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Launceston-based mortgage brokerage Up Loans has brought new broker hires into the business so its two founders can make their broking careers more sustainable into the future.
Kirsty Dunphey (pictured above right), who launched Up Loans with Carrie Twine (pictured above left) a decade ago, said the brokerage had increased from three to six brokers after a “completely unsustainable” time during the pandemic.
The hires are all ex-bank staffers, who have highly sought-after skills in Launceston, and have been expanding the business’ capacity for more diversified business, including more self-employed client deals.
“We saw over COVID a time when everyone was run off their feet,” Dunphey said.
“I was doing client appointments until 10 o'clock at night, and then starting to do admin after that. It was then that we realised we just needed more people on the ground with really, really good, solid skill sets,” she told Australian Broker.
This has seen the business deliberately take a flatter trajectory in terms of growth.
“We're really trying to focus on making sure that the business stays stable, but that those leads, instead of all coming to me as far as what I would have previously been writing, are now going out amongst the team and being handled in a more sustainable way,” Dunphey said.
Dunphey, who said she previously wrote $175 million in a year and “nearly burned out”, has scaled back her own loan writing as she focuses on managing the team and spending more time with her young children. Co-founder Carrie Twine also has a young family.
“I'd rather have three brokers writing those figures and everyone doing it in a way that's sustainable and more beneficial for everyone's long-term health and wellbeing,” said Dunphey.
“So there has been no great growth strategy in our business over the last couple of years; I want those newer brokers to be building up, to get really, really good at their craft, and then to be implementing those efficiencies that can see them, you know, doubling, tripling their current volumes. But I don't want them necessarily doing what we did a couple of years ago, and just going to that level of complete unsustainability.”
Dunphey’s main role in the business at present is to look after everyone's health and wellbeing.
“We had two brokers in Tassie die by suicide in the last couple of years, and I've got numerous other broker mates who've been right on the edge.
“So that's more the picture we're trying to paint in our office now; it's that culture, it's sustainability, it's not necessarily growth for growth's sake, which I think probably would have been where my head was a few years ago.”
Up Loans’ new brokers are helping the business become more diversified at a time when Dunphey said Launceston’s residential market was seeing fewer sales going through.
“What 2024 has been about for us is more diversification; lots of working with self-employed clients, some of them doing tax debt consolidations, commercial purchases, businesses and a few clients getting ready and purchasing investment properties.”
Dunphey said there was still plenty of activity in Tasmania, but home purchases made up a lower proportion of the brokerage’s current activities.
With both founders having had extended real estate careers prior to entering broking, Dunphey said the residential market “plateau”, with prices flattening out, was not unusual for the market.
“Tassie tends to go flat for a long time,” Dunphey said. “Like the ‘90s, we're pretty much flat. We were flat from about 2003 through to 2016. So, this is what we do. We don’t have the beautiful predictable cycles of other markets.”
Dunphey said the future would involve more sustainable diversification.
While the business is not actively hiring any further brokers, it is focusing on giving existing brokers a “really good environment to work in, so that they want to stick around with us for a long time,” Dunphey said. “That’s probably been our strategy more than anything.”
