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Three experienced Mahurangi real estate agents struck out on their own this month.
They are Donna Wyllie, Debbie Aldred and Katie Boyle, who together have nearly 50 years real estate experience.
While the three are sharing office space in Warkworth’s River View Plaza, they are part of a more entrepreneurial approach to real estate being developed under the national Independent Agents brand, setup by Matt Jones of Puhoi.
The brand provides back-up administrative support, leaving the agents free to work with vendors and prospective purchasers.
“We have our own clients, work our own hours and set our own fees and advertising costs,” Donna says.
“This allows us so much more flexibility when putting together individual packages for people.”
Debbie adds that working as an individual frees up a lot of time that would otherwise be spent in meetings or dealing with in-house matters.
“It also means we have the freedom to market a property in the way we think will work best for the vendor.”
The agents say the idea was born out of the pandemic.
“We just found that working from home allowed us to be more creative without a lot of the stress that sometimes comes with being in an office. It provides a much better work-life balance,” Katie says.
They say the benefit for clients will be agents who are more focused, with less distractions, who have the freedom to tailor sales packages to suit people’s individual needs.
“We also won’t be crippled by heavy franchise fees and these savings will be passed on to clients.”
The agents say it is still a seller’s market, but the market may be reaching the peak.
“There is still plenty of stock available and although lending is getting tougher for first home buyers, there is a lot of activity in this sector.
“The opening of the new motorway is going to make a big difference. Since Covid started, more and more people are choosing to work from home for at least some part of the week, so living outside of Auckland is now an option.
This means there is demand for homes in Wellsford north to Mangawhai that are still under $1 million. The only proviso on that, however, is that the street has to have a fast internet service. That is a massive consideration these days.”
