Australian real estate has entered a market where simply waiting for the next listing, buyer or enquiry is no longer enough.
After a softer 2026, conditions have become more demanding. Buyers have greater choice in markets including Sydney, selling conditions have cooled, and competition for available business is putting greater pressure on agents to actively create opportunity rather than wait for it to arrive.
For DiJones, that raises a simple question for agents heading into 2027: If the market has changed, why hasn’t your agency?
DiJones CEO Dean Mackie said tougher markets had a habit of exposing the difference between what agents had been promised and what their agency actually enabled them to do.
“When the market is flying, almost any model can look good. It’s when conditions get harder that you find out what your agency is really giving you.
“Agents should be asking whether their business is genuinely helping them find opportunities, win business and transact, or whether they’re still expected to do all of that on their own.”
DiJones has been building its business around a different view of what an agency should provide its people: not simply a brand, office and CRM, but an operating environment designed to help agents find opportunities, convert them and spend more of their time in front of clients.
That includes a guided digital AML workflow designed to make an increasingly important compliance obligation simpler and more consistent, reducing manual administration for agents and clients.
It includes digital Agency Agreement and Management Agency Agreement processes, removing unnecessary friction from another traditionally administration-heavy part of the job.
Agents can also choose to use centralised services and support when it makes sense for their business, rather than having to build every capability around themselves.
Then there is the part that matters enormously in a tighter market: finding business.
DiJones’ Perfect Match capability uses buyer requirements and its own data ecosystem to connect properties with relevant prospective buyers and support more targeted communication.
The system has been developed around real buyer activity captured through enquiries, inspections and agent interactions, allowing agents to identify relevant buyers and generate contextual call lists rather than prospecting completely cold.
Alongside this sits DiJones’ digital prospecting capability, supporting agents around the clock and helping turn data and activity into practical prospecting opportunities and automated call lists.
“We’ve been very deliberate about what we build,” Dean said.
“Technology for the sake of technology doesn’t help an agent. If it doesn’t remove administration, make compliance easier, identify an opportunity or give someone a reason to pick up the phone and have a conversation, it’s probably not adding enough value.”
None of it replaces the agent. It is designed to give the agent more opportunities to do what great agents actually do: talk to people, build relationships, create trust and transact.
That distinction is important. DiJones is not positioning technology as the answer to a difficult property market. Nor is it suggesting joining another agency suddenly makes the market easy.
The proposition is much simpler – when buyers and sellers hesitate, agents need better ways to create movement.
Better data. Less administration. Easier compliance. Smarter prospecting. Stronger buyer matching. And professional services available when an agent wants to use them.
For agents considering what comes next in 2027, the traditional choices have often felt fairly binary: stay where you are and accept the same operating model, or take on the cost, risk and distraction of starting something yourself.
DiJones believes there should be another option.
Join a business that has already built the infrastructure, technology and support, while giving you the space to build your own business within it.
“For a long time, ambitious agents have been told they have two choices: stay where they are or go out and build everything themselves,” Dean said.
“I don’t think that should be the choice. You should be able to build a significant business of your own without having to recreate all the infrastructure, technology and support that sits behind it.”
No promise that the market will suddenly become easier. Just better tools to trade through the market you actually have.
“We can’t control the market, and we wouldn’t pretend we can,” Dean said.
“What we can control is what we put in the hands of our people. If 2027 is going to demand more from agents, our responsibility is to give them more to work with.”
Maybe 2027 isn’t the year to wait for the market to change. Maybe it’s the year to change how you work in it.