Land brokers match sellers, farmers and developers, and get paid only when a deal closes. This is how to run field agents, document staff and a small office when income is lumpy and trust is everything.
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Share your requirementsA land broker introduces owners of plots, farmland and sites to buyers, developers and investors, and earns a commission when the sale completes. The team is thin: a principal who knows the owners, field agents who visit villages and layouts, a few staff who collect and check papers, and an office person who keeps files and calls. Deals can take months, and many collapse over a disputed boundary, a missing record or a family disagreement. Agents spend days on motorbikes and phones and are paid little until a deal closes. Because trust sits with individuals, an agent who leaves can carry a seller's number and a buyer's interest with them. Sellers and buyers often share sensitive financial details. For the wider sector, read HR for construction and real estate.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in land brokers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
An agent may spend four months on a site and earn nothing, then earn well from one sale, and cannot plan household costs.
A missing record or a disputed boundary appears late, and the agent who found the buyer is paid nothing.
The seller's number sits on the agent's phone, so a resignation can mean a competitor gets the next deal.
Agents travel to villages and layouts for the whole day, and nobody knows where they went or whom they met.
An agent who knows both sides can quietly take a side fee or send the buyer to another broker.
A new joiner follows a senior for months with no pay, then quits before the first commission.
Plot details, price quotes and owner promises are scattered across chat groups with no single file per deal.
Two agents claim the same buyer, and the principal decides by memory.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Employee Relations; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a land brokers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Who is recorded as the introducer, how a split is made when two agents touch a deal, and what happens if the agent leaves before closing.
Who is recorded as the introducer, how a split is made when two agents touch a deal, and what happens if the agent leaves before closing. Tie payment dates to payroll steps.
Plot details, owner contacts, visits, offers and papers in a single file, paper or digital, held by the office, not the agent.
Plot details, owner contacts, visits, offers and papers in a single file, paper or digital, held by the office, not the agent. Use your employee records for staff-side details.
A simple daily sheet or app entry of sites visited and people met, reviewed weekly with each agent.
A simple daily sheet or app entry of sites visited and people met, reviewed weekly with each agent.
Agents declare relationships with sellers or buyers and agree not to take side fees.
Agents declare relationships with sellers or buyers and agree not to take side fees. Explain it during onboarding.
A small fixed amount for the first months, with clear milestones for moving to commission.
A small fixed amount for the first months, with clear milestones for moving to commission.
Seller and buyer contacts saved in a firm record, with a second person introduced to each major relationship.
Seller and buyer contacts saved in a firm record, with a second person introduced to each major relationship.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Commission rules, trainee stipends and clear payment dates for staff on lumpy income.
Tidy staff records and a separate deal file system that keeps contacts with the firm.
A first-month plan covering conduct, declarations and how deals are recorded.
A fair way to settle disputed credit and deal conflicts between agents.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in construction and real estate, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Site engineers, supervisors, crews and sales teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between projects.
8 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead article
An employee brings you a complaint about their supervisor. What happens next should not depend on who is in the room. A grievance procedure a small company can actually run.
8 min readRead article
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Many brokers do, but fully variable pay is hard to defend as steady work and tends to lose good people. Ask a qualified professional how roles should be documented.
Record every seller in a firm file, introduce a second person to major relationships and agree what happens to open deals on exit. Check enforceable restrictions with a qualified professional.
Use a written rule about who made the first documented contact and how splits work, and note it in the deal file as it happens.
Use a daily visit log both sides agree on and review it weekly for support, not suspicion. Explain what is recorded and why.
A modest base that covers basic costs while they learn, with a clear step towards commission. Unpaid months produce quick exits.
A commission policy, a deal file template, a conflict declaration and staff records. Legal questions on titles and agreements go to a qualified professional.
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