Husband and wife team Terry and Diana King have made their mark in the 12 year they have been in real estate. They do things a little differently at their company, Remuera Real Estate Register, but it’s paying off – they sell between $50m and $100m worth of properties a year.
What did you do before real estate?
Diana: I’ve done a few things, including working in recruitment – I did a lot of headhunting in the 1980s, ringing people and getting as much information about them as I could to work out whether they would be a correct fit for a job. Now, instead of matching people with jobs, I match them with houses.
Terry: I started in real estate at 60 when most people were retiring. Before that I had a career in advertising. I built up the country’s biggest advertising agency, Mackay King, which I sold to Saatchi and Saatchi. I tried a few other things and then I thought we could do up homes. We are lovers of houses and décor and over the years Diana and I have done up about 14 homes. If I hadn’t gone into advertising I’d have been an architect and interior designer. When I see a property, I can instantly see how it could look and what you can do to improve it. Doing up houses seemed ideal because it’s a real passion, but then the GFC hit and the market stopped.
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So you got into selling houses rather than renovating them?
Terry: We initially thought we could offer our services to real estate agents and their vendors and I did a presentation for Megan Jaffe of Ray White, who said we’d need our real estate ticket to be paid a percentage of the sales price for those services. We qualified in a week and she said, “What you should be doing is selling houses.”
We did that for a couple of different companies and then we decided to start our own business.
How is the Remuera Real Estate Register different to other real estate companies?
Terry: We took the idea of having a register of buyers and what they were looking for in a home, and turned it into a business that was satisfying a consumer need. Diana is fantastic at getting people to talk and finding out what they really want, and then we try to match them with a property.
Diana: Often we get a new listing and because we have the register we can immediately think of someone who would love that house. Of course we keep things highly confidential.
Terry: We also decided the best way of selling a house was to put a price on it. We don’t ask the market to tell us what they think it is worth, we establish with the owners what we think it is worth from our experience and from a registered valuation. Once we’ve agreed a price with the vendors we then go and find the person who wants to buy the house and thinks it is worth paying that much for it.
Most houses we sell are sold for the asking price or close to it. Our transactions end up on a happy note because we haven’t overpromised on the price the vendors might get.
Often we only take one person through the house, and it sells to them. We pre-qualify buyers before we show them a home to make sure that it is what they are looking for, and also that it is within their budget. Diana is quite strict about that.
So you’re focusing on selling high-end properties just in Remuera?
Terry: We do sometimes sell in other areas but most of our business is in Remuera. We know the area well – I bought my first house when I moved to Auckland from Wellington in 1985 in Victoria Ave – and we’ve lived in the kind of houses we are selling. The average price for the houses we sell is $4m.
Diana: I grew up in Remuera and went to St Cuthberts. I haven’t moved very far in my life. I love it here.
The Remuera Real Estate Register is just the two of you and a colleague who can represent you if you are away. Isn’t that stressful, when you are “it”?
Terry: We are the brand and that’s how we want it to work. People come to know us and to trust us – trust is very important in this business. So is listening to people. We end up forming very good relationships with both vendors and purchasers. Although we have only been in business for 12 years there are some people we have done numerous sales for.
Diana: Real estate is incredibly hard work and you’ve got to be passionate about it to do well. There can be a lot of dealing with challenges and overcoming negatives, and that is something Terry is brilliant at. He’s an amazing facilitator.
The couple had planned to sell their exuberant heritage house in Parnell, but are glad to come home to their 'hidey hole'. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Terry: But it’s not stressful in that we don’t have open homes so we don’t normally work weekends. Our buyers prefer to view houses privately during the week when the children are at school. Our hours are usually 10am to 4pm. We are not slaves to the business.
What do you do when you are not working?
Diana: I am a very keen cook, and I absolutely love gardening.
Terry: We like to spend time with our family (I have six children) and grandkids. We usually go away to Europe every winter – a friend has a villa in Tuscany – but in summer we stayed home, reading and pottering. Diana has done such a wonderful job of the garden we had no desire to go away.
You’ve done a stunning renovation of your 1880 villa in Remuera, which you share with your dogs Ralph and Lauren, practically rebuilding it. Any plans to renovate another house?
Terry: I think about it often, and about 18 months ago we thought we were ready and actually sold this house. But the contract didn’t go ahead in the end and we were happy about that. We realised we wanted to stay.
Diana: We don’t need to be doing another house at the moment, we have a lot to focus on with selling houses. It’s wonderful that we can just come home to our hidey-hole and shut the door to get that work-life balance.
You’ve been married for 16 years now - how did the two of you meet?
Terry: Through mutual friends. But in fact I met Diana’s father when I was five. He was a client of my father’s and he came over for dinner. We worked that out many years later.
Diana: Also, I had met Terry’s ex-wife and two of their children through a friend of mine. And I remember when I was PA to the head of Lion Breweries, my boss came off the phone after hearing the Steinlager had just been named the best beer in the world. He was over the moon, and he said, “That was Terry King, who does our advertising.”
Terry: Those, “Steinlager, they’re drinking our beer here” ads – that was us.
