Number 1 For C21 - Josh Brockhurst

A real estate career doesn’t become a “machine” by working longer hours; it becomes one by removing the bottlenecks that cause buyers to give up and sellers to miss out. We’re joined by Josh Brockhurst from Century 21 WA, who recorded the morning after he cleaned up at the awards and stepped into the Hall of Fame. While the trophies are impressive, the real story is the system behind them: a team built to answer enquiries fast, follow up relentlessly, and deliver a customer experience that keeps referrals flowing. 

We dig into what a true support team looks like day-to-day, why Josh doesn’t try to handle every call and every email himself, and how that creates more clarity for the work only the lead agent can do: pricing, negotiation, and advice. Josh also shares why he sells well beyond a single suburb, taking on Perth Metro homes and regional Western Australia property when others won’t travel. The result is momentum, a sharper market feel, and some eye-opening outcomes in which sellers secure well above what they were told locally. 

You’ll also hear a practical breakdown of the Century 21 no-price method, how to handle the buyer pushback, and how to reduce the twin risks that ruin campaigns: going too high and going stale, or going too low and conditioning the market. We finish with what Josh is seeing as the Perth property market changes, plus the personal backstory that shaped his approach. If you get value from this, subscribe, share it with a mate in real estate, and leave us a review.

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Transcript

Welcome And Sponsor Message

0:02

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast of the Faith. Today's program is brought to you by the Agency Portal, Australia's first listed settled execution platform. This incredible digital platform allows us to use agency sign, agency IML, the style funding process, commission funder, agency supplier pay, and agency settlement. Agency settlement is the Pixar partner that allows the real estate digital transaction to exist. Let's get started with today's podcast.

Awards Night And Hall Of Fame

0:45

Joining us now on the podcast We Are Selling is Josh Brockhurst from WA. Josh, welcome aboard. Thanks for having me, Lee. Day of recording, it's the morning after you've just won every award for Century 21. How did you go? What did you win? Look, mate, that's a good question. I was absolutely shocked. I did take out number one for Century 21 for maybe the fifth or sixth time, and it was the third year in a row. And surprisingly, they flew mum and dad over without me knowing, and they were holed up in their room. So yeah, it was uh ducks and drakes, and yeah, I got an arm wrapped around me and it was mum, and I'm like, oh, that's weird. And dad was there, and yeah, I ended up getting Hall of Fame Century 21. So yeah, very honoured, very honored. Well, we're very honored to capture you at this time in your career on the program. WA going through huge change right now, and we've got a lot of WA agents, but before we get into that, because I want to talk about how you're selling real estate, which is very different to others, you came in in 2002, you built your own team and business.

