Partnership
We put you first Our promise to Australian consumers. The commitment to our membership. It’s a defining statement that makes First National Real Estate the outstanding business partner of choice. First National Real Estate offers more than a brand, a philosophy, or a mission statement. Our network offers a unique business proposition that places our members in a position of strength, independence and technological leadership. Allow us to introduce you to the world of First National Real Estate. The network that puts your interests first so your business can reach its full potential. Ray Ellis Chief Executive Officer
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together As a professional estate agent, you understand that peak sales performance requires determination, an ability to adopt the best ideas, the support of quality people and the ambition to succeed. But, the demands of managing a complex sales and technology based enterprise risks distracting you from what you do best… selling! So you’re wondering what sor t of suppor t and additional exposure a nationally recognised brand can offer your business. But there’s lots of noise out there about franchises, and their pitfalls, plus you’ve heard about restrictions, overbearing corporate management, and the high costs. Then there’s those long contracts to think about, binding you, seemingly endlessly, to the unknown.
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At First National Real Estate – We put you first. We have created an environment and business model that fosters the genuine sharing of ideas, values the management input of our membership, enables flexibility and delivers powerful, relevant products and services. Our crisp, modern brand aligns your business with the most recognised symbol in Australian real estate, delivering broad demographic reach while identifying your leadership in real estate services and technology. A comprehensive technology suite assures First National members maintain their lead over competitors with the most sophisticated tools, digital marketing, and social/mobile strategy available. However, despite the rapid pace of change and innovation at First National, we remain dedicated to the fundamental business model created by our founding estate agents 31 years ago. Our Board of Directors continues to comprise member estate agents who direct the network on behalf of its stakeholders.
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It’s called a co-operative – most certainly not a franchise! First National exists to give you the tools to improve your profile, not to make you compete against other franchisees to improve network profits. As a not for profit entity, First National Real Estate is unique in that every dollar of income is invested back into the network’s products and services, promotion and expansion. In other words, you get more ‘bang for your bucks’ at First National. We were set up by agents, for the benefit of agents, and we focus all our efforts on making First National Real Estate the most respected, professional and forward thinking brand in the country. So, at 31 we’re mature! But not too mature to forget we need to be bold in our undertakings, youthful in our enthusiasm, creative in our planning and wise in our governance. The future is vibrant and we’re moving forward… PARTNER WITH US!
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freedom of choice
A unique proposition Whether launching a brand new business, operating as an independent agency, or changing from another network, First National Real Estate holds equal appeal. With new business start-ups, most estate agents find that the transition from top salesperson to business operator is a steep and slippery learning curve. At a time when every dollar counts, mistakes in choice of products, technologies and branding are critical. First National takes the time consuming guesswork out of product and technology choices by offering proven, off-the-shelf solutions. There’s no need to waste valuable time researching web design, brand creation and the confusing array of office management solutions. Nor do you need to worry about how to generate content to service the exponentially increasing demands of social media. We’ve got that covered with First National Social Express, media releases, blog, facebook and Twitter content that you can cut and paste. Just choose the products you want and our Member Services Managers will help you put them in place.
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Independent? Keep your name and profit from ours! When joining First National you can keep your good name and grow with the additional listings and referrals that alignment with a nationally recognised brand, backed by a team of experts, brings.
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Franchisee? We know you might have to wait to exit your contract, but it’ll be worth it. Locked down for years? Not at First National. Unlike franchises and many other networks, we want you to have ultimate flexibility. So we don’t ask you to sign a commitment exceeding one year. But despite that freedom, the vast majority of our members have stayed with us for over 20 years and many are now celebrating 30th anniversaries!
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down to
business What’s in it for me? First National Social Express Want to jump on board with Social Media but just can’t find the time? No problem. Hook into our stream of Facebook and Twitter content and keep doing what you do best – listing and selling. We’ll automatically publish to your pages for you. You just upload the occasional photo of happy customers, some local status updates, and we’ll look after the rest. First National Social Express will reach out to your community with engaging real estate and home-life orientated posts, forming the foundation of new client relationships that drive business over the long-term.
