‘$100m deals can seem scary but I don’t have any fear’

Gavin Lloyd started at New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty last year as the company’s managing director of Auckland projects and developments – a role that was specially created for him. His whole working life has been spent in the property industry, and as well as the extensive experience he’s gained on the job, he reveals a passion outside of work has played a crucial part in getting him where he is today.

Q: I detect an accent – are you from across the ditch?

I am, I’m from Sydney. I have lived in New Zealand for seven years now, but it has been a special place to me for a long time. I first came here at 16 when my mum and dad brought us over to do a campervan trip. We ended up at Mt Cook, and went to the museum there, where I fell in love with mountaineering. At school I’d never been a particularly good student and when I should have been studying in the library, I would be reading stories about mountaineering and people like Sir Edmund Hillary. So coming here and seeing the mountains was really inspiring. A couple of years later I signed up to do a mountaineering course here and that was the start of a lot of trips I made to New Zealand to go climbing. I fell in love with the country, and I’ve also ended up marrying a Kiwi, which eventually led to me moving here.

Q: What was your most memorable climbing experience?

There have been a lot. I’ve climbed in Canada and a little bit in Europe but the best experiences have been in New Zealand – some of the best climbing mountains in the world are here. The most memorable was probably Mt Tasman, the second highest mountain in the country. It’s a beautiful, classic climb full of challenges and obstacles you have to overcome. It was 18 hours of endurance, but it was worth it.

Q: Do you still climb mountains?

No, not now that I have a family – I have two teenage boys. Mountaineering can be a bit of a selfish sport. You do it for yourself and you are not able to share it with your loved ones. And it’s risky. You only need to make one mistake and it could all be over. I climbed a lot of the 3000m peaks – the harder and scarier the better – and I loved the adrenalin rush. But things change when you get older and have children, and now I get as much joy out of doing other outdoor activities that we can do together. We do a lot of skiing and hiking and over summer we did a paraglide jump off Treble Cone. We also hiked up Mt Isthmus [in Otago] and when you get to the top, you have Lake Wanaka on one side and Lake Hawea on the other. It’s just beautiful.

I think that my enjoyment of challenging activities has influenced my career in many ways. Projects and developments is probably the hardest sector of the property market and there are a lot of risks involved. A lot of agents think it is too hard, but I see it a bit like climbing. It’s about mitigating the risk, and navigating your way through the long projects. Just like climbing a mountain, you need patience and endurance, and you break it down into stages. You keep your head down, you keep going, and you get there in the end.

Q: Did you always want to work in real estate?

I did, actually. We had a family background in property – my dad was a valuer – and when I was at school I did a week’s work experience with a small real estate company and fell in love with the industry. I went straight into real estate from school and got my licence at 19. I started out doing residential, but it wasn’t challenging enough for me, so after about three years I moved into commercial, which was a natural progression. It’s a lot more complex, with a lot of moving parts. You’ve got leases and yields and investments to think about. That journey gets even more interesting when you layer in residential developments, so that was where I found myself heading, and I really enjoyed it.

Lloyd says working on developments is a lot like climbing: “You need patience and endurance.” Photo / Fiona Goodall

One of the projects I was very passionate about when I was first starting out in commercial real estate in Sydney involved working with developers who converted a bunch of dilapidated warehouses down on the harbour into these amazing heritage workspaces. Some of them were leased to corporate tenants; we sold some of them as well. The area – The Rocks – is an iconic part of Sydney and it was so exciting to be involved and see these historic buildings given a new lease of life.

Q: What do you love about the job?

The problem-solving side of it. There are a lot of complexities around developments and large-scale projects and I enjoy solving the challenges that arise. It’s so different to selling a house, which can be done in three to four weeks. I also love the fact that with developments, you’re not just selling a home that already exists, you’re creating something out of nothing. There is a lot of responsibility with that; you want what has been created to be the best it can possibly be.

It’s a great feeling seeing something you’ve worked on for a long term finally finished. I love driving past some of the ones we’ve done, knowing I was involved. The most recent one was Pacifica in Auckland, which is the tallest tower in the country and has 280 apartments. It’s stunning. We sold the site to the developers, Hengyi, and then talked to them about the design, and where the market was at, so we were part of it from the start.

Q: Do you work closely with developers?

We do. We get involved really early on, being a part of the planning and the design side of things. We help to work out things like the sizes of apartments and the prices. So there is a lot of upfront consultancy. In the old days, a developer would just rock up with a set of plans and say, “There you go, can you sell this?” We would say, “No, because you haven’t talked to us about whether it is market-fit.” So having the people who know about what sells involved from the start makes very good sense.

We work closely not only with the developers but also the architects, designers and planners. It’s a bit like a mountaineering team, you all have different jobs but you have to pull together to reach your goal and if you are all doing our jobs correctly, then you get a successful result.

Q: What’s the secret of your success?

I think it goes back to the learnings I got from climbing when I was younger. I am not afraid of a challenge. I have been involved in some very big dollar sales – transactions of $80m and $100m – and that sort of number can seem scary but I don’t have any fear. I learned from climbing big mountains that it’s all about endurance. It’s also about hard work, you have to roll your sleeves up and get on with it.

I love what I do and at this stage of my career, I get very energised by helping younger people succeed. I don’t do a lot of face-to-face selling any more but I get a thrill out of running teams and guiding them to success.