Property Point

As a child and young adult I played a lot of sport. I grew up in Canberra and the city was a melting pot of people from all over the country who ended up in the capital thanks to their public service job.

That melting pot brought their various sports with them … so I got to play soccer, rugby league, rugby union, volleyball, basketball and to do a bit of athletics.

That was all a bit of fun in school sports but it was different with my two great loves, cricket and AFL football. That was the serious stuff.

I was reminded of my sporting background, specifically its lack of golf, when I recently went to Hamilton Island and joined some friends for 18 holes at Dent Island.

Anyone who has played golf on that most-picturesque of courses will know it comes with a degree of difficulty almost impossible to imagine or create.

There are holes where you either tee off perfectly and end up on the green or hit it slightly less than perfectly and end up in a ravine or the heavy bushland that squeezes the fairway into an absurdly narrow strip of laughable, pointless hope. And then there’s the wind.

There is no margin for error, no chance for anyone but the best golfers.

My seemingly extensive sporting background prepared me for Dent Island in the way that going for a roller coaster ride at the Mackay Show prepares you for entering a Formula 1 Grand Prix and taking on Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. Not very well.

I played with a couple of doctors, both of them better players than me but also victims of the unforgiving variables of the course.

It was interesting to note the Dent-driven frustrations of medical people who normally control the variables. They are accustomed to confidently predicting action and reaction, what precisely will happen when they apply their skills in the interaction between the human body and science.

For me, that is also the frustration of golf. In my work I know what needs to be done to create a predictable result. Does the marketing look right? Has the write-up hit the target? Have I contacted all the potential buyers on my database?

The buyer doesn’t know it, but the negotiation starts before they have even made an offer … but key elements have to be done properly for that to work, to ensure you are getting the best price the market will pay. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. Everything has to line up properly, just like a good golf shot.

There is a blue-print for success in selling a property and you can’t just come out swinging and hit and hope because your client, the seller, will end up in the bunker.

Whether you are an accountant, lawyer, mechanic, plumber, boiler maker, engineer, chef, florist or real estate agent, it is reassuring when you have the experience and expertise to create the required result.

The result might not always be 100 per cent perfect but it’s much better than working with the unpredictable mysteries of the back nine on Dent Island.