It might be ditching the suit, or having an office that’s more day-spa than corporate, but whatever Daniel Argent is doing, it’s working. Argent’s young firm, Urban Property Agents, was just named the best small agency in Queensland at the 2015 REIQ Awards for Excellence.

“It’s exciting, especially because it was the third year we were a finalist,” says Argent. Last year, Urban Property Agents set over half a dozen street price records, and sold over 90% of properties they took to auction. “We had a great year in terms of results, but it just doesn’t have to be boring," says Argent, whose career in real estate began when he was 20. Originally studying law at university, he deferred his degree and moved to London where he took an office job. “During that year I decided I didn’t want an office job, and decided that law probably wouldn’t be great, considering that,” he says. “I decided to try real estate and loved it straight away.” He then spent the next 7 years working for Sissons Estate Agents. In 2010, Argent was named Queensland’s best salesperson by the REIQ, and the following year, at age 27, he decided to start his own business.

“I just felt I was ready to forge my own direction with my own business, and I wanted to develop a certain culture,” says Argent. Urban Property Agents now has 12 staff. “We’re very results driven but we have fun doing it,” he says. “Everybody just gets along well, we socialize together but we work really hard to get fantastic results. That might sound normal, perhaps, but I can tell you that most of the staff that joined me were all existing agents and none of them came from that. They all said how bad their work environment was, that it was not fun, everyone was against each other there was too much internal competition. Our business is fun and youthful and energetic, and we want to portray that externally but it’s the same internally.”

Argent believes the youthful fun factor of his firm helps earn clients’ trust. “It makes a big difference. I’ve had people say it’s like walking into a day spa not so much a real estate agency. Everything we’ve tried to do is to make us more approachable. You don’t go into a stuffy meeting room, our meeting area is that front area [where they have a couch and photography books]. We don’t generally really suits, we have smart casual dress sense. Where I used to work, it was strongly recommended that you did wear a suit, and when I was in my last year there on my way out, I initially ditched the tie and then the jacket and just wore a shirt, and people were commenting. They’d say, ‘Oh, it’s so nice to see an agent not wearing a suit, you all look stupid,’ and honestly, people were commenting all the time how good it was to see that.”

Looking ahead, Argent plans to expand by hiring more agents this year and opening another Brisbane office within the next 12 months. He believes Queensland’s property market is set for a really strong year, and says there’s definitely scope for prices to increase in Brisbane. “I reckon there’s heaps of room to grow. It’s only February and we’re already experiencing about 40% of our inquiries from Sydney and Melbourne on properties, and the main thing they’re all saying is affordability. I reckon we’ll get a lot of interstate interest this year, as well as a lot of people locally." Argents says a lot of renters are looking to buy because low interest rates make paying rent seem silly.

"We’ve got southern interest driving our market, and tenants turning into property owners driving our market, and then the usual people just moving market. I reckon Queensland is going to be really strong this year.”