The team from Home & Co has recently been named Property Management Company of the Year in the 2023 Leading Property Managers Association (LPMA) Excellence in Property Management Awards which were run online on 26 February.

Colleen Topping, director of Home & Co, says: “The LPMA is an international organisation of property managers from New Zealand, Australia and the United States, so it’s very pleasing to be recognised by our peers that our team of five here in Wanaka is doing an outstanding job.”

When assessing Home & Co’s awards entry, LPMA judges said they had never had sustainability mentioned before. They were impressed by Home & Co’s commitment to educating tenants about recycling and how to better care for appliances which looks after the owner’s chattels, extends the appliances’ lifespan to lessen the number going to landfill when they become uneconomical to repair.

Colleen says looking at their own carbon footprint as a business has become a key focus for the Home & Co in recent years. They were the only non-construction and non-hospitality attendees at a workshop called “Measure What Matters” run by the Queenstown Lakes District Council late last year.

“An idea from this workshop, which has since been implemented, is to include a reuseable coffee cup in each tenant welcome pack along with a Plastic Free Wanaka reuseable tote bag. Our other initiatives are to have only re-useable To Rent signs and not having wastebins under each office desk, encouraging us all to recycle paper waste.”

The LPMA Excellence in Property Management Awards includes numerous categories and Home & Co was also presented with the awards for Excellence in Team Culture Award, Industry Educator Award, and Excellence in Business Performance Award, as well as an individual award – Excellence in Administration – for Home & Co team administrator, Jeanette Sharpe.