Curiosity remains at the heart of Ray White’s magic

Every one of the 190 Ray White corporate team members at this year’s Crows Nest conference felt appreciated for the impact they’ve had over another extraordinary year in real estate markets across Australasia.

The three-day conference, held at The Langham on the Gold Coast, is the most important event on the leading network’s calendar for its corporate team.

The most anticipated day of the conference is always Curiosity Day and this year 65 corporate team members delivered their thought-provoking, and well researched, five minute pitches to their peers to make the business even better.

Chairman Brian White is often quoted as saying, ‘there’s no such thing as a bad curiosity, the only bad thing is having no curiosity.’

This year’s curiosities saw topics covered from creating a new business focused on pet services for the millions of pet owners in Australia and New Zealand, to setting up Ray White Knowledge Travels to streamline study tours and taking the current Ray White Now Localised reports to the world with our incredible economics team’s data capabilities.

And in keeping with the auctioneering foundation of the group, the conference culminated in a hilarious fun mock auction with fake Crows Nest dollars issued to the attendees.

Ray White Managing Director Dan White (pictured above) said the annual conference remained important on the calendar to check in to see if the group was moving forward.

“For a 124 year old group like ours, the test we are always asking ourselves is ‘are we at our best?’ Crows Nest is synonymous with maintaining our spirit of curiosity,” he said.

“The only way the group can remain young and ambitious is to have curiosity in all parts of our business.

“We are not a corporatised group, and we never want to crush anyone's ideas or ambition. We never want to take away the magic of what we are.

“We always want to act like the market leader, yet we understand there is so much opportunity for improvement.”

Ray White’s market share across Australia and New Zealand is at an all-time high of 14.3 per cent, the highest of its competitors with no other major group over 4 per cent, while the leading group’s auction share sits at 25 per cent across Australia.

One of the keys to Ray White’s growth is the cross collaboration between the White family businesses, LMG and Ailo among others, plus the family experience.

“As we grow and keep pushing we need to be reminded of our family values. We will always support our members and our corporate team for as far as we possibly can, until we can't. We do believe in challenging everyone to be better,” Dan White said.

Dan White said the group was in its strongest position ever, by way of market share and the balance sheet, and the team in place, so there was no reason why 2026 should not be another year of growth.

“We are attracting the next generation with business leaders and the economy remains strong. NurtureCloud is stll our biggest differentiator, and we are investing in the right space but a great product needs good talent to implement, and we have both of those teams working together," he said.

“This is an enormous industry and only keeps getting better. There’s plenty of growth but we need leadership to unlock more areas but there’s plenty of growth opportunities.

“My focus is on the development and impact I can have on the senior leaders of our team.

“My plan is clear on that.”

Ray White Group joint chairmen, Brian White with Carey Smith (pictured above), reflected on the history of the fourth generation owned and led group and described the purpose of the annual conference “to make the business stronger and to encourage everyone to have the courage to make it better”.

“As a group we have come such a long way but the biggest danger is thinking we have done enough.

“Ambition, at Ray White, has our full support. Curiosity is at the heart of this business,” Brian White said.

“Remaining true to our core has been our key and the whole team that we have, our CEOs and our breathtakingly brilliant corporate team.

“The best ideas have all come from this room, and your curiosity.”

Brian White described a pivotal moment in his early tenure as managing director and how he grew the business into a national brand through franchisng in the 1970s-80s.

Brian White had some early wins in the early acquisition of ERA, a US business.

“I love this company. It’s always been wonderful working with my brother Paul and we are a famly owned business. There is confidence we’ll be there for our franchisees. People do respect our commitment and our consistency.”

“There is no finish line. Some of our competitors celebrate but if you reach there you are already on the way back. We know we have to keep getting better. That is the magic that we must preserve.

“We all learn from our mistakes. (You) are the reason this business has grown to where it is and has the potential to keep growing.”

Ray White’s future will be determined by many things, starting with the cause and effect that will take place at a macroeconomic level, and ending with the team as the market leading business.

The industry continues to evolve as a result of broader economic, technological and social change, requiring the group to closely analyse what is happening so that it plays the right game. Ray White knows how it responds to these macro and industry dynamics will determine if it continues to grow relevance and uniqueness in the real estate industry.

Ray White Chief Economist Nerida Conisbee gave the conference an update on the state of the property market.

The total value of the Australian residential dwelling stock was now worth $12 trillion, and New Zealand is worth $1.7 trillion but the correlation between price and transaction volume is actually very low.

“It’s highly variable year to year. When prices go up, people do not sell more. It’s not that simple. It is a difficult one to predict. We know prices will slow a bit this year but will it slow property sales? Do we still have cycles? Maybe not any more,” Ms Conisbee said.

“It’s hard and it's expensive to get houses built, it’s been a compounding issue since 2007.

“Houses are getting bigger and bigger while household sizes are getting smaller. Housing preferences are that we won bigger homes too which are more expensive to build.”

Ray White General Counsel Marc Johnston and Agency Compliance Manager Shaun Doyle spoke about the tidal wave of changes in the industry.

“Compliance is not a nuisance. It presents us with the opportunity to demonstrate our value proposition in this industry and why we are able to stand out from our competitors,” Mr Johnson said.

Ray White Chief Systems Officer Jason Alford said there was no doubt that Ray White was on an AI journey but he indicated “we will not use the tech to start calling our customers”.

“All of our members ask us what we are doing with AI leads? We have it already inside NurtureCloud, we create smart call lists every single day that is powered by AI based propensity.