Freedom Property,
Brisbane real estate,
May 2026.

02, The market

Brisbane real estate, right now.

Three currents matter for Freedom in this window. The transaction market is hot but cooling. The recruitment pool is structurally growing and structurally restless. Vendor expectations have hardened around reviews, responsiveness, and social proof.

The transaction market.

Brisbane’s median dwelling value is $1,116,180 as of April 2026, with annual growth of 19.7 percent (Cotality, via NAB Brisbane Property Market Update¹). Houses sit at $1,222,906 and units at $876,474. Annual dwelling sales total 50,696. Forecasters are split for the rest of 2026, with ANZ Research at +9.7 percent, KPMG at +11 percent, and Loan Market at 5 to 7 percent. The hot number is cooling. Auction clearance has rolled from 67 to 75 percent in Q1 2026 down to the high forties and low fifties in May, after three RBA hikes lifted the cash rate to 4.35 percent².

The Bayside cluster behind Freedom HQ is printing double-digit annual gains on house medians between $1.06M and $1.78M. Manly leads at $1,777,500 with +16 percent annual movement. Wynnum is at $1,402,500. Capalaba sits at $1,060,000 with +16 percent. Cleveland is at $1,275,000 with +9.9 percent³. Ipswich is the affordability magnet for Freedom’s regional growth lane, with an LGA median of $841,000 and five suburbs sitting in PropTrack’s fastest-growing list for May 2026 at 22 percent or above⁴.

The recruitment market.

Australia’s real estate agent count has grown 29.6 percent over the decade to 108,700 workers (KPMG via ABS⁵). Sales-worker job mobility hit 9.9 percent in the twelve months to February 2025. Queensland sat at 9 percent, second-highest in the country, behind only the ACT⁶. Roughly one in ten Australian agents changes jobs each year, and Queensland is the second-likeliest state for that move.

The franchise sector has flatlined. Ten-year average annual growth is 1.7 percent. 2025 growth slowed to 3.3 percent from a 6.4 percent post-COVID bounce⁷. eXp Realty’s commissioned IBISWorld research is the source for that read, but the independent operators saying the same thing publicly all point in the same direction. The high-split, agent-equity model is the named alternative agents are walking toward, with eXp at 83,060 agents globally end-2025, @realty at 950-plus across Australia and New Zealand, and The Agency at roughly 400 in Australia.

Vendor sentiment.

Sellers in 2025 to 26 have moved from list-it-and-pray to a research-heavy vetting posture. The REA Property Seeker Report 2025 (n=763 sellers, published March 2026⁸) puts the total seller journey at 23 weeks, with the active deciding-on-agent stage holding at four weeks. Reviews are now a hard gate. Seventy percent of sellers would hesitate to use an agent without lots of positive reviews. Three in four walk away from an agent who is slow to respond. One in three Queenslanders is considering selling within twelve months, the highest of any state (Canstar, December 2025⁹).

The shift at the top end matters most for Freedom. Premium sellers $1.5m and above have increased their demand for social-media connection by 23 percent and event invitations by 29 percent since 2024⁸. The vendor cohort Freedom converts at the top of its Bayside catchment is now asking for what Josh’s MrSell brand already does. That is not a coincidence, and it is the strongest single piece of evidence for the seller pivot Josh named in his 21 May email.

¹ NAB Brisbane Property Market Insights, April 2026, citing Cotality HVI. nab.com.au.
² Cavale, Rate Rises, Brisbane Premium Market, May 2026. cavale.au. Cross-checked against Cotality PMI weekly summaries.
³ Realestate.com.au suburb pages, accessed 2026-05-27. Manly 4179, Wynnum 4178, Cleveland 4163, Capalaba 4157. Cross-checked via Your Investment Property Magazine and propertyvalue.com.au.
⁴ PropTrack via 7News Queensland, May 2026, on Australia’s fastest-growing suburbs. Five Ipswich suburbs in the list at 22 percent annual growth or above. Madden Estate Agents 2026 LGA median read at $841,000.
⁵ Real Estate Business, 2025-05-08, citing KPMG analysis of ABS data. realestatebusiness.com.au.
⁶ Elite Agent, 2025-07-30, citing ABS job mobility data. eliteagent.com.
⁷ Real Estate Today Australia, 2026-05-11, citing IBISWorld research commissioned by eXp Australia. realestatetodayaustralia.com.au.
⁸ REA Property Seeker Report 2025, n=763 sellers, published March 2026. customer.realestate.com.au.
⁹ Canstar seller intent survey, December 2025, via Real Estate Business. realestatebusiness.com.au.

