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GOOD MORNING FROM ELITE AGENT 👋 Good morning, and welcome to The Brief for Wednesday 19 August 2026. |
TRUE OR FALSE? The top of the Empire State Building was sold to New York as a mooring mast for passenger airships. Travellers would step off a zeppelin, walk down a gangplank and be on the footpath seven minutes later. (Scroll to the bottom for the answer!) |
In today's edition of The Brief - Fiona Blayney banned one word from her business back in 2015 and never looked back – we've pulled 30 of her lessons that you should keep close.
- A home that once took six months to shift just sold in two days for $1.79 million – Elle Ritson's off-market playbook is worth a look.
- Victoria's oldest agency has been trading since 1854, and it's just picked a new dance partner – hello, Hodges McGrath.
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TODAY'S FEATURE  The word Fiona Blayney banned from her businessIn 2015, Fiona Blayney banned a word from her vocabulary and never brought it back. The founder of Real+ and PM/ONE has spent two decades as the person Australia's property management businesses call when the numbers stop making sense, and more than a decade of her sharpest lessons – on cash flow, culling costs and running teams – have just been pulled from the Elite Agent archives. |
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What you'll learn in the full article: - The 'Bill' test: her take on firing "difficult" clients – one question decides whether cutting them costs more than keeping them.
- The club rule: why she scrapped the word "database" from property management and what she calls your rent roll instead.
- The barbecue test: the backyard scenario she uses to check whether your property managers can actually sell – and how to pass it.
Read the full article → |
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DEPT OF LENDING  Investors pull $4.2b from lending as rates biteNew mortgage lending fell for a second straight quarter, down 5 per cent to $97.6 billion, and it's investors doing most of the retreating – their lending dropped 10 per cent, the sharpest quarterly fall since 2015. Owner-occupiers held up better, off just 2 per cent. NSW average loan sizes shrank $19,000 to $842,000. |
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DEPT OF DATA  Regional values hold firm as capitals slide 2.5%Regional Australia is only down 0.1 per cent for the quarter, while the combined capitals dropped 2.5 per cent – but the buffer is wearing thin, with 22 of the top 50 regional centres now in decline. Kalgoorlie-Boulder is still selling in 11 days flat, while Bowral-Mittagong buyers are taking their time at a median of 86. |
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DEPT OF DATA  Glasgow homes sell in 11 days, UK data showsEleven days – that's how long it takes to agree a sale in Glasgow, the fastest of any UK city, against a national average of 30 days. Alto's Riccardo Iannucci-Dawson says the gap comes down to pricing discipline, not market conditions, with flats the clearest case of what happens when asking prices lag behind buyer reality. |
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HOW IT SOLD  A missed-out buyer becomes a two-day saleElle Ritson kept in touch with a family who missed out on one of her earlier listings, then matched them to a five-bedroom Helensburgh home before it hit the open market. The result: $1.79 million via off-market private treaty in just two days. Find out the story behind how it sold → Agents across Australia and New Zealand are turning sales into stories. getailsa.com → |
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MOVERS & SHAKERS  McGrath partners with Hodges to expand Melbourne footprintVictoria's oldest real estate agency is stepping into a national network. Hodges, trading since 1854 across Bayside Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula, has partnered with McGrath Estate Agents to form Hodges McGrath, spanning five Bayside offices plus Rye. Directors Michael Cooney, Julian Augustini and Andrew Boyce will lead the combined operation into its next chapter.  Brisbane agent's charity event aims to raise $104,000 againBrisbane's Sonya Treloar is hosting her second annual Hummingbird House fundraiser on 25 September, hoping to match the $104,000 raised last year by her 200 guests. The Ray White agent's dedication to Queensland's only children's hospice stems from a deeply personal tragedy in 1996, when she lost her premature son, Blake, at just six weeks old—a time when her family had no facility like Hummingbird House to support them through their grief. This year’s gathering will feature guest speakers and stories from families who have relied on the hospice, as the local community comes together once again. |
 Highland Group honours staff at Crown Sydney awards nightMore than 220 guests filled Crown Sydney's Glittering Pearl Ballroom for Highland Group's 2026 Awards Night, honouring long-serving team members alongside rising talent making their mark across the business. CEO David Highland said the night was less about results and more about the people who show up, support colleagues, and live the group's culture every day. |
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AGENTS ON SOCIAL My sales strategy: 10% pitch, 90% unblinking eye contact 👁️👄👁️ |
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TRUE OR FALSE: The top of the Empire State Building was sold to New York as a mooring mast for passenger airships. Travellers would step off a zeppelin, walk down a gangplank and be on the footpath seven minutes later. And the answer is … True - but it never once worked. The wind up there swirled so violently that the closest anyone got was a blimp hovering in 1931 to lower a bundle of newspapers on a rope. The mast quietly became a radio antenna instead. Sixty metres of headline amenity, built mainly to out-tall the Chrysler Building down the road. Every listing has one feature like that – the one nobody ever uses. via Smithsonian Air & Space. |
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