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William Chan and James Yahl have a specific vision when launching their new North Shore agency in St Ives.
Roughly six months on from its debut, the business now has a new, tailored space to meet the team’s needs, and is growing in line with what the high-performing pair hoped when crafting the particular strategy to guide this new venture.
As Chan explained to REB at an official celebration of the agency’s opening, it’s a model they struck on having decided that the only way to find the right fit was to go independent.
“I think when we looked around the landscape there wasn’t anything that sort of sunk to us to say that’s us, that’s our values, that’s our vision. So we decided to create our own,” he said.
“And I think people that see the brand, Chan & Yahl, they’ll definitely know it’s us and we’re the people behind the brand,” he furthered.
To be sure, Chan already has quite a prominence in the area of his new business setup, having ranked among the highest performing agents in the country, coming in at number 60 on REB’s Top 100 Agents ranking for 2024.
Chan and Yahl have worked together for over 15 years, and were co-directors of another independent agency before striking off on their own.
With a blank slate, the duo felt it was important to create a place where they had “complete freedom to place ourselves in the market and really tell our own story”.
What that looks like is a large office centralised in their geographic area that promotes a strong culture among staff, while also keeping the business’s own real estate costs low.
“We had the experience of being in a model where we had multiple agencies, and we felt there was a way we could develop something a bit more cutting edge in the upper north shore with a boutique space,” Chan explained.
“We wanted to be in one location. We’ve found that having all the agency’s agents in one area creates great energy, great collaboration, and it gives us an opportunity to serve a larger area but keep the cost down as a business.”
That geographic location spans from Chatswood on the city’s lower north shore to Wahroonga in the north-west, with 25 personnel including agents and support staff working in various areas. By the end of the year, they expect to number 30.
As with all their staff growth to this point, however, the duo will be recruiting carefully, as a key part of the vision for the Chan & Yahl brand is built on the idea that “the people are the business”.
What they look for, according to Chan, is “a high care factor, and an attitude to deliver excellence”. A willingness to learn and never-give-up attitude are also high on their list of capabilities among new hires.
But Chan has stressed that though the agency has big aims – such as growing a rent roll from zero to 3,000 over the next five to seven years – the team is aiming for a steady rate of stable growth across the business.
While Chan Yahl has grown out of a carefully crafted strategy, in some ways it’s actually quite simple. As Chan explained, their aims are clear: “Pick the best talent we can, grow our agents and our rent roll.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
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