03, Freedom’s current position

Where Freedom sits.

Five offices, 77 team members, 470 suburbs serviced. A founder principal whose MrSell handle leads bio-first. A recruitment shoot photographed and edited. And, on Meta’s Ad Library this morning, zero active paid ads under any Sherwood-controlled page.

Freedom as agency.

The aggregate frame surfaced on realestate.com.au this refresh, for the first time: five offices, 77 team members, 470 suburbs serviced¹⁰. The verbatim agency line on REA: “Freedom Property is revolutionising real estate by equipping agents with world-class technology, training, professional support and in-house media, marketing and administrative expertise. Our office hubs are strategically located in Brisbane, Redland City, Ipswich and Darwin, and our agents operate Australia-wide in locations including Melbourne, Townsville, the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast.”

The careers page added five named agent testimonials with locations in the 12 days since baseline: Jacob Reynolds (Darwin), Leanne Burns (Brisbane), Kristian Parker (Wynnum / Manly), Rebekah Parker (Redlands), and C. Burak Binatli (Melbourne). The three-tier commission structure on the careers page is unchanged: Office Owner 90 percent, Office-Based Selling Agent 80 percent, Home-Based Selling Agent 90 percent. The Wynnum HQ team reads 17 agents at this office, led by Peter “Hooly” Houliston, Wayne Hay, Treacy Nielsen, Beverley Kinghorn, C. Burak Binatli, and Gerald Dawson.

Listings inventory tells a stock-build story. Domain near-doubled in 12 days (43 to 85 for sale). REA Wynnum HQ holds 100 for sale and 464 sold last 12 months at a $1.11M median. Sold velocity has softened around 1 to 5 percent across portals. Review acquisition is steady but slow.

MrSell, the principal brand.

@mrsell.joshsherwood has 4,666 followers, 191 posts, and a posting cadence of roughly one every 4.3 days. The bio leads with “$4B+ in Sales” and the founder positioning line. The audience reacts five times more strongly to listing reels than to brand-philosophy captions. The 7 Diacameron Court reel landed 71 likes and 731 views on 22 April. Brand-philosophy posts move 8 to 18 likes.

LinkedIn is the recruitment-pipeline leak. Josh’s personal profile sits at 116 followers and his last public activity is from mid-2025, ten to eleven months ago. The careers page is the second-most-important page on the site. The principal’s own LinkedIn is the second-most-important page leak. Both true at once.

What is actually running in market right now.

Meta Ad Library returned zero active ads under “Freedom Property” or “Mr Sell” or any Sherwood-controlled page on 2026-05-27. Zero. The recruitment shoot deliverables are ready. Josh’s 19 May “really cool, let’s get this rolling” email is the green light. The activation has not happened yet.

Three organic campaigns are running. The Local Schools $5,000 community giveaway closes voting on Thursday 29 May at 1 PM. Brisbane Careers Night at Wynnum HQ runs Thursday 28 May, 6 to 7 PM, on a Calendly RSVP gate. And the Michael Bacon (Place, Kangaroo Point) podcast and training-session tease posted 26 May has 36 likes, the highest engagement on the agency IG this month. The audience responds to industry peers more than to brand-philosophy lines. That is the signal in the data.

The campaign that matters most is the one that has not started yet.

¹⁰ Realestate.com.au, Freedom Property agency page, accessed 2026-05-27. realestate.com.au. Cross-checked against RateMyAgent ae927 and Domain 13928.