Building A Team That Responds Fast

1:49

How is your real estate sales team structured today? Right now, today, it consists of me, it consists of Lockie who answers email inquiries, phone inquiry, does a lot of final inspections. He's doing a lot of my regional final inspections, which is a good load off dad. And and Julie does 20, 25 hours a week. She was someone that purchased a house off me that asked if we have any jobs going about six years ago, and she's absolutely fantastic. Got kids, so she can't do more hours than sort of 2025, but brilliant, customer service focused. And and she also does email inquiries, preparing all my CMAs, all the packs that I do. She's on the phone following up. She does all that back-end stuff, and just seeing if someone's ready to sell, uh, she does all that follow-up stuff. So between her and Lockie, they combine to do what dad used to do for me for about 12 or 13 years, which was all the stuff that I can't get to because I'm in appointments or I'm driving and you can't answer your phone, you can't answer email. So, you know, we we have people in place that can take that inquiry, so you you miss less, I'd say, is the best way to put that. What you're doing is so important. You are a true team-based business. And the fact that the first call doesn't go to you, the inquiry doesn't go to you, you're left to do that real work. Whereas most agents are just distracted, their phone doesn't stop and their brain doesn't stop. There's no way you could be doing the transactions that you're doing without that sort of clarity around moving all your arms and legs to be the agent who you are. What is a good month of transactions that you're able to produce? Look, I remember the last month that dad worked with me, let's call it full-time, and look, dad today's 77 years old, and this would have been five or six years ago. So he would have been in his early 70s, and we did 25 odd deals that that month, and you know, I pay dad 500 bucks for every deal that he signs that goes through. Like I negotiate them all, but he does the admin, he's got the template, he types it all up. And look, I pay him well, but it's my dad, you know, the amount of things he's done for me, you can never repay that. So if I sell my 100, 120 houses a year, you know, on average that's you know, 50, 60 grand for dad just for typing them up. Now, sometimes you'll have to write up six or seven, but it takes him 20 minutes. So, you know, bang for bucket works out really well. And, you know, the the interesting thing, the reason I have a team is which m most people probably don't know, when I was a professional fisherman, I broke my ankle playing football down in Bunbury, AFL, kicked three goals, they needed an extra person. I ended up being the ruckman for the day, and I broke my ankle. I couldn't walk the next day. Next week, crayfishing season starts again. And in crayfishing in WA back then, mate, you make all your money in the first two, three months. I couldn't walk for those months. What am I gonna do? And I'd remembered I'd bought a house, I'd had a mate buy a house, and I'd be in the car trying to help old mate get a house, and I'd be in the passion seat, he's driving, I've got the newspaper, we're driving past all these signs, we're ringing off the signs, we're ringing out of the paper. We ring 20 agents, one answers their phone, one rings us back that day. We didn't hear from the other ones. And that sap with me for whatever reason, when I broke my ankle, that's what I thought of. So I've got a team so that that doesn't happen to us. That's that's the main reason. I just think agents get too busy and they get in the way of themselves, and then they don't answer inquiry. Like, those 18 agents didn't ring us back, those owners don't know that we ranked. They don't know they had an inquiry because no one's getting back to them. And if they do, it's on Friday. This is let's call it the weekend. They ring back on a Friday, they've finally got some time. Um, look, you you rang us about that property, and I was like, which one? We bought one on Tuesday. Oh, okay, no worries, gone. That client, that seller, is unaware that that happens. I don't want that to be me, and this is why I've got a big team of people that can handle that inquiry because I know I can't do it on my own. But they're not a team of agents, they're a team of customer support for the consumers, the buyer and seller, to give you that red carpet experience. And I said this recently on a podcast: if you can make your number one lead source, the customer experience, now you've made it.

