Real estate back in fashion for agent Dominique Ogilvie

Dominique Ogilvie has swapped hemlines for houses.

Dominique Ogilvie at her Woollahra house in Sydney. Picture: John Feder.

Most people aren’t game enough to launch a new career in their mid-50s. But fashion agent Dominique Ogilvie started selling houses and apartments in Sydney’s tough eastern suburbs market soon after gaining her real estate licence at the age of 53.

“When I did my real estate licence half the class were over 50,” says Ogilvie, the former wife of gallery owner Tim Olsen, son of John Olsen, one of Australia’s greatest living artists.

Once a fashion agent for high-profile names Lisa Ho and RM Williams, Ogilvie lost her passion for the game after a gruelling 20 years. “As a fashion agent you are the go-between the retailer and the manufacturer. It’s like real estate: you need to manage expectations. You need the same emotional intelligence for both jobs.”

Ogilvie joined Sydney’s McGrath network a year ago, specialising in some of Sydney’s most prestigious suburbs: Woollahra, Point Piper, Paddington, Bellevue Hill and Vaucluse. She has sold seven properties, including a one-bedroom apartment in Woollahra where she achieved a record price per square metre.

One of Ogilvie’s strengths is helping vendors decorate their apartments or homes for the marketing campaign. She is not averse to lending vendors her own artwork or furniture to enhance her vendors’ homes.

She has transformed her own large four-bedroom Moncur Street, Woollahra double-storey terrace into a haven of European design since she bought it three years ago.

Indoors Ogilvie, who has a 12-year-old son James with Tim Olsen, and an eight-year-old chocolate labrador, Rocky, painted the entire terrace, installed new electrical wiring and imported sisal flooring for the front reception rooms from Belgium. She can’t say how many paintings adorn her walls given she has been collecting art for 30 years. “The walls are groaning with art.”

“It’s my life. Every other night there are people here for dinner. It’s good for my son to have people around, and I love cooking. I cook easy stuff like BBQs with great salads and delicious potatoes. And if we need more wine or vodka for my mad friends, the store is six doors away.”

Ogilvie says she is on great terms with her former husband, Tim.

“He lives up the laneway. James can run up the laneway and be with his father. We all have a great relationship. To be any other way would be child abuse, in our opinion.”

Outdoors she has removed the overgrown bougainvillea, replacing it with large terracotta pots planted with basil for her favourite salad, insalata caprese, mint for vodka cocktails, and rosemary for lamb chops. The historic property’s pretty rear gardens feature wall-to-wall espaliered lemon trees and wooden boxes full of gardenias. Ogilvie is proud that she’s one of few people in Moncur Street with a lawnmower, which she regularly uses. “Not many people in Woollahra have a lawnmower.” Ogilvie has been active in real estate all her life, buying and selling apartments and houses since interest rates hit 17.5 per cent in the 1980s, when at 21 years old, she bought her first unit in the trendy inner city Brisbane suburb of Paddington.

She has also been active advising friends on real estate deals through the years.

Close friend international fashion designer Collette Dinnigan says Ogilvie ‘‘gets’’ spaces and interiors.

“Often I romance about real estate but Dominique is savvy about the returns,” says Dinnigan. “It’s great to get her advice; she does the research. She was involved in selling our Watsons Bay home with Ben Collier.

“I have known her for more than 20 years. She has some very good suggestions. She invests so much time in knowing what’s on the market and the comparable value, she can tell you what is coming up. She sniffs everything out.”

Dinnigan says that with family and work she doesn’t have the time to do the local research and find out the advantages and disadvantages of a property.

“This is not about gender, but for me I listen to her over a male; often they don’t understand what it takes. She is sympathetic to redoing an interior lavishly or to a budget.”