Dream weavers: Agile agents win the game
This year the most successful real estate agents found creative ways to communicate in a market that could have been hamstrung by the pandemic.
GEORGE SOUTHWELL
RAY WHITE RURAL
George Southwell, from a fifth-generation farming family, has only ever known real estate. “I started carrying Dad’s real estate briefcase around as a six year old,” the now 26 year old says. At 19, he followed his father Simon into the family business as a rural property agent, on the outskirts of Canberra.
Rarely seen without his Akubra hat, Southwell works out of Ray White’s Canberra/Yass office, selling everything from farms and Federation homes to subdivisions. His biggest challenge navigating the pandemic was getting a haircut – and coping with the huge buyer demand coming out of Melbourne and Sydney since early last year.
“Buyers are just blown away by how beautiful the Capital Region is – it’s quaint, historic, close enough to a city, and friendly,” he says.
“It’s the Australian dream to own property, and for first home buyers who aren’t inheriting a sheep station from the old man, country towns offer the only tenable option to make a purchase. There’ve also been suits who want a rural weekend escape or who want to move to the bush permanently.”
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He notes that the Yass district rode the back of the wool boom 60 years ago, and says “our new boom opportunity is new people who appreciate our proximity to Canberra and our rural lifestyle. We need to embrace them.” He detects an attitude among some locals “who seem to hate new people moving in. But these new people are crucial as they bring skills and businesses, families that fill our schools, and money that invigorates our tired economies.”
Southwell recently won Ray White Rural’s national title for auction agent of the year and property marketer of the year, and ranked as the third best performing agent in their network. He has a team of seven at an average age of 30, who together sold nearly $100m in property in the past 12 months, plus plenty of livestock.
“I think we’ll see more rural property transactions in the next few years than we’ve seen in a long time, because of the demand, the doubling of farmland values, and genuine enthusiasm for agriculture across the country. At the same time, cities will have an influx of migration when borders open, which will put more pressure on city prices and force city residents to re-evaluate their location. Covid has been great for country real estate; people have redesigned their lives and the lifestyle offered in cities is no longer the only option for professionals.”
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DAVEY HONG
MCGRATH ESTATE AGENTS (ASIA desk)
The vast reach and improvement in technology devices was very important in recent times for Davey Hong, who heads up McGrath Estate Agents’ Asia deck. “With the borders shut, a lot of my clients haven’t been able to get back into the country,” Hong notes. “We’re so lucky to have video, Zoom and FaceTime to show clients through property – it’s the next best thing to being there.”
The pandemic didn’t stop Hong playing a key role in sales, including setting a record on Sydney’s Lower North Shore when, alongside Glenn Curran, he secured a $10.2 million sale of an 1890s trophy home in Chatswood. “I persisted with the buyer for six months – every time there was any movement or news on the campaign, I kept in touch. I never gave up. I earned the trust to get the buyer to understand at what level his offer had to be to win the property.”
Hong was an all-rounder when he began his career 15 years ago, starting out at property developer Hayson Group as a sales assistant, where he often found himself involved in property management and showing off the plan apartments.
“Starting in real estate was a happy coincidence,” he recalls. He had not been able to find a job that suited him on completing his studies in business administration, where he majored in marketing. “I had the personal experience of being a tenant and moving around a bit. It led to an interest in the whole real estate process, though I didn’t anticipate a career in real estate.”
Hong believes the luxury apartment market will revive after international borders have reopened. “When international restrictions are lifted and we can go back to restaurants and bars, people will find more value again in apartment living,” he says.
Hong’s role has him working as a conduit between various stakeholders – the McGrath agents, the sellers and buyers, and often the property managers too.
On most Saturdays he’s on hand at auctions to help buyers and sellers. “Even though I am bilingual in English and Mandarin, it’s often the cultural aspects of a deal where I can be of most help. It’s one thing knowing a language, but building trust and honouring cultural elements is another.
“Heading up the Asia Desk at McGrath, I find I have a mix of buyers with Asian backgrounds as well as locals. I’m not area focused, I’m client focused, so I go wherever the client needs me. Buying or selling a property is a big transaction.”
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SARAH CASE
RT EDGAR
RT Edgar director Sarah Case’s star has risen as she has taken her place at the elite end of Melbourne’s prestige agents who service the blue-chip suburbs.
