I see a lot of rubbish coming out of real estate groups of late. Normally I would smile at their creativeness and move on with my day, but today I felt like a making an example of them. So I will. And where better to push my own views than on the site that bears my name.

Offender – LJHooker in Sydney Eastern Suburbs

This came to my attention from our Sydney guys who wanted to know why our stat says we sell a property every 8 minutes and LJ Hooker can claim 3 minutes. “Doesn’t Ray White sell more than them?”.

You are right we do. So how can this be?

*Fine Print States: 5 year average of sales based on a standard working week including Saturdays, excluding Sundays and public holidays

Ha! Statistical relevance please.

Is it just me or should “We do something EVERY x minutes” actually be calculated on how many minutes in a day? This statement brings up images of sales ticking over like the sheep jumping fences in my sleep. Clearly not the case.

Secondly, 5 year average? That goes back to include the booming years from 07 to the GFC. Ray White sold almost 60,000 properties in 2007 vs 50,000 in 2010. No prizes for guessing why they chose a 5 year average…

And lastly, my favourite question about real estate volume quotes, Is this based on settled sales and consider conjunctional sales? If two agents share a sale, both sides will try to count that as a 1. As such, adding everyone’s individual sales volumes comes to 200% of the total market…

Based on the same logic, we sell a property every 2 minutes. But why stop there.

I would suggest: “Ray White sells a property 50 seconds!”*
* 5 year average of international sales, based on school term of 199 days and 6 hour days. — Jokes 🙂