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GOOD MORNING FROM ELITE AGENT 👋 Good morning, and welcome to The Brief for Monday 12 October 2026. |
TRUE OR FALSE? Hearst Castle in California – one of the most lavish private homes in the world, built for publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst – was designed by the celebrated American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. (Scroll to the bottom for the answer!) |
In today's edition of The Brief - Buyer demand is down, yet buyers' agents' income hasn't budged, and it comes down to how they charge.
- Got half an hour and a folder of listing photos? Samantha McLean built a whole property website with one ChatGPT prompt.
- Older home that won't sell on its looks? Gordon Tran covered the streets with boards and letterbox drops and drew five bidders.
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TODAY'S FEATURE  Buyer demand fell. Buyers' agents' revenue didn't.Nearly half of Australia's buyers' agents (48%) say buyer demand has dropped significantly over the past 12 months, yet they aren't reporting a matching slide in income. The likely reason is how they charge: 76% now work on a fixed fee, so a softer market doesn't shrink the invoice. Leon Hayes, who created the index behind the numbers, also flags a pipeline risk worth weighing before your next fee conversation. |
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What you'll learn in the full article: - The $15,000 fee maths: A worked example showing why a 2% commission agent takes a 17% hit when the average purchase slips from $900,000 to $750,000, and whose income doesn't move at all.
- The referral risk check: Why having 84% of clients arrive through repeat or referral business looks great for this year's revenue and less great for knowing where next year's clients are coming from.
- The raise-the-floor argument: Why more than half of agents now want stricter regulation, and why that's less about red tape and more about protecting the value of the credential.
Read the full article → |
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TOGETHER WITH TRANSFORM Twelve days into Transform, our 30-day AI challenge, this is what participants are saying to each other. - “My win this week is no longer being fearful of AI.” – a director in Victoria
- “What stood out to me was how much you can learn about a potential client before even meeting them.” – a property management director in NSW
- “I am completely blown. Instantly I felt very behind as this is not something I ever dreamed of getting support with like this. Love it.” – a property management director in Tasmania
Registrations for this round are closed. Put your name down and we'll email you when the next one opens. Join the waitlist → |
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DEPT OF WEALTHY CLIENTS  Sydney's prestige market may be near its floorA $75 million Point Piper sale, Sydney's biggest of 2026 so far, led a quarter where the big deals finally came back. Dyson Austen's Simon Feilich thinks the top end is now within 5% of its bottom, with half the quarter's biggest sales landing in September. His tip for what moves it next isn't rates – it's the sharemarket. |
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DEPT OF PM  Capital city rents pull ahead of the regionsThe rent surge has swung back to the capitals, where advertised rents rose 7.7% over the year to September, more than double the regional pace. Darwin topped the capitals at 13.8%, yet some regional pockets are still outrunning the cities. Megan Lieu from realestate.com.au thinks vacancies loosening faster in the regions may be part of the reason. |
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DEPT OF MARKETING  One prompt, 51 photos, one single property websiteA Facebook post promised to "one shot" a listing site from a folder of property photos. Samantha McLean took that as a challenge and gave ChatGPT 51 photos and a single prompt. About 28 minutes later it handed back a live site with a poolside film, a narrated tour and a working enquiry form. The full prompt is in the article, along with what she'd add next time. |
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HOW IT SOLD  Five bidders, one saturated suburb, $72k over reserveAn older home in St Albans, Melbourne wasn't going to sell on its bones, so Gordon Tran flooded the streets with boards and letterbox drops instead. Five registered bidders turned up, pushing the price to $707,000 – $72,000 above reserve in just 24 days. Find out the story behind how it sold → AI cannot cite content that was never written. getailsa.com → |
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CELEBRITY HOMES  142-year-old Katanga mansion heads to auctionSamantha and Brad Hopper, the couple behind a $28.5 million Sunshine Beach sale, are heading back to the coast and listing Katanga, their reimagined heritage mansion on Hamilton Hill. And yes, there's a concealed theatre with its own bar. Damon Warat and Nick Roche of Ray White Ascot take it under the hammer on 28 October. Read the full article → |
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MOVERS & SHAKERS  eXp founder Glenn Sanford hands global leadership to Leo ParejaLeo Pareja, who has run eXp Realty since April 2024, is the new chief executive of its parent company, AGNT. He co-founded proptech Remine in 2016 and led the group's NextHome acquisition, and steps up after a unanimous board vote, with founder Glenn Sanford staying on as chairman. Leo's stated focus is giving every agent on the platform the tools and technology for an AI-native market. |
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AGENTS ON SOCIAL Buyer, lender, photographer, new lead, vendor wanting an update… just another "quiet day" in real estate. 📱🏡 |
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TRUE OR FALSE: Hearst Castle in California – one of the most lavish private homes in the world, built for publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst – was designed by the celebrated American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. And the answer is … False. It was Julia Morgan, the first woman granted an architect's licence in California, who designed some 800 buildings. Hearst asked her for a country house in 1919. She was on the job for 28 years. via Britannica. |
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