The best commercial agents aren’t necessarily the busiest ones. That’s the view of Ray White Commercial CEO James Linacre, who has spent his career watching what separates agents who build lasting businesses from those who grind through campaigns without ever gaining real traction.
The deciding factor, almost without exception, comes down to human connection and he offers a piece of advice that sounds almost radical in a transactional industry.
“Just go and be someone’s agent for free until they actually need you,” he says.
“Provide as much clean and relevant information to property owners and make yourself the most important person in their life from a commercial property standpoint. And usually it’ll pay off, if you know what you’re doing.”
It sounds disarmingly simple, yet executing it requires a total mindset shift. It highlights a fundamental truth about commercial real estate that sets it apart from the residential sector.
Residential is a game of quick turnarounds, whereas commercial success is built on relationships measured in years rather than marketing drives measured in weeks.
James himself took a somewhat unconventional path to the top; he started out in high-end apartment leasing around Sydney Harbour, developed an eye for auctioneering, and then moved to Cushman and Wakefield where he spent four years learning the commercial trade.
But what came next was the real turning point. He took a role with the New South Wales State Government working on acquisitions for Fire and Rescue NSW, hunting down sites for new fire stations and emergency services facilities.
“I sort of thought I’d like to have a bit of a go on the client side,” he says.
“I can get a bit written to this view that for certain people at certain stages in their career, going and understanding the motivating factors on the other side would be good.”
Sitting in the client’s seat completely transformed how he viewed agency work. When he returned to the private sector two years later, eventually joining Ray White and climbing through performance, recruitment, general management, and agency leadership, he possessed a rare perspective.
He truly understood what clients actually wanted from the people they worked with.
“I’ve probably had far fewer clients that you do a lot more jobs for.
“Those people that are really good relationship managers and know how to maintain good relationships with important stakeholders, they may find that they enjoy commercial more.”
There is a distinct personality profile that thrives in this environment. These professionals are patient, genuinely curious about a client’s long-term financial goals, and comfortable with a pipeline that moves slowly and pays out unpredictably.
Above all, they enjoy managing relationships as the core work itself, rather than treating it as a means to a transaction.
On the flip side, James is candid about who will struggle. Agents expecting the fast-paced rhythm of residential, where effort converts to results in a matter of weeks, often lose their footing.
That velocity rarely exists in commercial; they mistake a slow pipeline for a failing one, failing to realise that a durable portfolio of client trust takes time to compound.
When it comes to identifying where the richest opportunities lie, he points straight toward the private investor market.
While massive institutional deals hog the headlines, transactions between zero and ten million dollars move steadily through every phase of the economic cycle.
“People call it the mom and dad market. I don’t really like that,” he says.
“People that have gone and built wealth out of commercial property in the private world, they’re quite often sophisticated private investors and do a pretty good job at that level.”
Ray White Commercial has built a strong presence in this space, at times capturing one in every four on-market commercial campaigns across Australia.
The takeaway for ambitious agents is this: stop chasing one-off trophy deals that make the newspapers, and focus instead on building authentic bonds with private investors who trade consistently and reward the advisors who stood by them when there was nothing to sell.
When you strip away market cycles, regulatory changes, and geographic variations, Linacre’s philosophy remains remarkably consistent. Play the long game. Be useful long before you are needed. Know more about an owner’s position than anyone else in town.
“It’s probably a bit of back to basics really.”