How star auctioneer The Block’s Damien Cooley’s world came crashing down and how he’s rebuilt it

Consumed by the big bucks, fast times and narcissism that can be a part of real estate, Damien Cooley’s story is a stark warning to anyone blindly chasing success.

The Block auctioneer Damien Cooley has opened up about his divorce, his three years of hell and why he’s hit the reset button on his life and social media.

“I’ve deleted every single post from my Instagram and Facebook, I’m starting again ... it’s all about reconnecting with what I love, and that’s being the best auctioneer I can be and getting the best prices I can,” he tells News Corp in an exclusive interview.

At one point, during the darkest of days, the usually highly motivated five-time winning auctioneer on The Block, 42, who grew up in Rosebery, admits to struggling to get out of bed. But now he’s talking excitedly about his future: he’s got a new girlfriend; there are green shoots in the property market; he’s looking forward to spending more time with his three kids; he has a new gym trainer, Sam Karam, and an exercise program.

“Sam’s had such a positive impact, getting my head back on my shoulders,” Cooley says.

“I don’t just train with Sam, we talk for an hour every morning – what’s going on in my headspace – and I just feel that we relate really well. It’s been a blessing. I’m back exercising six or seven days, waking up at 4.40am; in the gym at 5am.

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Auctioneer Damien Cooley in Double bay. Damien has had a coupe of rough years but is back and re-invigorated. Picture: John Appleyard

“I’m feeling good about myself, the best I’ve felt since Covid, which was a challenging time for me like it was for many people. I underestimated the impact Covid had on me mentally and physically.”

The self-confessed perfectionist – “in every single thing I do” – who started his highly successful auction business, Cooley, two decades ago, says he’s learnt a lot over the past few years.

“I’m in my 20th year at Cooley, I started my business in 2003,” he says. “I was young whippersnapper at 23 years of age, when I thought I knew everything. I thought I knew everything 10 years ago, and I thought the same in 2020.”

Cooley, one of five kids, had planned to be a lawyer like his father, having excelled at public speaking and debating at St Gregory’s College in Campbelltown, where he boarded.

“My brother went there and I wanted to meet country boys, ride horses and motorbikes,” he says.

Damien Cooley gets the auction under way in the 2016 series of The Block. Picture : Ian Currie

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He could only get into Arts at Sydney Uni, but “hated it”, dropping out after a week.

“I left and rang Dad and said I wanted to go into real estate.”

Cooley decided he wanted to be an auctioneer after watching auctioneer Peter Kennedy sell his nan’s house in Kensington after she passed away in 1999.

“The reserve had been $750k and it sold for $815k – you couldn’t wipe the smile off Dad’s face!” he says.

He won a regional auction competition at Coogee and then the final in Bondi, where McGrath’s Scott Kennedy-Green was one of the judges.

“He asked if I’d like to have a meeting with John [McGrath] and I was recruited to McGrath,” Cooley says.

“I worked there for a while but I actually got sacked from McGrath – I made some poor decisions; Scott and I laugh about it now.”

.Cooley at an auction in Alexandria last August: He decided he wanted to be an auctioneer after watching the sale of his nan’s house in 1999: “The reserve had been $750k and it sold for $815k – you couldn’t wipe the smile off Dad’s face!” Picture by Julian Andrews.

Then he went jackarooing for a year, then ended up back at McGrath for a month but decided to set up his own auction company.

He admits to falling victim to the lavish lifestyle that success in prestige property in Sydney’s east can bring.

“You start earning money, getting a bigger ego; you’re spending more on lovely dinners, beautiful suits and flash cars.”

The always smiling, Energizer Bunny-like auctioneer had been starring professionally in the years leading up to Covid.

Appearing on the covers of Sydney’s real estate sections regularly, he did an incredible 2364 auctions in 2015 – that’s 45 auctions a week, or more than six a day.

He says now: “I look back on that year – two Ironmans, the most auctions I’ve ever done and feeling the best I’ve ever felt.”

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In addition, he ran his personal best in the City2Surf at 51.30 and the Sydney Marathon at 2:53:09.

But when there are big highs, there are often lows to follow.

Cooley’s perfect world was about to come crashing down.

And his story stands as a warning to every young professional in real estate – and other industries for that matter – who demand so much of themselves in high-pressure environments on a daily basis.

For Cooley, it was the changed world inspired by Covid that took its toll on his motivation, health and, ultimately, his marriage.

It was March 2020 and he’d been heavily training for the Ultra-Trail, a 100km race in the Blue Mountains, to be held in May.

“The year before I’d come 22nd, and the goal for the race this year was to be in the top 10.”

Cooley competes in the 100km Ultra-Trail event in the Blue Mountains in 2019. He came 22nd and was aiming to be in the top 10 in 2020.

But, like every other event at the time involving gatherings of more than 500 people, the Ultra-Trail was postponed. And then it was cancelled. Cooley was devastated.