04, The competitors

Josh’s named set.

Seven competitors. The set Josh walked through on the 2026-05-27 call when Sav asked who he sees as the main rivals. Two of those names came with verbatim reads from him on the call. The remaining five sit on the list per his earlier emails and the recruitment-pitch objections he is already fielding. Each card carries the positioning read, the verbatim Josh quote where there is one, and the live paid ads each competitor is running right now. Where a card has no live ads in the current capture window, it says so. No ads are invented.

05, Style references

Two peer benchmarks Josh raised.

Not competitors. Two reference points Josh named on the call to triangulate his own positioning. One on content style, one on the recruitment context that triggered the report itself.

06, What’s working

Observations from the call and the ad set.

These are reads grounded in what Josh and Sav talked through on the 2026-05-27 call, cross-checked against the live ads each named competitor is running. The points are observations, not strategy.

The recruitment ads are landing where it matters.

The Jason Andrews / Ray White anecdote is the strongest single signal in the file. Josh sat down with the CEO of Ray White and his recruiter, showed them the Freedom recruitment ads, and they reacted with the verbatim “what the f***.” The brand of scale that is actively courting Freedom registered the work as new. That is the recruitment campaign clearing this report was built to confirm.

Hook content earns the shares.

Josh raised Tom Panos on the call as the format the audience is already rewarding with thousands of shares. Raw phone video, founder talking to camera, no production layer. The agency’s own organic data agrees, the Michael Bacon podcast tease (industry peer, on-screen as a guest) carries the highest engagement on Freedom’s IG this month at 36 likes. The audience is asking for industry-peer commentary content, not brand-philosophy lines.

Visual polish and raw connection content can sit on the same grid.

Sav’s framing on the call: marry up the visual side that makes people compelled to convert when they land on the page with the hook-style raw content that drives the viral pull. Both can run. Josh agreed on camera. The recruitment shoot already produced two creative types, the Lantern House culture-style spots and the short-form cinematic reels. The vlog work Raph is producing folds underneath those as the founder-talking-to-camera layer.

Personal-brand recruitment is what is running, not agency-badge recruitment.

Across the seven named competitors, the live ads almost entirely sit on named-agent pages: Lance Russell at Coronis, Ryan Murphy and Carolyn Mole at Harcourts Property Centre, Luke Athanates and Brady Chant and Daniel Parsons at NGU. The agency-badge pages that show ads (Harcourts Property Centre at 44 days, Harcourts Solutions Group on the PM side) are recent and short. The pattern is consistent. The face is the page that pays.

The longest-running ads in the field are seller-side.

Lance Russell at Coronis carries four free-appraisal lead-capture ads past 430 days each. Ryan Murphy at Harcourts Property Centre carries four testimonial seller ads past 200 days, top one at 392 days. Vendors are clicking on the same shapes for years. The format Josh has built the recruitment campaign on (cinematic, principal-led, calm-production) maps cleanly across to the seller side at near-zero incremental production cost. Same chassis, seller perspective, different CTA.

07, What the market is asking for

Grounded in today’s discussion.

This section reflects what Sav and Josh explicitly talked through. The recruitment-first shape this round, the sellers pivot queued behind it, the office-owner protection thesis Josh laid out, and the leader-first recruitment thesis.

Recruitment first this round.

Josh and Elissa confirmed the recruitment campaign goes live this round on the two creative types already shot. The Lantern House culture-style spots and the short-form cinematic reels run in test. Targeting tightens to the integrated agent list Elissa has loaded in the back end (Brisbane, Bayside, Ipswich), no go-rogue audiences. Cost per lead is expected to drop, lead quality to lift. A two-week post-launch review is locked in pending Elissa’s go-live date.

Sellers next, as a double whammy.

Josh, verbatim on the call: “What we’ve done there with the recruitment, we do that on sellers next and then we smack all of the agents with that as just like a double whammy. So we’ll send it out to the sellers, but we’ll also send these seller targeted ads to the agents because they will be like, f*** these guys are so good at talking to sellers, too.” The seller campaign reuses the same visual chassis, shifted to seller perspective. It doubles as recruitment proof.