Selling Wide Across Perth And Regional

5:57

Just for our listeners in the UK, what's the style of real estate you're selling? And you've just changed that of late. 95% of what I do is residential house in Perth Metro. But I'm a rare agent that's always gone a little bit outside the suburb that we work in. And I remember my principal or my uh sales manager John Hartree, who's worked with me for the last five or six years, he's just retired, and he probably taught me 65% of what I know. He was like, Josh, you've got to stay to your area and all that. And and I'm like, look, I'd rather have 1% of 100 areas and sell 100 a year than have 50% of a suburb that sells 20 a year and I get 10. Why would I do that? Just made no sense for me. So I've now sold in over 250 suburbs and towns, and I think since about October, I've been running with one or two listings. I'm usually running with like 20 or 30, one or two listings because the turnover rates are fast, that there's just no one coming to market. And because I'm originally from regional, I grew up on a sheep and wheat farm in the wheat belt. For whatever reason, I've been getting referred to people in that regional area, and I've just done five in Narrigen, one in Corrigen, one in Bottington, one in Northern, one in 2J, which are these, you know, hour and a half, two hours, three hours from Perth, that the average agent's not going to do. And it's very surprising out there that some of these houses, we're getting 200 grand more than the local agent's telling them. Let me just pause on that. The local agent is sometimes limited. You've come in from out of area with no restrictions on your brain, you're doing a lot of deals, and I think when you've got that momentum in deals, you're so match fit that you see it different. Now take us into these differences of price. So look, there was a there's a house in Narrigen that um a lady had passed away, her son had come over from South Australia. I'd got a c I got an uh an appraisal. It was probably off a lead gen type one, and I've rocked up there, we've sat around the table, and I've just said, look, I think you're more than 850. I know there's no sales evidence in this town for that, but I know that I haven't sold that many in here. I have sold a few, but not for a while, nothing like this. And it's a big four by two pool, shed, needed a paint, but they didn't want to spend any money. And we went with uh a no-price method that we use at Century 21. And look, within I reckon nine days, we'd had maybe 18 groups through when people asking around price because we don't show that straight away. I'm giving him the look, we think it'll be mid-eights, mid-nines, owner would like it closer to one. Buyers are probably going to try to keep it in the eights, depending on feedback, how long it's been on, as to what they'll consider. What they definitely don't want to do is overprice it. And at that home open, it sounded like there was going to be three people offering in the mid-nines. And they were talking about it, and others could hear it. I had one offer at $800, and the one that got it was $970,000. Wow. So the gap was $170,000. But the dialogue with that guy was if you were to buy a block of land here, if you could find one and rebuild what's here, do you reckon you could do it for under a million bucks? He said, No, I know you can't. So for him, he did well. He got it for $9.70. My client did well because they didn't get in the sevens. Like it's just it's phenomenal. That's life-changing. Yeah, it it's crazy. There's we did a regional one late last year, just outside of York, a place that you know, I was concerned because I'd never heard of this place called Inkpen. And I'm like, we rang up realestate.com and said, can we put it under York? And they're like, look, you can't do that. Um, you have to put it under Inkpen, but don't worry, people will search around that area. I'm like, okay. So we had two blocks of land. The guy, a farmer, um, who was a relative, distant relative of mine, had subdivided his farm into three. He's gonna keep his house and stay there. He had 600 odd arable acres, and he had about 50 acres of bush forever, which he'd subdivided off, which was smart because the farmers aren't gonna see value in that, but the weekender coming from Perth is gonna see value in that. The local guy told him 200 grand. We got 340 odd grand in 48 hours, and I would have had 40 inquiries in a place that I've never freaking heard of before. So it was just it was bizarre. And I had the guy's number in my phone from a regional one I'd sold in Lake Marguerite the two years earlier. I still had his number in my phone, he still hadn't bought one, and he'd missed out on half a dozen, and this guy rings me within an hour of this thing going live. Two hours probably, because he'd seen it and then he'd driven out there and he was ringing me off the signboard. Take us into the latest impact of impact of the Perth market.

Perth Market Shifts And Price Talks

10:32

I've had a lot of Perth agents reach out. You're on the ground, you're on the streets, what's happening? Since COVID, look, COVID was a blessing for us in in Perth. At the time we were all, you know, packing our dacks about it because we thought, here we go, we've just had five years of downturn and here we go again. That's what it felt like. And look, we were putting staff off, we're holding back their hours, and look, within about a month, I reckon we were putting them on and putting extra hours on because things were going amazing. Right now, we're at a point where for five years I've not done a price adjustment. I've not had those price correction conversations with a seller. I've had about six of them in the last two weeks. Why would I have a conversation that I don't need to have? I wouldn't, right? It's because we need to have them. So we don't have control over a lot. I mean, we have a control, we we can give advice to our seller, but we can't control the one down the road that's 50 grand better, that's on the market for 50 grand less with the other agent. We can't control that. And a one-off, that's fine. But if you start seeing a pattern, unless you react and inform your seller, you you're not doing them, you know, the job that you should be doing for them. You're doing them a disservice. So I think you've got to be straight up with your owner. One good thing about media at the moment, most of my owners are aware of it. Some of them ringing me before going, shit, Josh, did you see the news here? I'll just send you the clip. And that's my owner basically asking me, do we need to do an adjustment? So that's one good thing about it. It's a it's a funny market over there. Some I'm very close to having that conversation. I'm having the conversation. I've said, look, leave it one more week. Let's just feel what happens this weekend. And we get five groups through, like one in two, Jay. It's been sitting, sitting, sitting. We're trying to get, I think it's from 7.19 or something like this. I've got no one in the sevens at all. I'm getting zero or one this weekend. Freaking six groups through. One offers 40 grand above, the other one's freaking 80 grand above. How does that happen? So you gotta be, you can't just throw the baby out with the bath water. You just gotta try to diagnose it as much as you can and go with your gut. And my gut on these few that have ended up getting really good prices has been let's just feel a little bit more. And once you know, you know. And I was probably 90% sure they needed it, but I wasn't 100. And I have that conversation with the seller. And look, even if we'd adjusted it, there's many times I've listed a property that back in the day when house prices were in the fives, we'd have one from 585, get 100 people through, no offers. As soon as we adjust it from 549, we sell it for 600. But where was the 600 when we did that? Josh, across the country, there's five different sets of laws, and we're all governed by different

