Tony Roumanous is no stranger to real estate. Over the past twenty seven years he has held a comprehensive variety of roles in the industry; everything from property manager, sales agent and principal right through to NSW area manager for Australia’s largest real estate group.
A few years ago, his success in real estate led to an approach from one of Australia’s largest mortgage aggregators and a subsequent offer to take on the state management role for Ray White Financial Services.
In that role he developed a program to effectively integrate mortgage broking and real estate sales. Under his tutelage many real estate businesses were able to successfully offer a broking service which provided real value to their customers. Most importantly, it also increased the agent’s ability to control the sales process.
In January 2008 Tony decided it was time to get back to running his own business. He left the corporate world to buy into an independent real estate office in the western suburbs of Sydney with two existing principals. Upon first analysing the operation, he found many areas that had the potential to improve. One of those was obvious given his recent experiences - finance and mortgage broking.
The office had already been using a local mortgage broker, but with less than outstanding results. There was no set process in place for referrals - if a customer specifically asked for help the lead would be passed through but this rarely happened.
Tony began to implement the blueprint he had so carefully developed in his time at Ray White Financial Services. Within several months, a dedicated finance broker had joined the team and processes were slowly being introduced into the various steps of the sales process. By the end of the business’ first year of trading with Tony as co-principal, the broker had written loans for 30% of all properties sold through the office. And Tony says this is only the beginning.
“It takes time to get things right and the success of any aspect of a real estate business comes down to having effective processes. And it’s not a simple thing! By the time we’re finished, there will be a process in place every step of the way. Each and every potential vendor or buyer who comes through our real estate business will be touched by our broking arm too” Tony said.
Perhaps surprisingly, his motivation is about not getting a commission for writing loans. Tony says the main driver is actually about control - control of the sales process and control over the outcome.
“Even in the short time I’ve been involved in this business, our broker has saved eight deals that would never have settled without his involvement. The whole point of using a broker is to make sure everything possible is done to get the deal gets over the line, particularly in the current market where getting finance is tougher than ever. Getting paid for doing it is just a bonus.”
In Tony’s experience, real estate offices not using a broker successfully generally do not have a good understanding of how or why to do it, nor the business processes in place to make it effective.
“It’s not enough to rely on salespeople pushing the mortgage service and trying to generate leads for the broker - the outcome will never be consistent. The service has got to be effectively integrated as part of the real estate business. When a principal has real control he doesn’t need to entice anyone to do the right thing - the processes ensure things run smoothly.”
“Without the right processes and control running a business is like a game of snakes and ladders, you’ll always end up at the bottom, tripped up by something you didn’t see coming.”
“Getting that consistency is not easy, but it creates such a great outcome. And the challenge is so worthwhile - I’m loving it!”
