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The era of the traditional local real estate office is coming to an end, with the agents of the future to be based in larger regional hubs and leverage technology to ensure high-quality service and communication with clients, according to a leading up-and-coming agency.
The Agency’s national head of sales, Thomas McGlynn, told Real Estate Business that as the property industry moved increasingly online and buyers became more mobile, it made sense for agencies to put less emphasis on franchise office numbers as a measure of success.
“These days, it’s rare for a buyer or seller to visit an office — the internet and the rise of data has changed the normal business model and it’s now not unusual for one agent to service an entire region or have three or four core suburbs they mainly operate in,” Mr McGlynn said.
“People also don’t move within the same suburb all the time, so we feel it’s important to expose our owners’ properties to a greater subsection of buyers from different markets, particularly since out-of-area buyers will always pay more.”
Mr McGlynn, whose agency had brought on 300 agents nationally since launching in 2017, said while real estate was becoming a digital-focused industry, the most successful agents would use technology to enhance rather than replace good communication with clients.
“Over the last 10 to 15 years, technology has changed, the way people use mobile and email has changed, the way they search for property has changed, but what hasn’t changed is that people want to deal with someone who is honest and returns calls quickly,” he said.
“More than ever, the level of service agents provide is being scrutinised, and that means people who are complacent are going to be left behind by a new breed of agent that is hungry, communicates quickly and often implements tech to help them do that better.”
Mr McGlynn added that being equipped with the latest data was another key consideration for agents in the current environment, given the amount of confusion about what home prices were going to do next.
“We’ve seen historically low levels of property coming to market and the buyer pool is increasing, so that should lead to healthy prices being achieved if agents get good coaching from their businesses to deal with the change in market conditions,” he said.
“Buyers and sellers have information at their hands very quickly, whether through social media or online portals, so the market can shift month to month in terms of consumer confidence and agents need to be well equipped with all that information.”
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