The No Price Method Explained

13:06

things. So in New South Wales, Office Above was banned out for their reasons of people putting low offers in. Just explain your no price method that you're using in WA. Look, the no price method we have is a century 21 method. And essentially, for the first week or two, we don't price it. And as much as that's annoying for a buyer, my job is to get the best result I can for my seller. And a lot of buyers will give the old, oh, if it doesn't have a price, we don't go to it. As we would, as we're a buyer, we go, oh, if it doesn't have a price, we don't go. So how do you explain? We list one out in the hills with this no-price method, and we get over a hundred groups on this house. The local agents are praised it at about one. I've said, look, I reckon we're upward to one, one, and before you know it, a hundred groups have come through. But we don't go through these ones without the price. And they asked me, Josh, you know, don't these owners know what they want? I'm like, yeah, they do. The number one thing they've told me is they don't want to overprice it and be stuck on the market for nine months, having home open every weekend and go stale. So just for this first weekend or two, we're putting it into the market, listen to feedback, and then after feedback, we're either going to accept an offer or price it. That's great, Josh, how much they want. And rather than be the agent that everyone hates, oh, we can't say anything we don't know, there's nothing like it, and everyone wants to punch that agent. I'll just say, look, we think it'll be in those early to mid ones. The only thing like it is close to that over mid-1's, buyers will probably try to get it closer to one depending on feedback, how long it's been on as to what they'll consider. What they definitely don't want to do is overprice it. And then with that, they'll go, Oh, you know, we ended up having offers on this one at 900, 950, a million, um, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3. It sold for 1.455 million. Wow. That's a big discrepancy. In that in the week. Now, we're not in that market today, but we were a couple of years ago. And you're still going to get little ones like this that will happen. The only other objection I'll get from buyers is express sale, the method that we use at Central 21, um, the no-price method. You know, is the owners need to sell fast today. Yes. What they definitely don't want to do is overprice it and be stuck on the market for nine months and go stale. Just for the first week or two, we're putting it to the market, listen to feedback, and then we're either accepting an offer or pricing it. What they definitely don't want to do is overprice it. The bit we can't say, the bit we don't say, it's true, they just don't need to know is what the owner definitely doesn't want to do is underprice it. And for the last five years, that's probably been my main aim. We don't want to underprice it. We don't want to condition the market with a number that is too low. We had a sale recently in Thornley, which is a neighbouring suburb of where my office is, was where I first opened an office. The record in that suburb was about 1.2 million. We thought this house that I'd listed would be around that. Happened to be on the same street as my staff member across the road that bought from us five, six years ago and now works with me, Julie. We put this out and it was one of the pop top two stories, the Hardy Plank up top, which, you know, history tells me they're a bit tough. They can take a while. And I remember one of my first listings that I ever got, it was because the other region had one of those pop top two stories that was on the market for a year. Like, why do you want to go with these guys? It's been on the market for so long. Um, but it was a pop top two story, and I still remember the address. It's 25 odd years ago. So this property we think will go for 1.2. We use this method, we get 40 groups through. The property sells for 1.388 million. So I'll be a breakcord. And it's all the dialogue I've just used now. And I've listed other people that have come through that house because they saw what we did there, and then they go, Can you come and do that to our plate? I just think it's fantastic, and it just reduces. What's our job as an agent? Reduce our owners' risk of going too high and reduce the risk of going too low. Now, if we'd priced that house in Thornley from our backup number from 1.195, I don't reckon we would have got 1.388.