Gateway Our Intranet – connecting you with everything First National Content, Content, Content! Scan our noticeboard; navigate our products, services and alliance partners, explore special offers, find solutions, use our news feeds, regular media releases and toolbar.
Gateway
Social Express
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Platform The office management solution – your launch pad! Platform is the single entry database management solution that is the foundation for your business. It offers activity plans that make the most of your customer database and complies with state specific legislative requirements. It manages your contacts, appraisals, listings, Trust accounts, and provides management reports to help you keep your finger on the pulse, right down to individual salespeople. Also available in sales and rentals only modules, remote access enables you to run your business from anywhere.
eMarketing and Information Systems The most effective web strategy in Australia – ever! Our competitors would kill to know how we do it. Some invest 10 times as much yet still can’t match our results. 2.38 million property views per month; 650,000+ visitors per annum, 46,500 properties online, 57% of traffic from search engines, top 10 Google rankings, advanced search engine optimisation delivering customers to your ‘e’ door.
First National Websites All new members receive a contemporary, templated First National Website worth $10,000 in development costs at start-up. An extremely competitive monthly package allows you to manage your own content and updates at no charge, as and when you choose. Develop your own individual look and feel with the might of First National’s’ research and development behind you. First National Websites also offer a Mobile Website upgrade. For a small, onceonly fee, your mobile website simplifies access for Smartphone users.
Websites
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Platform
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Lead Generation First National’s Lead Generation programme is designed to deliver prospective customers to members using a range of complimentary consumer advisory products such as the Home Buyers Guide, the Home Seller’s Guide and the Property Management Guide. Periodical competitions and marketing initiatives create further lead generation opportunities.
Mobile Apps For the social/mobile age First National offers a range of Apps to assist members and consumers. The ‘First National Real Estate’ App helps your customers find your office and your listings. People can favourite the properties they like, share with friends using Facebook and Twitter, or contact you for more information on your landline, mobile phone, or by email. Two Utopia based Apps, Mobile Register and Mobile Lister, take Utopia into the field. Using your iPad, register customers’ wish lists at open houses and auctions and impress them with your regular, automated notifications of matching listings. With Mobile Lister, demonstrate to potential vendors and landlords how increasing or decreasing their price would affect buyer demand – accessing your buyer database live with a sliding price scale. Our ‘Business Boosters’ App gives you weekly hot tips to trump the competition. We’ll help you boost your profile, listings, sales, rentals and management skills. We push updates to your Smartphone and you can bookmark and check them off as you complete them. The ‘Property Management Reporter’ App lets you dispense with time-robbing condition report paperwork. Grab your iPad and never look back. Walk from room to room, taking snaps as you go, and create your condition report with simple keystrokes. By the time you leave a property, the job’s done! Just sync with your desktop for fast reporting and a permanent record. Our ‘Agent Calculator’ App helps quickly answer all sorts of in-the-field questions. How many Acres is one Hectare? What’s the commission on $457,234? No need to estimate. First National’s ‘Agent Calculator’ gives you the answers! Australia and New Zealand commission calculations with GST breakdowns, Stamp Duty calculations, rental yield calculations, feet to metres, squares to square metres, and Contract Settlement date calculations. All sorted!
First National
Mobile Register
Mobile Lister
Business Boosters
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Property Management Reporter
Agent Calculator
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First National Commercial A commercial brand to ‘power up’ your business With a crisp, clean image, First National Commercial offers the choice of two levels of membership. ‘Stand-lone’ is aimed at members wishing to launch a 100% commercial agency. ‘Co-Branded’ offers existing First National members the opportunity to expand their chiefly residential agency into the commercial arena, with the support of larger players and the backing of the network. Supported by operation manuals for administration, marketing and property management, First National Commercial offers competitive advertising rates, a referral system, conferences and the support of a national manager. The Commercial QuickStart programme sets the industr y standard for a model commercial office. Follow the step-by-step guidelines and you’ll accelerate your growth.
