While there are super listers who have juggled hundreds of listings in the past year, OneRoof can reveal there are other agents who deal in such high price brackets they only need sell a relative handful of properties to earn the same or more.
The Walls are one such team. Auckland-based Graham Wall and sons Ollie and Andrew, of Wall Real Estate, listed just three dozen properties on the open market between August last year and this August, according to OneRoof.co.nz, with the total value of their listings sitting at $298 million.
That compares with the highest number of listings for the same period of 250 properties, listed by a Christchurch agent, which added up to just over $300m of real estate value.
The Walls came in at number one of the upper echelon listers in terms of total value. Graham Wall said he is proud of that as the agency only comprises three selling agents and two support people, he thinks making it the most successful agency “by miles” going by per person.
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Success at the top level is all about reputation, the momentum that brings, and discretion, he said.
“I've been around 20 years and with my two sons 10 years and once you get a bit of momentum and a reputation you’ve got to make a mistake for it to go wrong.”
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The trio do advertise and you might see them on the occasional billboard but mostly the work comes to them. People call to tell them they have a $20m house to sell, or one they want to buy, Wall said.
“We get these deals done. People know us and trust us. The point of difference, I reckon, is we’re not like most real estate agents.
“We have no bulls***, we have no fear and we’re so accustomed to dealing in really high numbers that you just get better at it.”
Wall’s plan from day one was to sell at the top level. He hooked up with the late Roger Coles, who had a small agency in Parnell, and said an early sale was the house of his friend Colin Giltrap, the motor car goliath.
But his big lucky break came when he approached the Brunei Investment agency – the Sultan of Brunei’s finance arm – to ask if he could sell the sultan’s 12 houses in Auckland.
“They said ‘yeah, why not?’ That gave us a real kick-start in terms of being at the top of the market.”
And selling at the top of the market is a lot easier than selling at the bottom, Wall said.
“It’s seriously just easier because people are very sophisticated at that end and they’re not people that are going to say ‘where is the microwave and how many fridges?’
“All the little detail bits that are hard work don’t even pop up.”
A modern, glass and steel mansion on Burwood Crescent, in Remuera, Auckland, sold for $20.6m in May 2023. The deal was brokered by Graham, Andrew and Ollie Wall, of Wall Real Estate. Photo / Supplied
These days investment banks call him up to ask for advice, Wall said. They might want him to find properties for clients, such as a recent call on behalf of a buyer willing to spend $20m or $30m for a property in the Bay of Islands.
“That doesn’t happen every day but at least once a month it happens.”
He knows a lot of wealthy people and has a lot of rich friends, saying he feels poor next to them when he goes on their jets and yachts. But, while he concedes to being quite a talker, he says discretion is all important and he knows what not to say.
Paul Neshausen, of Barfoot & Thompson St Heliers, is another agent making a good living out of trophy homes.
He said agents selling at the upper end of the market need to be widely educated – they need to know about cars, boats, art, holiday destinations and geopolitics.
People who are into luxury cars also tend to be into Formula One and all the drivers so it helps to know about that, too.
“It helps if you’re well versed in all of those categories. They often collect art. They want to know you’re not a deer in the headlights when it comes to selling their high-end property,” he said.
“I’m not intimidated by seeing a Goldie (the painter) on a wall and I can guesstimate who it is and roughly what it’s worth and what era it came from in the Goldie dynasty.”
The protocol is not to go up and gush if a client has a Goldie, or any other expensive item, for that matter. “That’s the deer in the headlights stuff. I never walk into a bathroom and go, ‘Oh, my God, you’ve got heated floors’. I mean, that’s a given.”
Barfoot & Thompson's Paul Neshausen: "Sometimes I do nothing but listen, sometimes I do all the talking.” Photo / Fiona Goodall
Neshausen said communication skills are key, and that agents selling at this level have to have an opinion and a balanced understanding of current and world politics.
“That’s the commonality that you need. You can’t fake it at the top end. You can fake it until you make it at the bottom end because people buy on your personality and energy – well, they do at the top end as well but there are other characteristics and skills that you need.”
Neshausen sold at the bottom when he started out in residential real estate only 10 years ago, saying, “I would sell a tent on a roundabout if I had to”, but as agents progress they grow reputations and then get a lucky break.
“You might get a $3m property and you advertise the hell out of it that you sold it and the price you sold it for and then you graduate up the price scale,” he said.
“As your skill set becomes better, as your confidence becomes better, as your knowledge becomes better and your reputation grows suddenly people are calling you rather than you having to door knock.”
Prior to real estate, Neshausen had a set of skills which transferred to the industry well, and has an MBA majoring in corporate governance and negotiation.