Her sale of Victoria’s priciest home in 2020 confirmed that Case is set to fill the void left by the veterans who are likely to take leave in 2022, tired after getting through the rigours of Melbourne’s six lockdowns.
Aged just over 40, Case began her real estate career at Mirvac after a stint at the Mattel toy company, where she came up with added-value products for their Barbie line. “People who know me laugh as I wear a lot of pink!” she says.
Case, who returned to RT Edgar in 2018 after stints at Kay & Burton and Sotheby’s, would love to see more women in the industry, but admits that it’s a difficult profession to juggle.
“You can’t be a part-time real estate agent,” the mother of one says. “It’s very hard work, especially if you have kids, as you need to have support around you with the hours we do and late nights.”
That said, she notes the administrative changes that have come with the digital age. “Everything is so much more streamlined, particularly signing contracts. Who would have thought that would have even been a thing, and legal! But for all the technology, relationships will still be the number-one key to real estate.”
Case says that the pandemic was “problematic” for all real estate agents, but particularly those selling at the top end. “The majority of the buyers weren’t going to buy a $15 million house via Zoom,” she says.
But in between the many lockdowns, she sold more than $250 million worth of property in the 2020/21 financial year. Among her 50 sales was the top-selling $25m contemporary home on Myvore Court, Toorak. “It was a privilege to get the sale,” she says. “The big deal euphoria makes up for the tiredness and the bags under your eyes.”
Case’s style is talked about in the industry – her love of fashion stems from her mother, Dawn, who was in the fashion industry for 40 years.
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NINA SCHUBERT
KNIGHT FRANK TASMANIA
Nina Schubert says securing a sale never gets tiring and this year has seen unprecedented price growth due to an increasing population and low stock supply.
“It’s a life-changing process for both my vendors and purchasers no matter what the reason for selling or buying, and I love being able to facilitate that,” she says.
Schubert works across multiple suburbs and sells a wide range of properties, from small units to developments and large family homes. She has only been in real estate for five years, having spent the previous decade in hospitality, including working at Meadowbank Vineyard Restaurant and Smolt.
But real estate was always her private passion, and she had bought and renovated a number of properties in the Hobart area since her first acquisition at the age of 21. She joined the Knight Frank Hobart office in March from Charlotte Peterswald.
“I haven’t looked back,” she says. “I moved to Knight Frank to further grow my career and diversify my skills.”
Schubert says that since joining the group she has had greater exposure to both national and international buyers. “I have sold an increased number of properties to mainland buyers,” she says. “They adjusted quickly to buying sight-unseen through virtual tours.”
Schubert’s biggest sales success has been the Hinsby Residences project in Taroona, a collection of eight high-end apartments by the developer Stefan Giameos of Giameos Developments, with apartment sales edging over $2m. “We have set suburb records,” she says.
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BJ EDWARDS
LJ HOOKER PALM BEACH
BJ Edwards learnt the streets and houses of Palm Beach from an early age. His first job in real estate involved delivering sales brochures into letterboxes as the 12-year-old son of the Northern Beaches LJ Hooker office proprietor David Edwards.
“I’d run around the hills of Palmy as fast as I could for a bit of fitness conditioning,” he says. “I was paid a flat rate and not hourly, so this incentive helped the speed.”
He’s been back in the business for the past 18 months, having finished school in 2011, studied, played a few years of professional rugby for the Brumbies and NSW Waratahs, and then ending up in the finance industry.
“The plan was always to join real estate at some stage,” he says. “Dad was tremendously happy that I came into the fold. I know he’s proud that after 35 years of building the business from the ground up he’ll now be in a position to keep it in the family, and with those on the team who have been there from the start.
“I’m learning every day. Real estate is a people business, and the great agents are able to build relationships and nurture them over a long period of time – that’s what I’m trying to build for myself and the agency.”
Edwards says the Palm Beach buyer demographic has undergone a big shift since Covid hit. Traditionally, about 80 per cent of buyers had been looking for a holiday home. “They were usually in their late 50s. However, since Covid came, I would have a much younger buyer pool and only half of them are viewing [a property] as a holiday home.This is partly due to the shift to remote work and people seeking a different lifestyle – closer to the beach and still within reach of the CBD. I also believe it has been driven by improvements in the area. I grew up here and have seen it change over the years – we’ve got better restaurants, pubs, transport and infrastructure than we did.
