Console Gateway, Console Cloud, and now the core Reapit ecosystem, McGrath North Lakes isn’t just keeping up – they’re shaping the future of how their business runs.