“So there’s a tool set of strategies I can deploy given the communication style, the ethnicity, the urgency, male/female dynamic. There’s a whole lot of things that come into play. Sometimes I do nothing but listen, sometimes I do all the talking.”
New Zealand Sotheby's International Realty agent Pene Milne says it takes guts and tenaciousness to sell prestige homes. Photo / Fiona Goodall
And Neshausen said he still works hard: “I’m still seven days a week. I’m always on. My phone rings at 9.30 at night on a Friday night when I’m trying to enjoy a wine and I answer. A phone call can be $100,000. That’s the challenge with that whole work life balance.”
Upper echelon real estate agent Pene Milne, who works for New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty, was a charge nurse in a previous life.
She found the people skills she had from the health system transferred into real estate and while she followed every lead she could in her early days selling homes, a lot of her business these days is repeat and people go to her for advice.
Milne started 22 years ago straight into higher end transactions and hustled for her first sales. “I started connecting with a few people and then I just followed every one of those connections. It took six months to get my first sale because I didn’t know anyone in Auckland,” she said.
Her first sale was an off-plan one for $1m and while that might not sound like a lot of money in today’s market, two decades ago it was, plus the property was lakefront in Takapuna. Her second sale was more than double that for a house on the waterfront in Westmere.
She said she was up against some pretty stiff competition but put her case forward to the sellers.
“I said if I could produce a result for them within three weeks would they be happy. They were and I did.”
She went from being a salesperson in the high end and waterfront market to owning her own business then selling it nearly eight years ago to Sotheby’s, then joining Sotheby’s.
Mansions dominate the landscape in Auckland's Remuera. The suburb is home to some of the most expensive houses in New Zealand. Photo / Fiona Goodall
She is not sure the skills required at the high end are any different to other parts of the market, saying it takes guts and tenaciousness: “You can’t have a give-up mentality.”
When she first started out she didn’t consider she had sales experience but after a year or two she realised her strong people skills from 20 years in nursing, often dealing with crisis situations, involved the every day selling of knowledge, experience and expertise.
“You don’t think of it like that when you’re in health but that is what you are doing,” she said.
“It dawned on me that, actually, those are the skills that you’re using every day, or helping your team use every day, to get through. I think those skills are very relatable in real estate.”
The skills involve being able to truly listen and understand people’s situation, she said.
“You don’t want to assume what people need from you.”
The people she deals with are extremely successful and don’t need micromanaging but need to know they can trust her.
“They want that same reassurance as any person who is selling. They want to know that that person is in the background doing everything they said they would or that they could possibly do.”
Premium agent Robert Milne works with his dad Richard Milne selling top-end real estate along the coast of Auckland’s North Shore. (Neither are related to Pene Milne).
Robert grew up in Takapuna, and also in real estate, and said he stepped straight into selling at the higher end of the market.
A lot of beachfront real estate in Auckland's North Shore trades off-market, says agent Robert Milne. Photo / Chris Tarpey
While the Milnes don’t have as many listings as some, Robert says it’s still very busy. “We don’t turn over as many homes as in the lower price point but that’s because the higher end is a little bit slower moving,” he said.
“You deal with fewer people and fewer properties but we’ve got a really good database of people and it’s a really small market so we’re just in it every day and we’re quite specific in terms of the area we work.”
While some agents sell all over Auckland, the Milnes focus on the coastal strip from Takapuna and up the bays, and these days most of their business is repeat or referral.
“Richard, my dad that I work with, he’s been in real estate for over 30 years and we’ve been working together for over five years, almost six years I think it is, and he’s always worked through that area.
“I guess it’s just progressively we’ve been locking that space in the market and doing it every day you end up targeting that area and that price point naturally.”
Robert said his father taught him a diligent work ethic and to genuinely do everything possible for the vendor to try and get the best possible price, but having a good local knowledge and understanding the market was also vital.
Patience is also a virtue because while there are stunning properties along the coast, there are not many available at any one time.
“We probably find a lot of the time buyers are looking anywhere from a few months to sometimes a couple of years before they end up finding the right fit for what they’re looking for so it’s quite a slow, drawn-out process from meeting a buyer and understanding what they are looking for and then actually helping them find the right thing.”
A lot of sales are made off-market, and one thing buyers tend to have in common at the upper price point is wanting a particular location, such as Takapuna beach as opposed to Milford Beach, the next one along.
“If they set out to be in a certain area they won’t look outside that area. Normally, if you’re Takapuna-focused, you’re Takapuna-focused and if you’re Milford-focused, you’re Milford-focused.”
While everyone has a budget and financial constraints, most are not in a rush.
“They’ll have certain requirements and they’re quite willing to wait to find the right thing but often when they find the right thing people are pretty capable of purchasing.”
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