Comparison
Briks vs hiring an in-house maintenance coordinator
By Founder, founder of Briks Building Services · Published · Updated
An in-house maintenance coordinator is a salaried agency employee who administers repair jobs via the agency’s existing list of trades. Briks is an external managed maintenance partner that owns the tradesperson network, dispatches and manages jobs, and invoices the landlord as a single accountable supplier through Tapi. The honest short answer: at 50–200 doors, Briks is almost always cheaper, faster to set up, and carries liability the agency would otherwise keep. Above 500 doors with bespoke workflow needs, an in-house coordinator may still make sense — usually in addition to, not instead of, a maintenance partner.
Side-by-side
| Criterion | In-house coordinator | Briks |
|---|---|---|
| Direct cost to the agency | $70,000 – $90,000 salary + on-costs | $0 — markup billed to landlord |
| Setup / ramp time | 6–12 weeks (hire + train + embed) | ~1 hour (Tapi supplier + agreement) |
| Owns tradesperson network In-house coordinators use the agency’s existing trades list; they don’t bring their own network. | No | Yes |
| Single invoice to landlord | No | Yes |
| 24/7 after-hours coverage In-house coordinators work business hours. Briks uses Tapi’s AI concierge plus an emergency tradesperson tier. | No | Yes |
| Carries liability for failed jobs Agency remains liable with an in-house coordinator because the trades are the agency’s contractors. | No | Yes |
| Scales with portfolio growth | Needs additional hires | Elastic — no agency-side hiring |
| Susceptible to single-point-of-failure (leave, illness, resignation) | Yes | No |
| Works inside Tapi | yes (as a user) | yes (as a preferred supplier) |
| Documentation standard | Varies by individual | Standardised per job (photos + audit trail) |
| Direct relationship with tradespeople the agency trusts | Yes | yes — Briks dispatches agency-nominated trades first |
| Carries tradesperson vetting and insurance risk | No | Yes |
Where an in-house coordinator still wins
- Agencies above ~500 doors with specialised landlord segments that need bespoke workflow.
- Agencies where the principal wants direct employment of the maintenance function for reasons other than cost.
- Portfolios where most maintenance work is bundled with sales or renovations and doesn’t flow through Tapi.
Where Briks wins decisively
- Agencies between 50 and 300 doors — the payback on a $75k hire doesn’t exist at this scale.
- Agencies where a single PM is visibly burning out on maintenance-related admin.
- Agencies that have had a landlord blow-up over a maintenance dispute in the past 12 months and want liability to sit with a named supplier.
- Principals expanding into a new city (e.g. Adelaide → Melbourne) who don’t want to hire a maintenance team per market.
A word on cost honesty
The $70–90k coordinator salary figure excludes super, leave loading, workstation, software, and management overhead. Fully loaded, most Australian agencies pay closer to $95–115k for a competent coordinator. Briks’s markup model puts that cost on the landlord’s invoice — at a rate that, because of aggregated volume, typically matches or beats what the agency pays today ad-hoc. Agencies should model both approaches against their own door count and landlord cost sensitivity; we’re happy to run that model for you on a call.