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A 300-office real estate group has started searching for a chief executive to manage its new finance business.
The new business, Professionals Global Finance, will be a national version of Professionals Finance WA, which has operated since 2002.
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Professionals Global Finance currently has 10 brokers, all of whom are based in Western Australia.
Managing director Rob Rooke said the brokerage would be represented in all states and territories by the end of 2015 and would have about 150 loan writers by 2020.
Professionals has 300 real estate offices across Australia, which is what is driving the ambitious growth target, he said.
The plan is to initially target Sydney, Melbourne, south-east Queensland, northern NSW and larger regional areas.
“We conducted customer research with 2,000 people, which showed 55 per cent of our real estate clients would consider arranging finance through a broker in which Professionals held equity,” he said.
Mr Rooke said the new brokerage would send its loans through an aggregator. “They haven’t signed up yet so I’m not able to say [which one], but it’s one of the big ones,” he said.
Professionals Global Finance is currently hunting for an east coast-based chief executive, who is expected to be appointed by the end of the month.
“Due to conversations in the industry, we’ve had approaches from quite a few people, and we’ve been talking to potential candidates since December,” he said.
Mr Rooke said there was no reason why the same company could not deal both with the buyers and the sellers in a property transaction.
“It’s only a conflict in some people’s minds; legally, it’s not. Full disclosure is always an issue. We have to have very high levels of disclosure,” he said.
“Our survey with our customers shows that they’re quite happy to accept approaches from finance brokers.”
Mr Rooke said Professionals real estate agents would be able to engage with brokers on their own terms.
“Where there’s a very large Professionals presence, and if that agency permits, we’ll be sharing office space, there’s no question about that,” he said.
“But there are some smaller offices that don’t have the space or volume, so those people will be serviced in a different way.”
Another real estate group, Hockingstuart, announced in December that it planned to open a brokerage in 2015.
[Related: Real estate franchise plans big expansion of broker business]
