From exit plan to expansion: How Adam Buchert's turnaround proves legacy systems are replaceable

At our recent Ailo x Mecca event in North Sydney, Adam Buchert, Director Stone Real Estate Hawkesbury, opened the panel with a line that landed harder than anything I could have said as host: “Less than a year ago, I was ready to sell the rent roll.”

Every principal and property management leader there knew exactly what those eight words meant. Burnout. Frustration. A business that feels harder each year despite the effort you pour into it.

Under Mecca’s soft retail lighting, surrounded by luxury fragrances and glass counters, Adam spoke with a calmness that only comes after walking through a genuine turning point.

What followed was one of the most honest accounts of operational strain I’ve heard from a principal.

Adam explained how a legacy tech stack had quietly turned his rent roll into a liability. A cluster of bolt-on tools promising efficiency but delivering complexity. Wage pressures rising. Trust accounting that felt like "diffusing a bomb every month". Staff spending valuable hours mediating between disconnected systems instead of helping owners and tenants.

"We were haemorrhaging money through systems that promised efficiency but delivered complexity," Adam revealed.

The proof came when they cancelled just one EFTPOS terminal and reclaimed almost $1,800 monthly. If a single peripheral device was costing that much, imagine what the entire legacy stack was draining.

His team was exhausted. Reconciliations leaked into late nights. New business opportunities slipped past. The business wasn’t underperforming, it was being suffocated by its own tools.

Adam didn’t arrive at Ailo with optimism. He arrived with healthy scepticism, shaped by years of grand promises from legacy providers.

So he trialled exactly one feature: direct-to-wallet rent payments.

The impact was immediate. Real-time payments. No more trades chasing money. Month-end reconciliation marathons vanished. What started as a small test became the catalyst for complete operational turnaround.

As Adam said on the panel, “I expected maybe thirty per cent of what Ailo promised, and that would have been a big improvement, but the reality was that I got more than a hundred per cent.”

The turnaround metrics tell only part of the story:

But the part of Adam's presentation that stayed with me was this: Adam didn’t just avoid selling his rent roll. He rebuilt his enthusiasm for property management and mapped an expansion strategy. Same team. Same market. Different platform… and a different outlook.

This isn’t a story about software. It’s a reminder that outdated systems are not immovable. They are replaceable liabilities. And for principals contemplating exit plans, the problem is often not the work itself, but the tools making that work unnecessarily hard.

If you’re standing at that crossroads, Adam’s journey offers a clear signal: transformation doesn’t require a leap. Sometimes it starts with a single test, a small shift, or the courage to question the systems you’ve tolerated for too long.

The real question is not whether to modernise. It’s whether you’ll wait until the exit paperwork is drafted, or make the shift while growth is still well within reach.

If you're wondering whether your rent roll represents an anchor dragging you down or an asset ready to soar, Adam Buchert's journey offers compelling evidence that a single platform decision can transform the equation overnight.

The question isn't whether to modernise anymore. It's whether you'll wait until you're drafting exit paperwork, or make the move while growth remains possible.

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