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Investing in training agents and using tech tools to foster client relationships saw Ray White Marsden succeed in this year’s REB ranking, according to its group CEO.
The Brisbane-based agency placed 11th in the 2024 Top 50 Sales Offices ranking after selling almost 580 properties for a total of $330.5 million during the 2023 calendar year.
Group CEO and principal Avi Khan attributed the results to several strategies, including the strength of his team and ability to navigate a changing property market.
The office has recruited established and new agents over the past three to four years, and focused on training and growing them.
“When new agents join us, we look at what they were writing and how they were performing, and we help them grow when they come to our agency,” Khan told REB.
The agency has experienced significant growth in productivity from its agents over the past two to three years due to its commitment to training them.
Khan said the agents are trained by network trainers and top-performing external agents.
“As a leader, it’s been great to sit back and watch our new and established agents grow. We want to grow those fresh agents as well as those who have stayed with us and been loyal to us over the past few years,” he said.
Building face-to-face relationships
According to Khan, Ray White Marsden has primarily focused on building and maintaining face-to-face relationships with clients, something he increasingly values as the use of technology grows.
“With the big reliance on property technology at the moment, we looked at it and thought about how we could use it without changing the fundamentals of real estate (which revolves around the client),” he explained.
“Many new pieces of technology have entered the market in the last few years. We’re using proptech to grow our face-to-face interactions with our clients, whereas some people are using proptech to get out of that. We don’t want to rely on texts and emails.”
The agency monitors how many times its staff calls and meets clients every week to establish and build relationships, he added.
Business from interstate
Alongside this, Ray White Marsden has seen growth in the number of interstate customers interested in purchasing property in Brisbane (particularly buyers from Sydney and Melbourne).
Indeed, around 60 per cent of the agency’s clientele is interstate, Khan said, which has led the agency to create a presence in Sydney and increase its footprint across different states to target those potential buyers.
The marketplace is “converging” between Queensland and states like NSW and Victoria for two reasons, Khan observed.
“Firstly, Brisbane is a low-price entry state and the rental yields have been strong for the past 12 to 24 months. We recognised early that our buyers are going to be investors and that helps us create competition for the properties that we sell,” he said.
This prompted Khan and his team to create and nurture relationships with investors, he added.
“We always knew where our clients were but that’s no longer the case because interstate investors have different addresses and it’s harder to locate them,” he said.
“I think building relationships with them has set us apart in the industry and in Brisbane.”
The importance of building relationships has been underscored by the reduction in the duration of investors holding property. Khan said Ray White Marsden’s internal data showed that they hold it for around 2.7 years after purchase.
Ray White Marsden largely sold properties ranging between $700,000 to $1 million in 2023, but also sold a range of other properties, from $250,000 units to $2.5 million penthouse apartments in the city.
As for how other agencies could emulate Ray White Marsden’s success, Khan concluded that they remain cognisant of the fundamentals of real estate, which is to build robust relationships with clients.
He concluded: “The silver bullet will always be relationships with buyers and sellers. Reassess your tech stack to see how you can make the process more efficient without taking away from having face-to-face conversations with your clients.”
Click here to download the complete REB Top 50 Sales Offices 2024 rankings and report.
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