LJ Hooker celebrates 90 years: ‘My grandfather would be pleased’

Leslie Joseph Hooker opened the first office 90 years ago in Maroubra in Sydney’s southern suburbs. It was 20 September 1928 and he was just 24 years old.

“Well, if you imagine what a young man who grew up as an orphan starting up his first real estate business in Maroubra in 1928 on the eve of the Great Depression would think what this brand has become today, I believe he would be pleased,” Mr Hooker told REB.

“He will be going ‘I started something that is going to continue and has made a difference to building a great country’. It’s a household name to millions of Australians and it’s been an innovator and pioneer in almost every aspect of real estate for 90 years.”

Mr Hooker said his grandfather was an innovator, a global citizen and a visionary.

“He was the guiding voice in LJ Hooker becoming an icon of business and responsible for so many major turning points in Australasia.”

Mr Hooker said that some of these include establishing the first real estate investment trust, now a $100 billion industry, in the 1950s; becoming Australia’s first national real estate network in 1960; bringing the “big box” retail mall concept to Australia in 1966; introducing franchising in 1967; developing one in five homes post-WWII; and leading the digital revolution from the first CRMs and agency websites in the 1990s to pioneering partnerships with Google and Facebook now.

1950s: Real estate industry trust 

“The reason why my grandfather created this is because he wanted to give an opportunity for a broader population to enjoy investing in real estate, if they couldn’t buy a home outright,” Mr Hooker said.

“So, the real estate investment trust enabled people to buy units in an investment trust to give them a stable income stream, diversified across a portfolio of appreciating real estate.” 

Mr Hooker said that within 10 years, LJ Hooker had 36 trusts.

“And today Australia is the most institutionally owned real estate market in the world.”

1960: National real estate network

Mr Hooker said that this happened when LJ Hooker set up shop in Perth.

“The year before we were in Tasmania, and obviously, we were up and down the east coast before that.

“So, it was Perth that was the last flag that gave us the first national network in the country. And now we have a network of over 600 offices across Australia and New Zealand and throughout Asia.”

1966: The “big box” retail concept

“My grandfather spent a lot of time travelling around the world looking for the best practices,” Mr Hooker said.

“And, same as the real estate investment trusts, he noticed this big box retail concept in the US, which had begun to evolve because people started to become quite mobile with the impact of the automobile.

“And then he brought that concept here and kicked it off with the Warringah Mall in Sydney and Pacific Fair on the Gold Coast.”

1967: Franchising

Mr Hooker said that he understands that the first franchise was Singer sewing machines in the USA in 1870.

“So again, on one of my grandfather’s many trips around the world, he saw franchising and he saw how successful it was in the USA. So, he pulled together a team to study it and then brought franchising to Australia and franchised three stores in Sydney.”

Mr Hooker said that it proved successful quickly, and then within 10 years LJ Hooker had 100 franchises.

“The interesting thing about LJ Hooker franchising is that he brought it out before the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonald’s or any of these other groups that hit Australia.

“It was a really pioneering move, and today you have franchising that basically employs half a million people in the country and generates $150 billion in sales every year in Australia.”

1985: 1 in 5 homes post WWII 

“After the Second World War, we had a huge immigration boom,” the chairman said.

“In five years, over a million people from all around the world came to Australia, and as a result of that, we had a housing crisis for decades afterwards because there simply wasn’t enough supply.

“My grandfather saw this and said he was going to help solve the national housing crisis. He created a very successful development company called Hooker Homes and that business at its peak was running 100 housing estates at the same time, which is quite phenomenal.”

Mr Hooker said that Centenary Estates in Brisbane is one example.

“Today, that area houses 35,000 people and that development alone takes up six suburbs with multiple schools, malls, fire and police stations and more. It increased the supply of Brisbane housing significantly.”

1993 onwards: CRM, websites, digital, social

Mr Hooker said that LJ Hooker was always at the forefront of innovation, and in the 1990s, it was the first to launch a website in Australia.

“The web then was just another portal into reaching the consumer and delivering information. We quickly seized that and, on the back of that technology, created our first CRM for the industry, which had many iterations in over the next couple of decades after that.”

Mr Hooker said that while now you can buy CRMs off the shelf, at that time there were no CRMs available.

“But the computing power was there to automate parts of the transaction to make agents more efficient and deliver a better result for the consumer, so we went about and built our own proprietary system.

“It was a big undertaking at the time, but it gave us a big advantage over anyone else in the industry.”

Mr Hooker said that after the website launch in 1994, LJ Hooker was the first to launch customised websites for all 600 of its offices — another big undertaking.

“The first iteration of that was about eight years ago and that drove traffic up to over 1,000,000 unique visitors a month, which is pretty strong, by far the strongest for a single brand in the country.

“So again, it is just about evolving with the times and seeing the power of the web come with that.”

Mr Hooker said that along the way, the company has forged some unique partnerships.

“The first one being Google when we worked closely with them on the MAPS application and also on some of their search applications for specifically real estate.

“And then most recently, we teamed up with Facebook in a first for the Southern Hemisphere on an integrated digital and social strategy.

“It reached over 16 million Australians, which means that almost everybody who is on Facebook in Australia had seen it. It got about 70 million impressions.”

Three generations and beyond 

Mr Hooker said that right now is the most exciting points in time to be in real estate.

He said that the real estate asset class in Australia is worth $7.5 trillion, by far the most valuable asset class.

“Australians are still passionate about property, and to be having a brand like LJ Hooker puts us in a very privileged position to keep serving customers that we have served for now three generations,” the chairman said.

“I see the fourth industrial revolution, which is sort of the second part of the digital revolution, as a very exciting time for our industry.

“Because what that can do is it can increase the productivity of our agents and property managers, but most importantly, it can deliver things to our customers that couldn’t be delivered before.

“Now customers are demanding more online, anywhere, anytime. And this technology that is coming out and the things that we have built, and are building, enables our customers to have new levels of experience with real estate.”

Mr Hooker said that real estate has evolved over time and LJ Hooker has always been a pioneer in it.

“I believe this next 10 years will be a very meaningful decade in the whole 100-year history of LJ Hooker. It has been back in the family now for almost a decade, and as far as I’m concerned, it is going to stay in the family for generations to come.”