🤫 0 open homes, 0 days on market, and the hidden CRM database

GOOD MORNING FROM ELITE AGENT 👋

TODAY'S FEATURE

Your social followers already belong in your CRM

Every agent and office in your network is sitting on an audience most head offices never think to count. Richard Lindley argues that combined social reach – across hundreds of offices and thousands of agents – is a pipeline in disguise, not just a marketing channel. The catch is most networks are using AI to mine the database they already have, while ignoring the much larger pool of people who follow but haven't enquired yet. The full piece maps out how to close that gap without losing the personal touch that got those followers there.

What you'll learn in the full article:

• The AML content play: how one piece of centrally created content can be scheduled across hundreds of office and agent accounts without ever looking like the same corporate post twice.
• The talk-to-AI method: why handing AI your voice is a mistake, but handing it your knowledge is where the real time-saving happens.
• The quiet-market rule: the specific reason staying visible when listings dry up matters more than any ad spend ever could.

Read the full article →

DEPT OF DATA

Regional growth shifts to the inland

Have your buyers been priced out of the capital? Regional Australia is building itself a bigger runway, with more towns now sitting well under city medians. It's the kind of shift that changes what "affordable" means for your clients.

DEPT OF LENDING

Building approvals slip 3.6% despite strong yearly gains

New home approvals fell 3.6% in July, but Tom Devitt from HIA says don't panic – they're still 8.3% higher than this time last year. The bigger worry is what's coming: investor lending is down almost 20% and new home sales have fallen for three straight months, a lag effect Tom says hasn't hit approvals data yet.

DEPT OF MARKETING

Asking prices flat, but sales tell a different story

Realestate.co.nz says national asking prices have barely moved in three years, down just 3.2% to $849,362. Wellington's William Yip disagrees – he says actual sales have dropped nearly 20% nationally, and over 25% in Wellington, some categories down 40%. Worth knowing which number your vendors are quoting back at you.

HOW IT SOLD

$2.15m record sale with zero opens, zero days

Dominique Vasers had already spent months showing a Newcastle family properties before the vendors of 78 Patsys Flat Road even approached her. She matched them instantly, selling the five-bedroom Smiths Lake home off-market for a suburb record – no open homes, no days on market.

Find out the story behind how it sold →

How's your findability on AI? The agents who turn up have more content out there. getailsa.com →

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Todd Alexander appointed CMO of Century 21, BHG

A new international remit lands with Todd Alexander, appointed Chief Marketing Officer of Century 21 and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. He spent five years on Ray White Group's Senior Leadership Group leading a 20-person marketing team, after three years as Business Marketing & Performance Manager at Ray White Double Bay, and close to eight years across six marketing roles with InterContinental Hotels Group. He'll now set unified marketing strategy across Australasia, the UAE and India.

FOUNDIT strengthens Sydney Eastern Suburbs presence with appointment of George Goldsworthy as partner Eight years exclusively on the buyer's side of the table, across Elizabeth Bay, Double Bay, Vaucluse and Sydney's eastern beaches – George Goldsworthy has built a practice on referrals rather than advertising. She now joins FOUNDIT as partner, taking her local agent relationships and off-market access into the group's national research and technology platform, managing acquisitions for owner-occupiers, investors and developers.

Group named number one in Ray White rural network Twelve months after setting the goal, Ray White Rural Pittsworth | Warwick | Dalby | Chinchilla | Stanthorpe has been named the top business in the Ray White Rural network, according to the network. Principal James Croft, general manager Sally Croft, director James Arthur and Stanthorpe operations manager Alison Jones grew the group from three offices to five, adding Chinchilla and Stanthorpe and lifting the team to 35.

Barry Plant reports growth amid softer Victorian market Ninety individual best-month-on-record results, up from just 24 the year before – that's one of the many standout numbers from Barry Plant's FY2025–26 results, landing in a Melbourne market where most networks would settle for steady. Sales rose 12.25 per cent to 10,196 transactions and appraisals climbed to 28,427, growth CEO Lisa Pennell and head of commercial and finance Akshay Sharma say is spread across the group's more than 60 Victorian offices.

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Policy update: Westpac & St. George are shaking things up 🏦⚡️

TRUE OR FALSE:

At the peak of Japan's bubble in 1989, Sony bought a controlling stake in New York's Rockefeller Center – and six years later handed the keys back to its lender.

And the answer is …

False. Sony was actually busy buying Hollywood that year. The buyer was Mitsubishi Estate, which paid US$846 million for control of the Rockefeller Group and then kept buying. Rents never rose the way the spreadsheet promised, the debt bit, and by 1995 the whole thing was in bankruptcy court. The most famous address in America, undone by an optimistic rent assumption. via The Washington Post.