Uncertainty has a habit of making businesses wait. Wait for interest rates to settle, listings to improve, buyers to return with greater confidence, or the next election, economic shift or industry disruption to pass.
But for Harcourts Chief Growth Officer, Tina Ashton, the danger is that business owners can become so focused on what might change next that they fail to recognise what is already happening in front of them – particularly when competitors have adopted the same cautious approach.
“I think the biggest opportunity always becomes available when someone else is waiting,” she says.
It is a philosophy that Tina says is playing out within Harcourts itself, with the network continuing to expand at a time when many operators are reassessing costs, business structures and their appetite for further investment.
In the first half of 2026, the group had opened 26 offices, with a significant proportion of its recent growth coming from independent agencies looking for greater support, systems and certainty.
That pace is expected to continue through the remainder of the year, with Tina forecasting the network will more than double its first-half tally of new offices.
“Our growth trajectory is excellent at Harcourts at the moment. We will probably open 52 or 50 – over 50 offices this year,” she says.
For Tina, the expansion points to a broader lesson for the industry: challenging conditions do not necessarily remove the capacity to grow. Instead, periods when confidence is lower can expose acquisition opportunities, create openings to recruit talent and give business owners the chance to strengthen operations before conditions improve.
That perspective has been shaped by three decades working through property cycles; Tina began her real estate career in 1996 and says experience taught her that external noise could easily distract agents from the activity still occurring in their own markets.
“I didn’t focus on the news. I focused on what was out in the marketplace,” she says.
Throughout those different cycles, she kept returning to what she describes as the three constants of real estate – “death, divorce, downsizing” – life events that continue to generate transactions irrespective of consumer confidence, interest rates or property price movements.
Those underlying drivers mean agents and business owners need to assess the opportunity in front of them on its own merits, rather than attempting to predict precisely what the property market will look like a year from now.
“There’s always things that will influence it. But by just going with making sure that opportunity is right and it’s right for now, then it’ll always be right for the future.”
The same principle applies to the way agency owners make strategic decisions. Tina says businesses that continually defer investment until every external indicator appears favourable risk allowing market conditions to dictate their strategy.
“There’ll always be another rate rise, an industry disruptor, an election. If we’re constantly waiting for the next piece of the market to be right or to get that insight, you become reactive rather than strategic.”
Instead, the objective should be to establish a business capable of performing when conditions are more challenging, while ensuring it has the capacity to capitalise quickly when activity strengthens.
“A successful agent doesn’t wait for the market to stabilise. They build a business that can perform through uncertainty and then accelerate when the conditions improve.”
Growth without relying on the market
That approach requires agency owners to broaden their definition of growth beyond simply increasing transaction volumes or waiting for property prices and listings to provide the momentum.
Tina argues that some of the most important gains can come from inside the business itself, particularly when owners are prepared to examine productivity, costs, staffing, technology and new revenue streams at the same time as pursuing traditional sales growth.
“The greatest advantage of the industry is that a property market doesn’t have to be strong for your business to grow,” she says.
“Growth can come from improved productivity, increased service offering, holding fees, expanding into markets, acquisitions, reducing costs.”
Recruitment and retention, rent roll acquisitions, lead-generation technology and expanding a client base are among the areas Ashton believes can continue producing value regardless of the broader property cycle.
There are also opportunities in the less visible parts of an agency’s operation. She says owners can use periods of uncertainty to reassess underperforming assets, consolidate sites, renegotiate leases or lock in contracts, particularly when the businesses on the other side of those negotiations are also looking for greater certainty.
It is this ability to look beyond immediate transaction numbers and identify areas where a business can become more efficient, productive or profitable that Tina believes separates operators who merely withstand difficult conditions from those positioned to emerge stronger.
The growth of Harcourts’ own network provides one example of that shift, with Tina saying independent agencies have been an important source of new offices this year.
“I found that the influx of independents was where our market was coming from. A lot of people are joining a group because they feel that it will minimise that uncertainty.”
The movement has not been confined to independents, with some larger operators also crossing from competing networks as business owners increasingly assess what they are receiving from their existing structures.
“We’ve had some big ones come across from other groups as well. Which, again, they’re looking for value. They’re looking for support. They’re looking for systems.”
She believes that demand will continue, particularly among independent operators looking for infrastructure that would otherwise be difficult or costly to develop internally.
Harcourts’ offering includes technology that analyses CRM data to identify potential business opportunities, AI lead-generation products, recruitment and retention systems, an internal training academy and collaboration between offices.
Its Insights product, for example, works through an agency’s CRM to identify potential opportunities to win business, while Agent Beacon is among the network’s recruitment tools. The group also operates what Tina describes as “Interfirms”, where similar-performing offices can compare areas including profitability, costs and business practices.
“We want to share and make sure that everyone’s successful together,” she says.
But Harcourts’ appetite for expansion does not mean growth is being pursued indiscriminately. The network assesses potential locations strategically, dividing markets into A, B and C areas and reserving particularly valuable territories for businesses it believes can have a significant impact.
Bondi Beach is one example Tina gives of an A-grade location where the network would be highly selective about the operator brought into the market. However, she says the assessment is not simply based on how many agents an office has or whether it meets a prescribed set of KPIs.
“We want people who are aligned and want to grow,” she says.
“We want a minimum standard, we want people who have a growth strategy, we sit down and we request a business plan of them. We assess their business plan and their direction, and then we work out how we can assist them to take it to the next level.”
What constitutes that next level can differ dramatically between businesses, which is why Tina says growth strategies need to be built around the individual office rather than imposed through a single network-wide formula.
An agency with 4000 properties under management may have its sights set on 5000, while a business with a large and productive sales team might see its greatest opportunity in establishing or expanding a property management division.
The common denominator is building a more profitable and stable operation that is not entirely dependent on favourable market conditions.
That has become particularly relevant following the unusually strong conditions experienced during and after the pandemic. Tina believes the industry is now experiencing something closer to a conventional property cycle, requiring agents to place greater emphasis on the fundamentals of prospecting, service and relationship building.
“I think when we went through COVID and since COVID, we’ve been in a very strong market. And now we’re probably back to a standard market,” she says.
For agents, that means spending more time working with buyers, servicing existing clients and maintaining regular contact with people who may not transact immediately but could become future vendors.
“You’ve made those four strong touch points every year so that you’re on the call out list. If you’re not making that and you’re not building that strong foundation, the long-term growth just will never be there as an agent.”
Those who have already worked through more difficult property cycles are unlikely to regard that environment as unusual, she says, because they understand that a slower market does not mean the underlying business of real estate stops.
“The ones who’ve been there before won’t be scared about it. They will just see it as an opportunity to keep growing.”
For Harcourts, that thinking is now underpinning an expansion that could see more than 50 offices added to the network during 2026, but Tina says the more important measure will be what those businesses do once they arrive.
“The people that are coming in, they’re in touch with where they want to be. They’ve got great goals. They’ve got great plans,” she says.