Being a business of relationships, it seems natural and almost inevitable that there are so many Australian families working together in real estate. Among the industry’s most prominent and successful families is the Toops, who are undoubtedly Adelaide’s “first family" of real estate. The firm Toop & Toop was started in 1985 by husband and wife Anthony and Sylvia, and now includes their daughters, Suzannah and Genevieve.

“I’ve absolutely loved it,” says Suzannah, 26, of working alongside her family as she heads up the firm’s property management section, no small role considering Toop & Toop has over $1 billion of residential property under management. “To be working alongside Mum and Dad and Gen, I’ve got fantastic mentors across the business. I think it’s amazing, we couldn’t have asked for a better dynamic.”

She admits that it working as a family does take some getting used to. “I think that at the beginning, like any family business, you’re just used to being a family together around the dinner table, but then you have to put that into Monday to Friday and work-mode,” she says. “I think with family you can objective, you can honest, you can give critical feedback because you’ve got that foundation of being a family unit. You don’t have to tread lightly, you can be a bit more blunt, you can have the hard conversations and you’ve got that basis there to keep the business moving quickly. It’s quite a different relationship there.”

After studying law and commerce at Bond University on a Geelong Grammar scholarship, Suzannah joined the graduate program at AMP Capital’s property funds management team in Sydney. She was set to begin a role as an analyst on one of AMP Capital’s funds, but returned to Adelaide in May 2012 after her father was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. “AMP were great, they said go home where you need to be and your job is here when you come back,” she said. “Sylvia stepped up to run the business and Gen and I came in to help our where we could. Gen was always coming back into the business after finishing up in London, but for me it was sort of go in wherever I was needed to help keep the business running while Dad was getting treatment.” Suzannah said it was a few months in before she realized she loved working at Toop & Toop, and ended up resigning from AMP Capital. “I’ve loved it ever since, and it’s been amazing to help drive the business forward,” she said.

Suzannah said it was easier to work with her parents because they’re supportive of their daughters’ initiatives. “I guess with some family businesses the parents are strict and have a certain knack for the business and the younger generation can come through and it could be at odds with the business, but both Mum and Dad have said, ‘We’re backing you guys, you know the next generation out there, you’ve grown up with iPads, iPhone, Internet, and we’ll listen to what you guys have to say about how we can keep the business relevant into the future.’”

With her parents’ encouragement, Suzannah has just launched a new, industry-first property maintenance system called My Maintenance, a portal to educate tenants about maintenance issues. MyMaintenance communicates live to tenants, suppliers and landlords with real-time job updates provided by suppliers in the field. “If we can educate tenants so they don’t actually need to log maintenance, then that’s a huge win. Before MyMaintenance, we were getting emails saying “my door is broken,” so we’d write back saying what door and what do you mean by broken, and then we weren’t sure what tradesperson to send, is it a locksmith, is a glazier, is it a carpenter. There was a whole lot of communication just to find out what the issue was.”

Suzannah has plans for other digital products, and Toop & Toop now have a team of four full-time IT programmers. “I’m very conscious that it’s not all about making everything computer-based and loosing that human contact and relationships,” she says. “It’s exciting that we’ve got a platform now to really look at how we can do things differently and challenge the norm of how residential real estate is done.”