How Offers Get Signed And Managed

16:54

Josh, why do you feel your team approach has attracted so many people in the marketplace to give you the incredible results you're getting in numbers? Look, I I think initially we think as an agent we've got to do it all ourselves. But history has shown me, even when I wasn't an agent, when I was a professional fisherman, that you can't do it all by yourself. And I think a lot of agents drop the ball because they're too busy. They've in their mindset, for whatever reason, is I can't afford to pay someone. You can't afford not to, unless you can answer those calls efficiently yourself, you can't afford not to. And I I learned that early on just because of the experiences I'd had. And it's not to say these agents are bad, they just can't deal with the capacity, like the the number of inquiries coming through, and they miss them. So I want to limit that with my team. And you know, I was initially worried that oh, you know, like I'm over on this conference, and I'm your stress, your little internal thing, you're having that awkward conversation, say, look, I'm away at a conference, I'm not going to be here this weekend. You know, I always judge everything on I try to leave on a Saturday night so I can at least do a one day of home open before I leave somewhere. And I'm away next weekend. And I've had those conversations with the owners, and I'm like, look, would you rather mum and dad do it? So for those that don't know, my mum drives every weekend for me. She loves driving. I hate it. She heat she helps meet and greet people at the home open. She watches if they've got a booklet in their hand when they leave, and if they don't, she'll be like, Oh, you just need to go and chip in with Jimmy. The ninja team. So, you know, that's what mum does. And dad's at home typing up the offers as we come through. I'm taking photos of our people coming through, name, email address, phone number. Do they want the offer questions? Do they have a place to sell? And dad will be on the laptop watching the footy, and he'll be freaking sending all the let's call it the guff email with all the copy of the civita title, property interest report, dial before you dig, all of that stuff, the offer questions that we have, about 16 of them. Um and with that response to that, dad can just type them up. Once they're typed up, they sign it, then I ring them, and that's when the negotiation will begin. But I don't push at all until we have a signed offer. We've got to get the heart involved before we get the head involved. Um, and it yeah, it seems to work pretty well. Josh, you were on stage last night more than the

Fishing Lessons And Future Plans

19:10

band. Uh many, many awards uh were won. It was quite an emotional night. What where to from here? What's your focus to further progress or stabilize the business? Look, it's a good question. Um, you know, we've got succession planning happening over the next five to ten years. You know, I'll dub every sales rep to come and work with me, but it's one of those things that I've I love, the ones that I've got as well. Uh you know, we've got limited space, but I just we just want a team up. We've probably an attraction business, and it's not that I go and headhunt anybody, uh, it's just not my thing. But we're open to people coming having a chat. What do you draw from your professional fishing career into real estate? Look, so many people say, How did you move from the ocean to land? It's so different, but it's so the same, in my opinion. I was a good fisherman, I did sardine fishing, cray fishing, charter boat fishing, broke the ankle, couldn't do that anymore. Real estate just seemed to be a natural fit because I saw there was some loopholes there in the dealings I'd had, and I just felt that you know that you could do something better than what I'd seen. Um, and then the next step was I got a phone call from Katie Lucas at the time, our state manager for Century 21, took me out for coffee, showed me what they do, and the timing was perfect. So I jumped on board, and the training, as we do with Yuli, as we have a lot of other trainers, uh, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Everything's there. Like the systems, the strategies, the method from day one to day 300 is all there, and it's all there mapped out to follow. It's almost a fail knot, and not that everyone goes and uses it, but the tools are there, and if someone's hungry, it's all there for them just to chow down as much as they can, and I think they can fast track them to be a lot better than I am, and how long it took me to get there, I think you can do it in you know a quarter of the time now. What's your total time with Century 21? Uh, I think I'm coming up 17 years now, so yeah, I've been with them for for that amount of time, or in my 17th year, so I've I've been fortunate enough to be number one in WA for 16 years in a row, and yeah, as we heard last night, I've I've taken out number one for the brand and other times. And look, I remember the first time I came second to Joseph Tan, one of our stalwarts in this brand, and he beat me by six grand. You know, we went over to the Century 21 convention in America, and I had mum fishing on Lake Mead on the first day. My partner couldn't travel, and you know, those awards over there, it was all America, America, that their top ten. But you know, when you calculate the numbers out, Joseph would have been second, and I would have been third in the world for the brand. Wow. So it was a it was an eye opener, and I enjoyed it. It was too rah-rah rah for me over there. But look, I love the fishing, and mum actually outfished me. I was too busy taking photos of her fish. Josh Brockhurst, thank you for joining us on We Are Selling. Thank you, Lee.