Chelsea Gill’s vision: A business built around family and community

Managed owner Chelsea Gill.

Paraparaumu business owner Chelsea Gill was midway through a busy workday as a real estate agent last year, when something caught her eye in a window and made her heart drop. While working from home, the mum of four noticed her reflection as she chatted on the phone to a potential home buyer.

But what Chelsea saw wasn’t the patient, attentive and family-focused mother she’d always striven to be. Instead, she was hushing her daughter who’d come over to ask a question, gesturing to the youngster to go away.

“When I saw my reflection I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s not who I am as a mum,‘” recalls Chelsea, 36, who has been a qualified real estate agent since 2016. “I didn’t like it and decided I wanted to change that. I wanted a career around my children that feels right.”

So, Chelsea made the bold decision to leave her full-time job and start a business in property management. She purchased a struggling local property management business and gave it a complete brand overhaul, bringing a fresh approach to the local market.

On March 1 this year, Chelsea launched Managed, which offers short- and long-term property management for rentals and Airbnb accommodation between the coast and Wellington.

“Working for other people meant I had to juggle my family around my job, and I wanted it to be the other way. I want to change how hard it is to be a woman when you’ve got to work to survive, but also have kids who get sick,” says Chelsea, who runs the fast-growing venture from home and within her own hours.

“We don’t want to feel like we’re sacrificing one for the other and as women, we can have it all, we’ve just got to design our lives around that balance.”

Part of her business philosophy is employing mothers, while helping to get food on the tables of Kāpiti families by hiring small local businesses for contract maintenance jobs like plumbing, painting, landscaping and cleaning.

“I wanted to go a step further by not just making home-work balance acceptable, but normal. If I’m on the phone with a client and a kid’s crying in the background, I don’t want it to be a stressor. I want to change that for mums,” she explains. “I love employing mums so I can provide a flexible working environment for them as well. One day, I want to have an onsite creche!”

There’s another side of property management Chelsea’s passionate about — helping young or struggling families into rental properties during a nationwide housing crisis.

“We have single mums on our books, for example, who we’d love to help, and there’s no reason for them not to have a property. But they’re not even looked at,” she says. “We read every single application and ring every applicant, and each one has the opportunity to view a home. There’s no discrimination. It’s important to humanise the experience.”

Although Chelsea wasn’t sure how running short-term rentals would go, she quickly learned it’s a major advantage for Managed.

“We’ve had experiences where a person has four weeks and nowhere to live because they’re in between houses. We understand it’s hard out there and we’re really good at sorting issues out,” Chelsea says. “If we don’t have something on our books, we’ll be ringing around, trying to find someone a property! Sometimes we’re able to put a renter in one of our Airbnbs and it changes their life. We did it for a woman who’d sold her house but not truly loved anything on the market yet, and a solo dad with four kids. It helps homeowners earn money too, when bookings are slow. They love it.”

From meetings and appraisals to healthy homes compliance checks, property inspections, new rental listings, Airbnb bookings and keeping track of bookings, Chelsea is working harder than she ever has. But she says it’s worth it.

“I didn’t expect word of mouth to get things moving along so quickly and with help from my amazing Airbnb manager, we increased our stock within months. People have said they’ve never had this type of service from management companies, which feels amazing!” she enthuses. “When you build a strong relationship with renters, they feel like they can come to you with problems, which is also beneficial for the homeowner.”

For Chelsea, running her dream business comes down to three key drivers — communication, building trust, and passion.

“I love that this is mine and my team and I don’t have the pressure of nine to five and not being there for our kids when they need us,” she smiles. “People have asked, ‘Why’d you create a business in a flooded market in Kāpiti?’ I tell them it’s because there’s always room for someone who cares and does a really good job because they care.”