Office-owner protection is the differentiator.

Josh’s recruitment pitch, lifted verbatim from the call: “We’ll give you all of those things that you wanted, but we’re going to protect you because we’re not just going to go and open up another freedom office in your suburb or even in your region if they’re the right people.” And: “We’re going to do the recruitment up here and we’re going to fill the our switch office owner. And we’re going to market the office, we’re going to market the brand for them to reap the benefits of and we’re going to fill their office hopefully for them.” This is the counter to URBAN X and the SAB Realty archetype. The agent gets the support, the marketing, and the brand familiarity, plus geographic exclusivity protected by Freedom.

Leader recruitment opens the rest.

Josh, verbatim: “We just need the right leaders who can help us recruit because they’ve still got to like that leader.” The expansion model is leader-first. Find the right office owner for the region, give them protection plus marketing plus brand, and fill their office around them. The recruitment campaign feeds the principal-tier candidate pool.

Premium sellers are already asking for the MrSell shape.

The REA Property Seeker Report 2025 finding cited in Section 2 is the data validation for the seller pivot Josh raised on 21 May: premium sellers at $1.5m and above have lifted their demand for social-media connection with their agent by 23 percent and event invitations by 29 percent since 2024. The Bayside catchment Freedom converts at the top of its market is now asking explicitly for what MrSell and Brisbane Careers Night already deliver.

08, What this means

Implications for Freedom.

Four points. Anchored on the dual phase (recruitment this round, sellers queued), the office-owner protection thesis, and the hook-content folding into the existing visual polish.

1. The recruitment film sits in a clearing nobody else is running.

Across Josh’s named seven, nobody is running cinematic, calm-production, principal-led recruitment film in the local Bayside or Ipswich corridor. The Coronis seller ads are static DCO single-image. The Harcourts personal-brand ads are testimonial-led on consumer-grade video. The NGU recruitment side is quiet in the current capture window. The URBAN X recruitment-pitch lives off-platform, in the manifesto and in-room conversations like Josh’s “why would I join you over URBAN X?” moment. The Freedom recruitment film is the clearing. (Ties to Section 4 and Section 6.)

2. The seller pivot lands in a chassis that already works.

The cinematic recruitment shoot can be re-cut for vendor audience at near-zero incremental production cost. Same principal, same brand voice, same calm-production posture, different CTA. The local Bayside pincer (Ray White Wynnum/Manly, Place Wynnum Manly, Belle Property Manly QLD, Harcourts Property Centre at Cambridge Parade) is the most contested seller territory, and none of those four is running cinematic, brand-led seller content the way Freedom’s recruitment shoot is shaped. (Ties to Section 6 and Section 7.)

3. Office-owner protection neutralises the URBAN X and SAB Realty pitch.

The recruitment objection Josh hears in the room (“why would I join you over URBAN X?”) gets answered by the protection thesis he walked through on the call. URBAN X gives the agent a white-label brand and full commission retention. Freedom gives the agent a recognisable brand, marketing infrastructure, geographic exclusivity per principal, and the upline of leaders Freedom will build around them. The argument is qualitative, not commission-math, which matches the data: only @realty and eXp publish actual commission numbers, every other competitor in Josh’s named set keeps the math private. (Ties to Section 4 URBAN X and @realty cards.)

4. Hook content folds in beside the polish, the grid runs both.

The Tom Panos format is what the audience is already rewarding with engagement on the agency’s own IG (the Michael Bacon tease leading at 36 likes this month). The Raph-led vlog work in production this week is the founder-talking-to-camera layer that runs underneath the cinematic shoot. Both formats live on the same content grid. The recruitment ad activation gives the visual polish its commercial test. The vlog and hook content give the audience the founder commentary they already engage with. (Ties to Section 5 Tom Panos and Section 6.)

LOVR · Burleigh Heads · May 2026