“I fell into a trap of comfort, abusing myself and not training,” he says.

Whereas he’d previously been an early riser, he says it was a challenge to get out of bed at 7am.

“Maybe I’d been out for dinner and had a bottle of wine and wasn’t feeling great; celebrated too much after auctions.”

Then there were the personal tragedies.

“A lot of significant things have happened in the last couple of years – Mum died at 66, Dad got dementia and is in a home, I separated from my wife of 17 years.”

Cooley met Peppi when she was an office manager at BresicWhitney.

“I was auctioning for Bresic on a Saturday, that’s where we first met. We got married in 2006, bought our first property in Naremburn and renovated that, plus investment properties,” he says.

They have two boys and a girl, aged 10, 12 and 13, together. They also worked together in the business. Cooley describes the breakdown of the marriage as “the biggest chink in his armour”.

“I can’t overestimate the impact that it’s had on my three kids,” he says. “Now we’re getting divorced, going through that, and I’ll probably end up with nothing ... everything I’ve worked for in the last 20 years, I’m about to lose. It’s a financial bitter pill to swallow, everything Peppi and I have worked for, unravelling all of that.”

It was in this mindset that Cooley made his biggest ever social media mistake, putting him in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. He’d posted a photo on Instagram of him crouched beside a deer he’d just killed, advising he’d “ticked off a very big life goal this week”; raising the ire of animal rights advocates and many of his peers.

The star auctioneer’s explanation at the time that “I hunt for the table and have so much respect for these animals” didn’t help, with many saying they’d lost respect for him.

Cooley says now: “I regret posting that photo because it impacted on the perception that other people had of me,” he says.

Damien Cooley at his Southern Highlands farm. His explanation for his controversial social media post last April that “I hunt for the table and have so much respect for these animals” didn’t help.

“I have a farm [in the Southern Highlands] and I spend a lot of time at that farm, but there are things that shouldn’t be put on social media and that was one of them. I copped a lot of flak from that.”

Having known Cooley for 20 years, the lapse in judgment seems out of character. And put in the context of what he’d been going through at the time, many in the real estate industry will no doubt relate to his story and empathise.

Real Estate Institute of Australia deputy president Leanne Pilkington says auctioneers, sales agents and property managers all struggled during Covid.

“Auctions were forced online and we couldn’t do open homes, or could only take limited numbers through houses, so that meant more private inspections,” Pilkington says.

“In a lot of areas there was massive demand during Covid, so agents were run off their feet, trying to stick by government rules that were literally changing by the hour. You didn’t know what you could and couldn’t do, you were held up to public scrutiny whether you were holding auctions or selling houses – so it was enormous pressure.”

No wonder many were burnt out by Covid. Many quit the industry – a trend Pilkington expects to continue if the market across the country is impacted further by interest rate pressures.

“Now the market is nowhere near as buoyant and now people are leaving the industry because it’s just hard,” she says. “We haven’t had a market like this since the GFC, 2007 and 2008 ... a lot of people selling now have never experienced anything but the good times.”

Cooley, though, is seeing some positive signs – and not just the one the excited vendor had put up at the auction he’s just come from: “Auctioneer Damien Cooley, as seen on The Block!”

The property in Sydney’s west went for $12.9m. The reserve was $11m.

“It was unbelievable, we had six registered bidders,” Cooley tells me. “People were ecstatic. That’s a big price for a property like that.

“It was a commercial property, but it was indicative of what’s happening in the residential market. Buyers are flocking to quality assets.”

Cooley in Double Bay last week. “Obviously with the separation there are significant lows and I’m still dealing with that ... but I’m feeling good about myself.” Picture: John Appleyard

A big $4.5m sale price in Concord the previous Saturday had made the vendor of 22 years so happy that he gave Cooley a present.

“He put a family heirloom, a salami slicer, in my boot,” he laughs. “I told him it’s the best gift I’ve been given in 20 years of real estate.”

“Damo” is back, new and improved.

“Obviously with the separation there are significant lows and I’m still dealing with that, still challenged by those emotions, but I’m feeling good about myself and making clearer decisions,” he says. “I’m not as reactive to situations, planning ahead and I’m doing what’s best for me and the kids right now.

“Peppi’s in the family home, there’s investment properties going on the market; liquidating 20 years of wealth is complex.

“But I’ve said this to a lot of people who are close to me – I feel like I’m in day one in real estate.

“I feel I’m back in 2003 and what’s interesting is I’m starting to do a lot of things I used to do ... something as simple as cutting a newspaper clipping out of the Wentworth Courier and sending it to an agent and wishing them all the best; reconnecting with people that I’ve known for a long time.

“I’ve got a better-quality relationship with my kids, I’ve got a new partner [Niki, a Double Bay property lawyer] and I’ve never been happier, and I think that’s showing professionally – agents who know me are saying that’s the best auction I’ve seen in 20 years.”