First National Foundation Raising funds to assist and engage with communities throughout Australia No other network has such a strongly developed strategy to differentiate itself in the marketplace. Our partnership with Red Cross enables our members to promote their philanthropic efforts and co-brand with one of the world’s most recognised and respected brands – helping their community to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies and disasters effectively.
Property Market Outlook Produced twice-annually, Property Market Outlook is First National’s statement to the media about property market hotspots, market trends and anticipated dynamics. It generates enormous publicity to boost your profile. By completing the online survey, your office receives an individually tailored copy for its website and a media release for your local newspaper.
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Multi-Lingual Agents Nearly three million Australians speak languages other than English. First National helps you to reach out by enabling translation of your website to the five most spoken other languages – Chinese, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese and Arabic. There are also promotional window cards explaining how Utopia delivers the goods if you’re a Landlord, Buyer, Seller or someone who’s renting.
Search Maximiser Helping more customers find you before the competition It’s all well and good to have a great website but it’s no use if customers can’t find you, or worse still, they find your competitors first! Search Maximiser is First National’s secret weapon to maximise your agency’s visibility to both search engines and customers. 88% of First National members enjoy top 10 Google search engine results – ensuring ease of access to your listings for consumers.
First National Advertising A one-stop advertising, listing submissions, artwork generation and delivery platform First National Advertising empowers you to take care of your advertising and agent marketing tasks from one powerful online ordering, campaign management and design system. It provides the freedom to consolidate all office marketing, to put a campaign to bed in minutes, dramatically reduce the impact of errors, and coordinate advertising without employing an expensive advertising agency. Finally, advertising control is in your hands. Now, First National Advertising incorporates our Next Generation Listing Submissions.These can be tailored to each and every listing pitch, printed on your own printer, on-demand in just minutes. Run rings around competitors with class leading design and concise content.
Advertising
Search Maximiser
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Communications A regular cycle of First National communications keep you and staff informed of industry developments and internal network news. Twice-monthly proforma media releases assist your business to build local profile with free newspaper editorial and social media content. Proforma media releases are also available to help you promote successes, anniversaries, awards and all manner of general newsworthy events to local press. Monthly sales, rental and commercial customer newsletter templates are available through Utopia and Gateway. Next Generation Listing Submissions enable your sales agents and property managers to quickly create individual listing submissions for each and every potential client. You can print in-house, using your own colour printer, or order professionally printed generic versions for the whole team. Other communications keep you abreast of the network’s commercial and property management news. Our news blog and social media streams provide additional content that makes life easy.
Quality Assurance A standard that’s internationally recognised! So what’s your point of difference? In a sea of mediocrity, no other network offers a Quality Assurance certification that’s recognised by consumers as a genuine guarantee of service standards. Quality Assurance delivers your business instant step-by-step procedures of the best known methods to execute everyday tasks. It integrates a culture of continuous improvement, delivers greater consistency in customer service, leads to fewer mistakes, greater financial stability, reduced risk, lower Professional Indemnity insurance premiums and the highest levels of profitability in the network.
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Property Management Support Property management forms the backbone of many First National agencies so First National supports the development of products, training and services through the provision of a National Property Manager. We also don’t charge any fees in association with your Property Management income. That’s right, no fees! Our annual Property Management conference gives you and staffs the opportunity to build support networks, share experiences, compare systems and methods, and benefit from the specialist professional development presentations. First National Professional Development provides additional property management resources and our ‘Renting Your Investment’ online listing submission is designed to help your staff up-sell landlords to your highest management fee package.
Regional Specialisation Just over half of First National’s membership is located in regional Australia. Now in its 31st year of operation, the network has a vibrant regional chapter. This actively caters for the special interests of the network’s many regional members.
