The spirit of innovation and curiosity was on show at Ray White’s annual corporate conference, Crows Nest 2024, on the Gold Coast this week.

Every one of the 190 Ray White corporate team members at this year’s Crows Nest conference felt appreciated for the impact they’ve had over another extraordinary year in real estate markets across Australasia.

The three-day conference, held at The Langham on the Gold Coast, is the most important event on the leading network’s calendar for its corporate team.

The most anticipated day of the conference is always Curiosity Day and this year 55 corporate team members delivered their thought-provoking, and often hilarious, five minute pitches to their peers to make the leading business even better.

Chairman Brian White is often quoted as saying, ‘there’s no such thing as a bad curiosity, the only bad thing is having no curiosity.’  

This year’s curiosities saw topics covered from how Ray White can offer a tiered service offering for property management, to adding team recognition into the awards program, to a new pathway for sales associates, plus a curiosity about a recruitment hub.

Respected business development leader Martin Millard said it would be easy to see how Ray White could easily double its entire business within five years with just one extra sale per agent per month.

And in keeping with the auctioneering foundation of the group, the conference culminated in a hilarious fun mock auction with fake Crows Nest dollars issued to the attendees.

Ray White Managing Director Dan White said the annual conference remained important on the calendar to check in to see if the group was moving forward.

“For a 122 year old group like ours, the test we are always asking ourselves is ‘are we at our best?’ Crows Nest is synonymous with maintaining our spirit of curiosity,” he said.

“The only way the group can remain young and ambitious is to have curiosity in all parts of our business.

“We are not a corporatised group, and we never want to crush anyone's ideas or ambition. We never want to take away the magic of what we are.

“We always want to act like the market leader, yet we understand there is so much opportunity for improvement.”

Ray White’s market share across Australia and New Zealand is at an all-time high at 14.55 per cent, the highest of its competitors.

Ray White’s auction share sits at a dominant 25 per cent across Australia.

One of the keys to Ray White’s success is the cross collaboration between the White family businesses, LMG and Ailo, among others, plus the family experience.

“As we grow and keep pushing we need to be reminded of our family values. We will always support our members and our corporate team for as far as we possibly can, until we can't. We do believe in challenging everyone to be better,” Dan White said.

LMG executive chairman Sam White said the fast growing group now had 5500 brokers on its platform across Australia and 1500 brokers across New Zealand.

"We are growing at a six per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). In the last year, the group lodged 276,611 loans, 198,180 were approved and 195,507 loans were settled,” Sam White said.

LMG is by far the largest aggregator in Australia with significant market share. Three quarters of all loans in Australia are arranged together through brokers, with customers were choosing brokers over banks highlighted by a 95 per cent satisfaction score.

Ben White spoke about Ailo, his technology platform for property management which replaces a lot of legacy software systems.

“It provides a lot of benefits for the agencies and improves productivity and team satisfaction. The platform is experiencing multi-sided growth, with 65,000 properties under management - mostly from Ray White - and we have 200,000 on the platform, mostly renters, landlords and property managers,” Ben White said.

He said the next areas of focus were agency and property management growth plus owner occupiers.

“Complexity is actually good for our business and we have books of scenarios ready in place in case of changes in regulation but it’s the pace of change that can be hard,” he said.

A commonly held belief about the group's market performance is that Ray White sails best in light winds, so analyst Jordan Tormey tested the theory.

“In fact, we are actually very versatile in handling change full stop. From COVID-19 to the GFC, we were able to shift and deal with any changes,” Mr Tormey said.

“Over the last 18 years we have grown our market share to 14.55 per cent, from nine per cent, with a big acceleration since 2019. What is driving this growth? Our competitive edge is that we are seeing more efficiency in both our offices and our salespeople.”

Ray White’s Together Initiative has grown from strength to strength with more corporate members than ever engaged in the active community.

Together champions Georgia Holden and Natalie Hortz highlighted the year of organisational development with all the fun, engaging and interactive programs that the corporate team ran.

From STEPtember and the Leadership Academy to the Springboard Academy, Movember and the monthly corporate updates.

“Physiological safety is incredibly important for productivity and for creating results in the workplace, and together we accomplished a lot this year,” Ms Holden said.

“We certainly like moving for a cause, we have more people qualified in Mental Health First Aid and we are making our mark on the culture of Ray White.”

Ray White New Zealand executive chairman Carey Smith also facilitated a panel with James Linacre of RWC, Kelly Tatlow of Concierge and Stephen Nell of Ray White Rural and Livestock.