“Luckily, in Palmy we’ve got some of the best beaches and lifestyle that Australia has and we are selling homes to those who want to tap into this dream. The agent is able to make that dream a reality.”
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COURTNEY CAULFIELD
PLACE KANGAROO POINT
A well-established lawyer before turning to real estate, Courtney Caulfield puts her career change down to watching the joy real estate gave her husband, Simon Caulfield, one of Brisbane’s busiest agents as the head of Place Estate Agents.
The career switch nearly didn’t happen, however.
“He told me I should not make the move!” Caulfield recalls, adding that she told her husband she had resigned from the law firm and that he had no option but to hire her.
“We both worked similar hours when I was a lawyer; however I could see when he came home each day the genuine enjoyment he got out of the job for the hours he put in. The people he helped to buy and sell became our friends, and this human connection and reward for effort was really what I was looking for.”
Caulfield’s time in the industry has been much of roller-coaster, with the market seeing “the lows, the highs, the unknowns, from the 2020 low market to the 2021 high market – every sale delights me.”
Her first project at Place was working on Barca, a landmark development for Adco Constructions completed in 2019 in Bulimba. Her main clientele are luxury apartment seekers, selling up bigger houses and looking to downsize.
She loves the variety of selling real estate: selling off the plan and helping create someone’s dream home, as well as selling the older, established homes that have history, charm, and countless family stories.
Her biggest sale over the past 12 months was Blair Lodge on Hamilton Hill, which sold for $4 million.
“It was a deceased estate, which everyone who has ever dealt with this type of sale knows is challenging. The sale price was irrelevant; it was about the experience and the family and executor who trusted me throughout to achieve a sale for a home that had been in their family for decades. I was honoured to be a part of a small piece of their history.”
Caulfield says Brisbane buyers still love print media.
“I have been to many conferences in the US for real estate and also the local conferences – everyone is so focused on digital as the way of the future, but we still have buyers in Brisbane who rely on the paper advertising. I get so much enjoyment when we have an ad in the paper and someone turns up with a copy in their hand to an open home. It’s instant results for my client.”
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REBEKAH OFFERMANN
TOM OFFERMANN NOOSA
Noosa agent Rebekah Offermann has followed in the footsteps of her proud father Tom Offermann, the dominant real estate agent on the Sunshine Coast.
“It feels like forever will not be long enough to learn everything Dad knows,” she says. “I love working with him and vice versa; we are very alike in many ways, and every day is good fun. We work on some properties together and plenty separately, but in our agency it is a true team environment.”
Last financial year she secured more than $100 million in sales.
Offermann says she competes with herself when it comes to making sales. “I am a very competitive person in a competitive industry,” she says.
One metric she especially likes to keep an eye on is client reviews.
“We seek a review after every sale from our buyers and sellers – a five-star review with kind comments means the world,” she says. “It’s so satisfying knowing your clients are super happy.”
Rebekah joined Tom at his eponymous agency nearly three years ago, after having completed a business degree with advertising and public relations majors. She was working for an international advertising agency.
“I gravitated towards working with luxury property developers and real estate clients on new projects and large-scale property marketing campaigns,” she says. “I was confident I had gathered and honed the skills that would underpin my success in luxury real estate. I have always been interested in property, architecture and business.”
Offermann has been operating in the booming Sunshine Coast market during the pandemic, and has embraced new technology to secure sales.
“A ‘carry on’ approach has helped me negotiate some incredible sales amid lockdowns and border closures, as I have found ways to assist buyers to feel comfortable to buy properties over Facetime and phone bidding – which has given me the confidence to continue to encourage sellers to bring their properties to market and achieve great sales even when our southern friends cannot visit.”
Offermann secured a record $16.1m apartment auction result last month with the four bidders competing via phone.
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BENJAMIN GOODWIN
RAY WHITE, EASTERN BEACHES
Benjamin Goodwin has come from selling cars just six years ago to now selling some of the priciest homes in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
He has just been headhunted back to Ray White after a stint at McGrath Double Bay.
