John McGrath does not pretend the real estate industry is always easy to admire.
“There’s a lot of real estate businesses out there that aren’t doing it with transparency and integrity, as we’re starting to find out now,” he said.
“There’s a lot of boys clubs out there. There’s a lot of things in our industry that aren’t attractive.”
His criticism is not indiscriminate. John is quick to acknowledge that many operators do the right thing, but he is equally clear that the ground is shifting beneath those who have relied on loose habits, informal systems, or culture by assumption.
With regulatory scrutiny intensifying and technology making behaviour easier to track, he believes the industry is entering a phase where integrity is no longer rhetorical. It is structural.
That context matters when considering why John and Kon Stathopoulos have recommitted to McGrath West Group for another decade, and why they see the partnership model at its core as more than an internal experiment.
A different kind of growth
McGrath West Group has grown quickly since its launch in Parramatta in 2020, expanding across Greater Western Sydney and the North West corridor in under five years.
But what distinguishes the business is not the number of offices; it is how ownership is shared inside them.
Rather than the traditional principal-led structure, Kon has built a partnership model that allows agents, managers, and property professionals to buy equity at a local office level, without taking on the full burden of running a standalone business.
“He runs a great business with a group of partners,” John said. “He’s got a unique structure where he’s brought a lot of people in; his model is quite different to most.”
Where many agencies stop at one or two principals, McGrath West has designed a structure that could ultimately support dozens of equity partners, more akin to a professional services firm than a traditional real estate office.
“There wasn’t really a defined career development pathway for people in real estate,” Kon said.
“So what we wanted to do was create a structure that enables people to have real equity, an asset, and distribution or dividend growth … while still helping them become better at what they do.”
The aim, he said, was not to encourage everyone to become a principal, but to offer an alternative.
“A lot of salespeople think they want to be principals,” John added.
“But what they really want is skin in the game … a nest egg for the future, without running the business day to day.”
At the top sits a head company, majority-owned by Kon, alongside senior partners. Beneath that, individual offices offer up to 30 per cent equity to people working within those offices.
Entry is neither automatic nor symbolic.
“There’s a protocol,” John said. “There’s a performance hurdle, a timing hurdle, and a cultural hurdle.”
Prospective partners must generate at a certain level, spend at least 12 months within the business, and demonstrate behaviour that strengthens the culture rather than eroding it.
“We date before we get married,” John said. “No one’s getting handouts. These are proper business transactions.”
For Kon, culture is non-negotiable.
“Good people make great real estate professionals,” he said. “We’re looking at the quality of the human.”
Support is built into the structure, auctions are run collectively, and training is ongoing.
Partners meet regularly to contribute ideas, without carrying the operational weight of running the business day to day.
“They get a voice at the table,” John said. “But not many of them actually want to run the business day to day, because it’s hard.”
Why the timing matters
The appeal of the model, both men argue, is being sharpened by what lies ahead for the industry.
Proposed changes around price visibility, stricter enforcement of underquoting, AML obligations, rising service expectations, and the growing role of AI are increasing the complexity of running a compliant business.
“Imagine if you’re a solo operator and you have to deal with all this,” John said. “There’s a lot going on.”
In that environment, scale becomes less about dominance and more about capacity – the ability to absorb compliance, systems, and operational load without compromising standards.
Kon argues the structure was designed with that reality in mind.
“The complexity and friction points are becoming harder,” he said.
“What we’ve done is create a vehicle where people can get a better outcome without sacrificing their health, their family, or their performance.”
The ten-year decision
Against that backdrop, the decision to sign a ten-year franchise agreement was deliberate.
“Most franchise agreements are five years,” John said. “We just said, ‘Let’s get serious. Let’s join arms.’”
“You don’t want to go anywhere. We don’t want you to go anywhere,” he said.
“Let’s have a ten-year plan so we all know where we’re going.”
The length of the agreement sends a signal beyond the principals.
“So all your partners know the brand is committed to the business,” John said, “and our partners know the business is committed to us.”
The move also aligns with McGrath’s broader ownership structure following its return to private ownership, backed by shareholders.
For Kon, the commitment removes distraction.
“There are always opportunities and noise in real estate,” he said.
“What we wanted to do was focus on a ten-year plan and block everything else out.”
A harder decade ahead
John’s view of the future is unsentimental. He believes the next decade will be harder for businesses that are casual about standards, loose in structure, or unclear in leadership.
Technology, he argues, will remove any remaining room to hide.
“It’s like having a speed camera on every corner,” he said. “If you are a systematic underquoter, you will be caught.”
For businesses that can demonstrate compliant behaviour, train consistently, and operate at a scale capable of absorbing rising complexity, the path forward is clearer.
For those that cannot, he expects the market to be far less forgiving.
“There will always be a place for a small boutique business that focuses on a niche,” John said. “But it’s the middle that’s going to struggle.”
“You’re either very small and highly focused, or you’re larger and able to leverage scale,” he said. “That middle is where the squeeze will be.”
The reasoning, John says, is practical rather than ideological. Compliance, staffing pressures, rising consumer expectations, and rapid technology adoption all demand time, systems, and discipline – and not every business has the depth to carry that load.
*This is part II of a interview feature with John McGrath and Kon Stathopoulos. Read part one, Super Saturday:The January auction play that turned a ‘quiet month’ into a yearly engine here.
