UrbanX Featured in AFR: Platform challenges real estate traditions

The real estate model has changed and in a recent AFR article, “Platform challenges real estate traditions,” the threat to real estate agents who don’t change their approach to the declining market is made clear.

What’s changed?

It’s no secret that Aussies are obsessed with real estate. Buying and selling property has moved away from being a transaction between two parties, into conversations at BBQ’s filled with opinions about investment strategies, market conditions, interest rates, and the suburbs to watch.  

In fact, we’re so obsessed it’s even crossed into mainstream TV, with no shortage of shows about real estate and property investment and now entire series featuring Real Estate Agents themselves. 

But despite advances into our culture and changes in how we consume real estate information, the industry itself has lacked innovation and remained largely unchanged for over a century. 

“Buyers now browse online rather than browsing shop-front windows.”

Traditionally, the industry has been dominated by a handful of national franchise groups. Those groups consist of what are often locally owned and operated agencies at the suburban level, who have benefited from using a well-known brand.   

However, with developments in both technology and consumer behaviour (buyers now browse online rather than browsing shop-front windows), the traditional franchise model is set to feel the full weight of disruption. 

And it’s clear the industry agrees, with UrbanX recently being named on the Financial Review Fast Starters List 2022.

In a follow up interview featured in the AFR, Ripe for disruption: platform challenges real estate agent traditions, UrbanX CEO Dan Argent explains how the platform is designed with the real estate agent’s best interests at heart, and how UrbanX’s partnership approach shifts the power away from the franchise brands to the agents, who often see up to half their income taken from them.

As quoted in the article, Dan comments:

“The real estate industry was designed 100 years ago by what are now the big franchise groups… Technology has enabled everything to operate from the cloud. And if it can operate from the cloud, it can be operated remotely. That’s what we do. We specialise in it.”

The AFR article discusses the current declining housing market, which is bad news for sellers, but also impacts the agents who’s commissions decline as house values do.

So, what’s the best way to combat declining income? Keep more of what you earn and control more of what you do. And luckily, helping established agents do exactly that is the UrbanX mission, allowing them to retain between 75-90% of their GCI. As Dan says:

“They [agents] can come to us with nothing, just their track record and their experience,” he adds. “We will design their brand, design their website, design their templates, come up with their marketing strategy and, on an ongoing basis, do all their back-end administration.”

With over 90 partners (40 launched in 2022 alone) and over $2billion in sales, it’s clear the market is responding to the new approach to real estate.

“The supercharged growth that UrbanX is achieving is an indicator that real estate is the next industry set for a major overhaul.”

See the full article on by Australian Financial Review here.

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