A residential broking firm runs on agents who show homes, share leads and chase commissions. This is how to run people when pay is by deal, records are on phones and good agents can leave with their contacts.
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Share your requirementsA residential property broker connects buyers, sellers, tenants and owners. The office has a few salaried coordinators and a larger group of agents, some on payroll, many on commission only. Agents source listings, show flats, negotiate and follow up on paperwork. Owners' and tenants' contacts sit on agents' phones. Weekends and evenings are the working time. Commission is paid when the deal closes, sometimes months later, so disputes over credit and splits are common. Agents move between brokers easily and take their relationships along. Coordinators handle documents, agreements and handovers, and are often the office's memory. 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 residential property 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.
Two agents introduced the same buyer, and the split is decided by who shouts louder, not by a rule.
A good agent earns nothing for months, then a lot, and a thin month pushes her to a rival.
Owner and tenant contacts are in agents' personal phones, and a departing agent takes them.
Nobody knows who showed which flat to whom, so follow-up and credit are guesses.
A newcomer is given a lead list and told to start, and learns by losing deals.
Women agents show vacant flats to strangers in the evening with no one knowing where they are.
Agreements, ID copies and receipts are collected at the last minute, and errors surface at registration or move-in.
Coordinators do the heavy paperwork while agents take the commission, and resentment builds.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Retention and Attrition Management; Exit and Alumni Management. 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.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
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.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a residential property brokers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Who earns what on a referral, a co-broke, a lease and a sale, with dates for payment and a clear dispute step.
Who earns what on a referral, a co-broke, a lease and a sale, with dates for payment and a clear dispute step. Align it with payment steps.
Each visit entered with agent, client, property and time on a shared sheet or app, used for credit and safety.
Each visit entered with agent, client, property and time on a shared sheet or app, used for credit and safety. Hold agent details in employee records.
A listing and client register held by the firm, with access by role and a signed rule on use at joining and exit.
A listing and client register held by the firm, with access by role and a signed rule on use at joining and exit. See exit steps.
Pairing with a senior agent, a short course on documents, negotiation and fair dealing, and a first-deal review.
Pairing with a senior agent, a short course on documents, negotiation and fair dealing, and a first-deal review. Use onboarding steps.
A check-in message before and after each visit, visits in pairs for late hours and a buddy who knows the address.
A check-in message before and after each visit, visits in pairs for late hours and a buddy who knows the address. Follow safety steps.
A fixed role description, a share in team targets and a visible part in training agents.
A fixed role description, a share in team targets and a visible part in training agents. Review through engagement checks.
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 and payment dates that agents can read and trust.
A training month that makes new agents productive and fair-dealing.
Check-in routines and pair visits for evening showings.
A clean handover of listings and client contacts when an agent leaves.
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.
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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.
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What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
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A delivery head's plan for the notice period: what to ask the leaver in the first week, how to capture knowledge, when to cut access and how to keep the client informed.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Write the rule for each case in advance, record who introduced and who closed, and apply it the same way for everyone.
Keep a shared register, limit access, and brief and record the rule at joining. Confirm the enforceable terms with a qualified professional.
That is a legal and tax question. Take advice from a qualified professional before choosing, and write whichever terms you adopt.
Use check-in messages, share the address and time with a buddy and send two people to empty homes in the evening.
Train properly, share leads fairly, pay commission on time and give a visible path from agent to team leader.
Their list depends on the deal and local rules, so have a qualified professional set a checklist for sale and lease paperwork.
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