Tom Rawson used to stake out homes as a private investigator, now he sells them. In just seven years in real estate he’s been one of Ray White’s top international sales people – at one stage selling a house every four days – and now helps to run four branches in South Auckland.
Q: You’ve had a couple of very varied careers – what did you want to do growing up?
Actually, what I really wanted to do was be a policeman, that was always my dream. But I am blind in one eye so I couldn’t pass the physical test to join the police force.
Q: How did you lose the sight in that eye?
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It was an accident when I was about seven or eight, I got shot in the eye with a jelly gun by my older brother. It is something I have learned to live with. The hardest thing was that my mum wanted to wrap me up in cotton wool and didn’t like the thought of me playing contact sports because if anything happened to my other eye I’d be completely blind. But I managed to play rugby, cricket, representative soccer, golf, tennis… all sorts. You do lose your depth of perception but I have always just got on with it. It’s my brother who ended up being the police officer.
Q: So private investigation was the next best option?
I actually started out in security, installing alarms and cameras. I thought it was another way of catching the bad guys. Hopefully an alarm or camera I had installed would catch a burglar in the act, the police would turn up and I’d have done my bit to help.
Some of the cameras I was installing were hidden ones for companies who were trying to catch their staff doing things they shouldn’t. I was looking at ways of increasing my business and I thought maybe I could get involved in doing security audits or things like that for private investigators, so I emailed three firms and one of them said come and meet us for a coffee. They said, “We’ll teach you how to be a private investigator if you teach us how to do these covert camera installations”. It sounded like a good idea.
Rawson thought about being a lawyer, inspired by the TV show Suits. Photo / USA Network
Q: Where did you hide cameras?
All over the place. Above cash registers where people had been skimming from the till. In the medical room at a retirement village where the doctors and nurses were taking controlled drugs away from the premises illegally. In a lunchroom where one of the staff members was taking a bite out of their boss’s lunch and then putting it back in the fridge.
Q: Did you also follow people?
Yes. Sometimes in my car, occasionally on foot. There was a guy who came over from America who was suspected of being a cheating husband and I followed him all around town on foot. He was just shopping, as you do on holiday.
I also had a van for all my tools and ladders for installing alarms and cameras, and I would use that for monitoring properties. I would take everything out, put a mattress in there and sit in the back of my van all day. I’d be looking for things like beneficiary fraud.
Rawson: “It should never be about the commission, it should be about getting the best deal for your vendor.” Photo / Fiona Goodall
Q: How long did you do that for?
About eight years. Then I sold my business to move out to Papamoa, but ended up coming back to Auckland about eight months later. I decided I didn’t want to do security again. I’d had enough of crawling around roofs installing cameras, which was not great when you’re claustrophobic.
Q: How did you end up in real estate?
I’ve been friends for ages with Adam Thomson, who was the manager at Ray White’s Manukau office at the time, and he rang me one day out of the blue. He’d seen that I’d been to some auctions as I was looking at buying a house and asked what I was up to. I said, “I’m watching Suits and looking at the law school website because I’m thinking about being a lawyer. I’d love to wear a suit every day and be like Harvey Specter.” In fact, I had missed the cut-off for enrolment, and I wasn’t sure if I had good enough grades anyway.
Adam said, “Have you thought about real estate? Come and give it a try, I think you’d be good at it and you’ll enjoy it more than being Harvey Specter.”
Q: Was he right?
Definitely! I started doing my real estate licence and I’d go into the Manukau office to study and just listen to the lingo and what the guys there were talking about and I loved it. I started helping out by researching an area, and the area they gave me was Otara. I was looking into how many houses being sold were owned by the Crown as opposed to private owners and it was really interesting.
Adam ended up taking me under his wing and teaching me everything about the business. He made a three-year commitment to teaching me but after six months he said, “I’m still here if you need me but I think you’ve got this. Good luck.”
When he stopped selling to focus on the business side I kind of took over and with his help grew a team. I sold for a further five years but in the last couple of years I have stopped selling to concentrate on the management side of the business. So my clients are now the agents – Adam and I are partners in four offices in South Auckland now – and I do whatever it takes to help them.
Adam and I have our own way of doing things. We don’t have meetings around a boardroom table, we go for a walk and discuss business as we go. It works for us!
Q: You’ve been in the top 10 Ray White agents in New Zealand and the top 2% worldwide – what’s the secret of your success?
Putting people first. In my job now that means looking out for my team and making sure everyone is supported. We are careful about who we employ – we want to be working with really good people that you’re happy to go for a beer with. We don’t want to upset the applecart – just because someone is a superstar at another brand doesn’t mean they will fit in here. We get on so well we go on holiday together, about 50 or 60 of us. We’re hoping to be able to make it to Rarotonga this year.
Putting people first also applies when you’re selling. It should never be about the commission, it should be about getting the best deal for your vendor.
Q: Is it tricky to make those top sales figures when you’re selling homes in South Auckland, as opposed to some other parts of the city?
It is. When I was selling, our average sales price was around $726,000 and I had colleagues ahead of me in the top 10 on the leaderboard who were selling multi-million dollar homes in Remuera and Herne Bay. So I had to sell at least double to keep up with these city guys but we had twice as many places available for sale in South Auckland.
And again, the thing was not to focus on your commission, but getting the house sold for the best possible price for the vendor.
Q: What’s the best thing about your job?
I really enjoy working in South Auckland – the people are great. I love seeing the looks on vendors’ faces when their house is sold. I’ve seen a lot of people’s lives changed because we’ve been able to get a good result, whether it is a couple of thousand more than they were hoping for or a couple of hundred thousand. If they are hoping for $800,000 and they get $1.3m, that’s life-changing.
One of my staff had a vendor who was selling because they were starting to look towards retirement and planning on buying a cheaper place. The price they got was several hundred thousand more than they were expecting and the sale was enough of a windfall that the owner said, "I’m going into work tomorrow to tell them I am retiring straight away." That was wonderful.