Ms Kelly, who has a background in banking and has been with the group for 20 years, has built the market leading Concierge centre.

The Brisbane-based team with 125 staff looks after Loan Market and Ray White’s clients and generates the vast majority of its income from selling insurance.

“Concierge grew 22 per cent in the last year for the volume of work we do,” she said.

James Linacre said the recent commercial rebrand certainly gave RWC a new identity for the commercial network.

“We have 800 people across 58 businesses and we did $110 million in GCI last year. Institutional price values are right down but the private part of the market is very strong,” Mr Linacre said.

The decentralisation of talent from big US corporations had been an opportunity for RWC. Stephen Nell is responsible for growing the rural franchisees to 150, from 70.

“We were tracking along nicely until some big corporations started acquiring our members. We are selling more than double our competitors but we are under pressure like never before as we are a target,” he said.

Ray White New Zealand CEO Daniel Coulson outlined a case that delved into the decision-making and early warning signs of leadership challenges at Ray White Ponsonby, once a top-performing real estate business in Auckland, New Zealand.

Mr Coulson examined the leadership and strategic shifts that led to business decline, outlining key interventions and outcomes to provide insight into managing similar challenges.

Ray White members had 1.8 million interactions on the NurtureCloud platform last month. Michal Kot believed his start-up prop tech business had the potential to transform the real estate industry worldwide.

“We are ambitious geeks. My team are all smart and creative people who have come from industry leading places like Google, Atlassian, Canva and Uber. We can achieve a lot together, we can go faster,” Mr Kot said.

“A lot of my team believes in the mission of the company. We love using technology to innovatively solve difficult problems. We are continually driven by our customers. We believe our best practice can be replicated overseas, and we could build a global prop tech company.

“We have the right base and the backing of Ray White and this is what gets us excited every single day.”

Ray White Group chief strategy officer Mark McLeod said the ability for NurtureCloud to go overseas to retain their top developer talent was extraordinarily important for them.

“We are fully supportive but we will keep pushing them and keep the tension in our relationship. NurtureCloud is an evolution of us. This is our real differentiator,” he said.

“NurtureCloud is a nod to data and to being a differentiator, it’s a love letter and we sit here today with 1.8 million interactions a month and I can see a time when we will double that very soon.”

Carey Smith led a panel with Ray White Queensland director Tony Warland and Ray White Buderim’s Brett Graham about the succession planning project inside Ray White called, Project Nova.

Project Nova offered a “graceful and stylish” way for long term business owners to depart after a lifetime of adding intelligence and wisdom.

“Some people were simply terrified of showing weakness in the field but as the project kept going now people are open to these conversations,” Mr Warland said.

Mr Graham said “succession planning” used to be such a taboo topic and now it was firmly embedded into business plans.

Ray White Head of Organisational Behaviour Natalie Hortz led a case study into the lessons from Ray White’s brand refresh and implementation of its brand management platform in 2017. The goal of a centralised system to present a premium, unified identity meant building a single platform to house all local suppliers.

It was one of the biggest change projects rolled out to the network in the past 10 years. The case study looked at the challenges that arose during the transition along with identifying significant learnings for future change projects. 

At the Chairman’s Cup awards, Ray White Group head of performance and recognition Bianca Denham won the top award, the Chairman’s Cup. She has made her mark on the group by driving performance and recognition across all aspects of the business through market leading programs unique to the Ray White Group. 

“To say I was surprised to receive this award was an understatement. To have my name etched into the cup along with some of the most influential leaders in our company is an honour I was not expecting,” Ms Denham said.

“I am beyond proud and hope to do the award justice in the coming years.”

Ray White chief information officer Ben Cowie said he was incredibly honoured to receive the prestigious White Family Trophy which is awarded to those in the group who have made a significant impact in all areas of the business. 

“I was blown away to receive this award but it’s a testament to the hard work, dedication and passion of my entire team. Winning this trophy is a huge personal achievement. I am so proud to have worked for the White family for 13 years.”

Congratulations to all the 2024 award winners!

• Chairman's Cup - Bianca Denham
• Curiosity Award - Leteicha Wilson
• Challenge Cup - Jason Andrew & the Queensland team
• True Believer Award - Alina Gavrila
• Myf Porter Award - Shaun Doyle
• Cutting Edge Award - Peter Merrick
• Further Together Award - Natalie Hortz
• Next Generation Award - David Simpson & Bridgette Collis
• Christine Gray Award - Kirby Pearce & Monique Hayden
• White Family Trophy - Ben Cowie