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Since establishing her own independent agency, one Grafton real estate agent says her daily working hours have halved and her remuneration increased.
Clarence Valley-based real estate agent Kylie Swift’s real estate career has seen her partake in a number of career ventures. Beginning her career at a major franchise in the Northern Rivers seaside village of Wooli, Ms Swift returned to her hometown of Grafton, joining the town’s Elders brand, which she would later become a shareholder in.
“I had a vision to grow the business [Elders], so when I bought in, we had several staff and by the time I sold out, nine years later, we had around 25,” she said.
Serving out a non-compete clause after the sale of her share of the business, Ms Swift spent that time working as a real estate coach before establishing her own independent agency through @realty, Virtue Property, in October last year.
She has explained that the driving factor behind her decision to open Virtue Property was due to a disconnect between her values and traditional offerings.
“I lost faith in the corporate real estate model and what I perceived to be a lack of quality customer care,” Ms Swift said.
“When I decided to set up my own brand, I wanted something that reflected my values and that’s how I came up with Virtue Property.”
She credits a small part of her Virtue Property’s success with her decision to implement @realty's OASIS system.
“I thought that now I am able to sell residential alongside rural, and back servicing Grafton and South Grafton, it was the perfect time to rebrand and that’s when I became an OASIS agent,” she said.
“As a sales agent I list, sell and create connections and the OASIS model enables me to avoid time wasted in the back-end stuff.”
Ultimately, Ms Swift’s decision to establish Virtue Property has had far-reaching personal and professional benefits that include an improvement in her work/life balance.
“It [independence] suits me well as I can sell 25 per cent of what I previously did and retain a greater percentage of income.
“I’m not splitting it with administration, personal assistants, agency directors, franchise companies,” she said.
At the same time, she’s relishing now working “no longer than four to five hours a day”.
“When I was a shareholder in a large corporate business, we were at the office from 8am to 5pm each day, working after hours as well as most Saturday mornings and everyone was burning out,” she said.
