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Launched last October, Upside Realty’s altered business model is responsible for a 59 per cent increase in new agents joining, according to the agency’s director of sales James Kirkland.
In a tense real estate environment, Mr Kirkland revealed the new model, which operates in conjunction with higher commission splits, a strong suit of technological offerings, and extra leads, allows agents to opt into one of three models when joining the network: the employment model, a partner agreement, and a business unit model.
Four months into the business pivot, Mr Kirkland declared that “it’s certainly paid off”.
Each offering provides agents with a different set of options. Under the employment model, the network treats incoming agents as employees and pays them as such. The partner agreement allows the agents to run their business with support from Upside, while the business unit model facilitates agents scaling their business.
He revealed a majority of new agents coming onboard from NSW and Victoria, the network’s two largest markets, adding that the employee model is the most popular proposition to prospective Upside agents though he admitted expectations for the business unit model to “become quite a significant offering”.
Declaring, “in any industry, one size doesn’t fit all, but that’s especially true in real estate,” he outlined, “Upside agents are given the flexibility to work with the nuances of their market to provide better value to vendors whilst maximising their fee.”
“Depending on whether they’re a subcontractor or a direct employee, we’re offering them a 70 per cent to 75 per cent commission split,” he added.
Additionally, agents moving into Upside Realty are accommodated with a range of technological supports, including the NurtureCloud system, which allows them “to operate from anywhere, with all features and their entire database at their fingertips”.
Conceding that “most agents receive their little support in their current work environments and have little or no access to their activity data”, he believes they’re “increasingly more open to hearing how Upside can support them” in a market where both sales and premium prices dry up.
Moreover, in a seemingly constantly changing market, Mr Kirkland detailed, leads have increased because “home owners still remain as interested in the movements of the property market as ever”.
In a presently “highly dynamic market”, Mr Kirkland stated that the agency wants its agents “to have as much flexibility as possible”, concluding they’re “looking forward to welcoming even more new agents as we continue in this period of rapid growth”.
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