Almanac First National’s yearly Almanac is designed to help you make the most of your membership and have your say in the network’s management. Key Regional Council contacts in each state help you directly reach your colleagues in office bearing positions to discuss your business needs. Management and Member Services team contacts help you get in touch with people you need, when you need them. 2013/14 Almanac
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National Website Consumers want more and our forthcoming National Website is set to lead the field. Real estate is a life-journey so we’ve identified the stages our customers recognise and need help with. Plus, everything’s geared toward leading them to an expert – that’s you! First homebuyers, upsizers, downsizers, investors, retirees, rural changers and life’s challenges; whatever the question, First National has the answer. Optimised for Social Media engagement as well as the next stage of search engine optimisation (SEO), the new National Website breaks with tradition and delivers more than any other brand
Utopia A powerful listing tool to grow your contact database Exclusive to First National, Utopia provides the most powerful prospecting tool available in Australian real estate today. It grows your customer database, adding to the capital value and saleability of your enterprise. By automatically building your contact database, Utopia provides you with a bulletproof system that guarantees buyers always hear back from your agency the moment a new listing matches their search criteria. Manage vendor, buyer and tenant matching services from one powerful system. Coming in 2013, Utopia Open For Inspection reports will automate the process of communicating the outcome of open for inspections to your vendors. Weekly reports are generated, activity reports for auction reserve meetings/price adjustments, and new buyers and tenant contacts can be added direct to your Utopia database while out and about.
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Utopia
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First National Professional Development State based skills training tailored to local markets With such vastly different trading conditions across the nation, First National recognises the need for different training agendas in local areas. Members are consulted, through state based Regional Councils, on the topics they believe will most effectively assist their staff. National and state funding is allocated to ensure the programme of speakers, venues, topics and content can be accessed both regionally and in the cities. First National’s training model ensures that three key areas of expertise are addressed continually – sales, property management and business management. An annual benchmarking survey allows members to participate confidentially in the comparison of their business and it’s efficiencies against other similar sized businesses. Special annual events such as the Proper ty Management Conference and the combined Commercial and Regional Conference provide additional opportunities for training, sharing of specialised knowledge and networking at national level. Of course there’s also the National Convention where all members have the opportunity to come together to learn about the network’s new products and services, listen to keynote speakers, and enjoy the camaraderie that First National is famous for. Complementing First National’s commitment to training, First National Professional Development capitalises on the Internet to make training accessible across the nation. For members in remote locations, it’s no longer necessary to travel large distances and lose vital time in your office. For all members, the convenience of a library of past training and the opportunity to access key training presentations, sometimes for up to three months after the original presentation, heralds unheard of flexibility.
Professional Development
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benefits A unique proposition. In summary, there’s a long list of reasons why you should join First National Real Estate:
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National Awards
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Corporately Branded Giftware
Retain Your Identity Member Driven Referrals Local Agency Marketing Free Template Website Photobank
Television Commercials
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On Hold Messaging
Low Flat Monthly Fees
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Alliance Partner Benefits Emarketing Advice State Awards And National Conventions First National Text Messages
Professional Development Group Buying Power Regular Media Releases
Member Services Managers Uniforms Lead Generation Guides Marketing Advice Rural Local Networking Professional Indemnity Insurance Radio Commercials Multi-Lingual Agents Platform Utopia Quality Assurance Periodic Lead Generation Campaigns Mobile Apps Online Listing Submissions AFG Mortgage Brokers Landlord Insurance Products
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fees and
contracts? First National charges a low, flat, monthly fee and your maximum obligation is 12 months. We don’t charge a percentage of your sales turnover and property management income is free of fees. Plus, you’ll never pay fees for more than two offices, so, as your empire grows, you get to keep more. Think of the enormous difference this makes as your business grows.There’s no penalty for success! First National Real Estate has grown to become the largest independent network in Australasia with approximately 400 offices throughout Australia and New Zealand. We offer easy access to world-class technology, quality assurance/business management procedures, training and expert advice. You’re free to choose the products and services you need – we encourage your feedback and ideas. Make a decision today that will set your business on the road to success. Partner with First National Real Estate. We put you first
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your state recruitment
specialist National Network Development Manager Jennifer Wittmann 0422 114 815 Victoria Ben Price 0413 624 305 Queensland/Tasmania Greg Pratt 0413 624 308 Western Australia Jonathan Clover 0413 624 307 South Australia & Northern Territory Hannah Trevilyan 0413 624 306
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