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Brendan Wong
Real estate businesses that continually implement innovative solutions have a competitive edge in the market, according to an award-winning director.
Managing director of Realmark John Percudani said a majority of principals were heavily invested in the role of listing and selling property.
"I think for many of them that still takes the number one priority over everything. What they need to embrace is that they are business people and the business comes first. They need to put that as the primary priority – their role as the business leader, the business innovator, the business strategist, and I think for many of them that’s a real challenge,” he said.
Innovation was vital as consumers moved ahead of the real estate profession.
“They have adopted new innovative practices about the way they go about choosing an agent or choosing a property, and I think the real estate industry is probably still acting in some respects in a traditional command and control role,” he said.
Principals were often focused on the tangible side of their business when the key needed to be on the intangible, which was their culture, practices and values.
“In the industry, what we do is list and sell real estate how we've always done it: we talk about our signs, our websites, our personal profile, and then we ask the client why they should deal with us," he explained.
“An innovative approach is to actually flip that completely on its head. I often talk about flipping the model at Realmark – flipping our approach, flipping our thinking patterns, which is comfortable for a lot of people.
“What we really should be going to is the why first, not the what and the how.”
By discovering the why, principals would subsequently take an innovative approach where solutions were customised around consumers’ needs rather than imposing on clients what they felt they needed and having a one-size-fits-all approach.
Realmark were recently ranked 28 in BRW magazine’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, which included companies such as Coles and Commonwealth Bank.
“At Realmark, we’ve always sought to do things differently – not for the sake of being different, but because we truly believe in always searching for better ways of doing business,” Mr Percudani said.
Among some of the company’s innovations are their market and business management tools Set Date Sale and For Sale Xpress.
“We’d noticed certain problems developing with traditional sales strategies in WA, particularly around the risk of under-selling and under-renting properties,” Mr Percudani said.
“In response to that, we developed Set Date Sale, Tailored Solutions and For Sale Xpress, which are all designed to give our clients the confidence that they’ve achieved a premium outcome. It also gives more buyers and tenants a fairer opportunity to place an offer. In the case of Set Date Sale, the number of days a property is on the market is roughly half that of traditional sales methods.
“This proves that when these innovations are employed, they’re having a really positive impact and are helping to deliver outstanding results for our clients.”
