Property Point

One of the things I like about life is having a range of friendships with people from different age groups and an array of different socio-economic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Life is more interesting when you can have a laugh just as easily with the 90-year-old bloke who lives on the corner, the 21-year-old tattooed pommie hairdresser who is up for a chat while she has a vape outside the restaurant, the 45-year-old miner who is enjoying a Friday night beer at the pub after returning from over the hill or the 60-year-old Maltese cane farmer who is annoyed about too much/too little rain.

The mix of people don’t have to be your best friends, just people you get on with and have a connection with when you see each other.

And it can be pretty much anyone, with the obvious exceptions of Collingwood supporters and politically correct left-wing tyrant bullies with no sense of humour.

But even that isn’t quite true … I have met some quite decent Collingwood supporters over the years.

One of the great things about being a real estate agent is that you have to deal with all types of people. You don’t have to become best friends, but you need to create a connection and get on in a way that allows you to work together to get a deal done.

A friend of mine runs a small business in Mackay. He is what my mother used to call a New Australian. He speaks with an accent and comes from working class roots but he’s got money because he works hard and his business is successful.

He told me that he was pretty much ignored by a real estate agent at an open house recently and he felt it was because the agent assumed he didn’t have the money to buy that particular property. Not true.

I find that one of the most enjoyable aspects of real estate, as in life generally, is coming across a mix of people, ranging from business executives, stay-at-home mums, stay-at-home dads, doctors, truck drivers, artists, mechanics, builders, office workers and teachers to scientists, florists, miners and lollypop ladies.

An agent needs to connect with all of them and take them comfortably on the journey of buying or selling a property.

It is a great advantage if you tend to get on with all types of people, which means you can be authentically yourself and not be forced to pretend to be someone/something different.

That’s almost always the way it plays out for me. And when a politically correct, left-wing, Greens-voting, coal-hating, pillar of today’s cancel culture wants to buy a house I am selling … well, this little agent knows when to shut his mouth and not let his opinion get in the way of a good sale.

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