REA Hackdays names customer-led winners as innovation sprint wraps

REA Group has named the winners of its 2026 Hackdays, with three Ray White businesses taking the top places after a four-day innovation sprint at the company''s Melbourne headquarters.

The event ran from 7 to 10 September and, for the first time, brought selected REA customers into the full Hackdays program alongside REA technology, product and business teams. Participants worked on real industry challenges spanning customer experience, artificial intelligence, technology, business processes and community impact.

The 2026 winners

• 1st place: ''IM360'' by Ray White Commercial CSR.
• 2nd place: ''Agent Angel'' by Ray White Upper North Shore.
• 3rd place: ''Launch IQ'' by Ray White Mildura.

The first-place team received a $30,000 Advantage Plus AI Acceleration Grant, with $20,000 awarded to second place and $10,000 to third. Each of the remaining participating customer teams received a $5,000 grant to continue developing their ideas.

Ray White Commercial CSR''s Grant Turner said the team had gone from an idea at the start of the week to a winning concept by the end of it, crediting the people around the project for turning it into something the judges responded to.

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REA Executive General Manager - Sales Gerard Connell said customer involvement added a new dimension to the event, bringing frontline knowledge of agency businesses, client needs and industry pain points directly into the development process.

Hackdays has been running for 16 years. The 2026 program marked the first time selected customers joined the complete event, working directly with REA teams to test ideas and build prototypes.

Real Estate Today reported in August on the 10 customer ideas selected for this year''s program, which included projects focused on listing intelligence, vendor pricing conversations, rental enquiries, market monitoring, project marketing and commercial information memorandums.