In the past year his sales successes have included double-digit million-dollar deals in Centennial Park and Vaucluse.
After a $12m sale on Lang Rd, Centennial Park he letterboxed the parkside neighbourhood with a flier declaring: “There’s a new Ben in town.” It was a cheeky reference to his being a worthy rising competitor to the more established agent Ben Collier.
“Nothing makes me happier than to see a client of mine who have put their full trust in my process to enable them a wonderful result,” he says.
“I genuinely believe the value an agent adds to any public or private property campaign is intrinsic to the final result. The relationships in a negotiation are critical. If it was an easy job, everyone would be doing it.”
Goodwin’s prediction for 2022 is that the prestige property market still has quite a way to go before we see prices begin to stabilise mid to late next year. “The biggest hurdle for sellers won’t be how much they will sell for; rather, it will be on where they are going to buy. At the moment prices have grown at such exponential rates that it has really pushed a large demographic of buyers to the sidelines, first home buyers and upsizers in particular.”
If there’s one thing Goodwin would change about the real estate market, it would be to see a level playground for all, he says.
“It’s everyone’s dream in Australia to find their own piece of paradise, and it’s distressing to see so many people lose the opportunity. I would like to see a fairer playground for younger couples, the socially disadvantaged and single parents. I personally believe our government could be doing a lot more to assist.”
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DOMINIQUE VASER WILLIAMS
SOTHEBY’S
Dominique Vaser Williams, who returned to real estate sales early last year after time away from the industry, was destined from an early age to be in the industry.
“On Saturday mornings as a kid, my first introduction to real estate was accompanying my dad as he collected rental payments,” says Vaser Williams, the daughter of the late Mid-North Coast Pacific Palms estate agent Rick Vaser.
She is now spearheading Queensland Sotheby’s International presence in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. The demographic is buyers selling the family home in the suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne and relocating to enjoy the lifestyle, from Pacific Palms to Byron Bay and the Northern Rivers.
“I get a great deal of satisfaction from what I believe is the most elaborate matchmaking,” says Vaser Williams. Her first sale back was a record $4.45m price at Hastings Point via FaceTime to buyers in Hong Kong. Most of her time since she returned has been spent during the pandemic. It has been something of a challenge for Vaser Williams, who is based at Casuarina and has a family of five.
“There’s been the family juggling with home-schooling the kids while having professional conversation swith clients and prospective buyers and the dogs barking in the background,” she says. “I quickly learned that it was no big deal, as most everyone was in a similar situation.
“My mantra was to turn a challenge into learning – perfecting my virtual property inspection skills and navigating obstacles to achieve an optimal outcome for my clients.”
“You must believe in yourself and your strengths to take advantage of disruption, now more than ever.”
Vaser Williams ventured into the real estate scene after having worked overseas as a facilities manager at a financial institution in the Middle East and South-East Asia.
“As I returned from overseas my dad was selling his real estate business, and I said, “I am the buyer” – although her father didn’t encourage her to pursue the move.“I think he thought that at 27 I was too young,” she says.
“My return to this industry is somewhat dependent on the appraisal of both my clients and my peers.”
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DAVID HIGHLAND
HIGHLAND PROPERTY AGENTS
David Highland was 27 when he established his own agency in the Sutherland Shire. He’d started in property management at the age of 17 and turned to sales at 21, the traditional career path for many estate agents.
With a database of 90,000, Highland Project Marketing has secured more than 350 apartment sales this year, seeing eight projects sell out. The agency began with a team of six in 2007, and now employs more than 120, including an in-house design and creative department. It also provides a concierge service, which provides buyers, sellers and tenants with assistance in any move.
That helped secure one of Highland’s recent established home listings through Highland Property Agents. It sold for $7.6 million, the highest price on the Burraneer Bay peninsula for waterfront homes to date in 2021.
Highland describes his buyer demographic as very broad. “We service all parts of the market and price points from $400,000 to $60m currently,” he says.
The office pivoted from its longstanding dominance in off the plan sales in the shire to Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs this month, and to the Gold Coast big league earlier this year, marketing the luxury Coast, Surfers Paradise project for the Cronulla-based property developer Sammut in partnership with Alceon. The fast-selling $200m, 35-level apartment project saw prices between $3.5m and $9m.
