Saturday, December 15, 2007

The estate agent millionaires

Despite the property industry taking some knocks this year, estate agents are still raking in the dough, with one property sales company boasting more than 100 millionaires.

While some estate agencies remain coy about their top earners, others openly boasted about their record sellers.

One Cape Town estate agent sold two top-notch properties in two weeks for a total of R55-million, while a Gauteng agent earned a whopping R7m in commission this year alone.

According to RE/MAX, its top 10 agents earned a combined income of more than R44m this year. Agents earn between 6 percent and 7 percent commission on sales, and the more than 2 100 agents in the network earn, on average, R404 000 a year, which is three times the industry standard. There are 124 who earned R1m or more this year.

Jeanne van Jaarsveldt, RE/MAX of Southern Africa marketing and finance director, said three of the top 10 were from Cape Town, four from KwaZulu-Natal and three from Ga! uteng.

One agent had earned more than R7m in commission this year, while quite a few other agents had taken home between R5m and R7m this year.

He said most of the top 100 earners had been in the business for five or more years.

Top earners did not necessarily work in exclusive areas where properties fetched many millions of rands, but earned lucrative incomes doing deals in middle-class suburbs.

They worked hard, with 10 to 12-hour days, weekends and public holidays.

He said the market conditions had tightened this year, and there were a number of interest rate hikes. "But like the weather, there were no blanket predictions. There were pockets around the country that did phenomenally well."

The new entry requirements set by the Estate Agency Affairs Board, according to the National Qualifications Framework, were set to cause a huge decline in the number of operating estate agents in South Africa.

The RE/MAX turnover, sa! id Van Jaarsveldt, was not far off that of the giant in the in! dustry, Pam Golding Properties, which has indicated its turnover was close to R18 billion (R16.5bn for the previous financial year) for the year ending February 2008.

Andrew Golding, chief executive officer, said they had had an exceptional year. They were 20 percent up from last year - despite the backdrop of a difficult market. About 30 percent of their 2 000 agents around the country were in the top bracket and "doing extremely well".

According to reports, the average Pam Golding agent earns about R25 000 a month, a figure based on income for beginners as well as seasoned agents.

The chairman of Seeff Properties, Samuel Seeff, said: "We have a substantial number of very high-earning agents who have been particularly successful across the country. Some of them are on very significant upper-end incomes.

"As is our policy in terms of looking after the confidentiality of our buyers' and sellers' concerns, so, too, do we respect that of our agents, so we! cannot divulge specifics."

Although he was loath to talk about their millionaires, one of their agents who specialised in top properties in Constantia notched up the highest priced sale for any property in the southern suburbs at R29m.

A week later, the agent secured another record price, in the estate of Silverhurst, at R22m.

By: Tim Edwards

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Source:
http://www.dailynews.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=vn20071215102805963C823721
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