“I believe my willingness to embrace change and keep my business agile enough to evolve as necessary has kept me ahead of the game ... employing the latest technologies and surrounding myself with good people,” Highland says. “I am happy to outsource the weaknesses.”
“Resilience is important,” he adds.
One of the biggest initiatives during the pandemic was the move towards better use of technologies such as virtual tours, which has allowed agents to overcome some of the challenges presented by lockdowns and border closures.
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DEBORAH WILTSHIRE
GURNER
Deborah Wiltshire, Gurner’s off the plan sales general manager, has notched up two decades in sales, while all along maintaining advisory services for her high net worth clients across Melbourne.
Her career kicked off at Wilson Pride in St Kilda, also the training ground of dynamic property developer Tim Gurner. Then for “two fabulous years” she built a women-only small agency specialising in the bayside area. After that she took a break, and while she’d formally left the industry, “the passion for architecture, design and real estate market forces never left me”, she says.
Her recent return put her in a leadership role securing the off the plan sales at Gurner, highlighted by its sell-out success at the $540m St Kilda apartment development Saint Moritz.
“Tim approached me for the launch of Saint Moritz, which was ground-breaking luxe,” Wiltshire says. “In one weekend we sold in excess of $70m.” She says Gurner has “evolved a unique way of selling and of selling out very quickly”. Originally it had a permit for 240, which was reduced to 120, given the Melbourne market was ready for a global level of luxury.
“It was brave in my view; there is no hiding with an iconic site of this size. The response was astounding. A very personalised and exclusive pre-release campaign saw records being smashed, and most of the development sold out in weeks. The amenity on offer is astonishing and the market loved it. I am unsure if we really understood the depth of the luxury sector before Saint Moritz. We do now, and are absolutely focused on owning it.”
Gurner has continued with the more urbane Victoria and Vine in Collingwood. “Now we are heading to the Gold Coast with an incredible offering, La Pelago,” Wiltshire says, adding that “off the plan is an exciting and evolving space, where the future meets the present. I love the ability to be nimble, to be part of the conversation in market shifts. In this post-COVID world, homes are no longer only a place of rest, but also of work and of sanctuary. Catering for these kinds of elements and finding ways for people to live their best lives is what I love to do.
“Essentially it is about storytelling and listening, creating and caring, finding spaces that meet client’s needs, and respecting the gravitas of their decision to trust in the story and the brand. The word ‘journey’ is often overused, but in the off the plan space it reflects our process. Relationships and residences are built in unison. To be a good storyteller, you have to have a decent story, and in Gurner I believe I have one of the best.”
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MICHAEL PAPROTH
THE AGENCY MELBOURNE
Melbourne estate agent Michael Paproth reckons the biggest change he’s seen in his time in real estate has been the role played by the internet. He notes that it gives the buyer access to the same data as the listing agent, which means “it is essential agents know their stuff, as buyers have never been more informed”.
It enables buyers to filter homes quickly and shorten their time in the market, he says.
“Things like seven-day-a-week agent availability, valuable real-time data and quality market advice make the difference,” he says.
Paproth sits among the young starters in real estate in The List, having begun selling houses the day he turned 18. He had done chores while at Hocking Stuart after having secured a place in 1995 at RMIT as a 17 year old intending to study a bachelor of business, but he realised after a few months he couldn’t afford to put himself through the course.
Since leaving Marshall White, where he’d sold $177 million worth of property during 2017, Paproth has helmed the Port Phillip office of ASX-listed The Agency, taking the role of director of projects Victoria. His wife Michelle runs the office administration, and the family household, allowing Michael to do the selling.
Paproth says he has had the best time of his career during the pandemic. “While I absolutely empathise with many of my colleagues who have had a difficult time waiting for restrictions to ease, I decided not to waste a moment,” he says. “My focus turned to selling out my clients’ apartment projects, which we could do extremely effectively over Zoom presentations.” He even sold his own house during lockdown, to upgrade locally.
He’s not one to ask for real estate agents to get a better rap. “We are our own worst enemy as we continue to prioritise ourselves above the transaction and client,” he says. “The industry is at peak silliness right now. There is something unbalanced when many agents are better known than Sarah Gilbert, the professor who was co-creator of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.”
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