There’s a craziness to being a top tier listings agent. They get so busy they don’t see their kids that often. The busier they become, the more successful they get, the busier they get.
Some put up boundaries and carve out precious time for family but that mobile phone glued to their ear sometimes barely stops ringing, and in a downturn it can ring more often.
That’s because as less successful or newer agents door knock in vain, in downturns vendors tend to reach out for tried and tested agents, preferring those with strong track records. Some of the less successful agents can end up having to get a second job or leave the industry altogether.
OneRoof ran the numbers on who has been the busiest over the past year, going by the number of properties they advertised on OneRoof.co.nz, coming up with a list of 60 extremely busy agents who leave the rest in their wake.
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These agents have been going hard out despite the post-Covid property slump and general listings shortage.
Number one on the list, Cameron Bailey from Harcourts Gold in Christchurch, juggled 250 properties in the 12 months from August last year with a total worth of more than $300 million.
To put that in context, the average number of listings per residential agent on OneRoof over the same period was 14 – a little over one a month – at an average value of $800,000.
Most of the super-agents on the list operate in Auckland, but regional New Zealand also features strongly, with Bailey’s home turf of Canterbury claiming 13 spots and Waikato claiming eight.
Top agents everywhere stressed the importance of having a strong team around them and how important repeat business and referrals are.
Most had a mentor in their early years and hoovered up all they could learn, and crucial to many was the importance of a good PA – or several PAs – so they could concentrate on the negotiating rather than the paperwork.
Many love the challenge of a downturn because they can showcase their skills, and all stressed the importance of not over-promising, saying honesty and decency are vital parts of reputation building.
Some spoke of the importance of having multicultural teams, and some about the benefits of having team members who can specialise in different parts of the market – developments, townhouses, new-builds, off-plan sales, as well as existing residential and lifestyle sales.
Nearly all the top agents spoken to, though, said they sell across all parts of the market, from cheaper properties to pricey ones. It’s a bit like the share market. Concentrating on only one aspect is risky because when a certain part of the market fails, as many developments have in the last year, there is not much to fall back on.
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Branding is important, too, and that’s more than being part of a big brand real estate company, it’s also individual and team branding. One agent from Hamilton says you have to put yourself out there and be seen to be successful, even if that means having the occasional object thrown at the Porsche.
And when there is a bit of downtime, which isn’t often, top agents will be following economists and forecasts, and they will know what the opposition is up to as well as what properties are selling for.
No regrets
Bailey, who is also a part-owner of Harcourts Gold, Christchurch, says making the wrong choice of agent can cost sellers a lot of money because the cheapest agent does not mean the best, and loose words can cost thousands of dollars.
He recalls looking at a priced property years ago and the agent telling him not to worry about the price as he could get the property cheaper: “In five words they were doing the owner out of $30,000 or $40,000.”
Bailey has been in real estate for 19 years and says while people think he might ease off at his level he is still working as hard as ever, coming off the back of 16 open homes when OneRoof spoke to him, choreographing them throughout the weekend.
His 16 were among 50 his team did, and his team consists of three other selling agents and three PAs he says he couldn’t do without, but he admits he has sacrificed a lot to get to where he is.
“I’ve got 12-year-old twin girls and the first five years they were alive I hardly saw them because I was working so much.”
Harcourts listing machine Cameron Bailey: “You can have all the success and all the money but you can’t take it with you if you die.” Photo / George Heard
He is far from alone there – one agent joked she could hardly remember what her kids looked like when they were young. That begs the question is it worth it, and Bailey says he has done a bit of soul-searching around that in recent years.
“You can have all the success and all the money but you can’t take it with you if you die.”
At 44 years, he does not regret the sacrifice but says if starting over he would set up systems so he could have the success as well as the work-life balance, saying agents are often not aware of what they are missing out on at the time.
He thinks Canterbury is so well represented with top listings agents because the region did not fall as much as other areas, and while Christchurch is still seeing a lot of growth there has also not been as much pain at the bank.
A lot of buyers were fuelled by EQC money and insurance money after the earthquakes so people did not take on as much debt as elsewhere, he explains.
Burn-out rate
Across in Selwyn district, Ray White Rolleston business owner Brendan Shefford, number 25 on the OneRoof list, thinks the region is well-represented with hardworking agents because prices are lower, meaning agents have to list more to earn a decent income.
In Auckland, for example, an agent might sell a $2m property but down south they would have to sell three properties at $700,000 to earn the same.
Shefford, who has four offices and listed 123 properties according to the OneRoof data, says he is at a stage where he has eased up on the sacrifice and insists on spending every fourth weekend with his family, sometimes handing his phone over to a rookie in the office.
“Too many people come in and burn themselves out in our industry,” he says. “Just work hard and then all of a sudden, they break down in tears and go, ‘Geez, what am I doing it all for? I’ve earned good money all the way through but my life is actually pretty s***’.”
Barfoot & Thompson agents Bob Qin, from the Millwater office in Auckland, and Sandy Wang, from Highland Park – numbers three and 10 respectively – were among a strong showing for the family firm which specialises in Auckland and which recently bought into Lodge Real Estate in Hamilton.
Sold stickers dominate a Barfoot & Thompson sales office. The agency's managing director says his best agents come from sales backgrounds. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Managing director Peter Thompson says personality is a defining characteristic of top agents. They have to have the drive to get out there and get the work, but also have the confidence to talk to all comers and to close deals.
Some of the best agents come from sales backgrounds, he says, because be it retail or real estate the techniques are the same, and some of the best agents his company has had are people who have worked for McDonald’s or other food chains where they are trained how to ask questions.
“They always ask you, don’t they, ‘would you like to upgrade that to the big meal’ or ‘would you like fries to go with that?’.”
Many real estate agents freeze when they get to the big question, “would you like to buy the property,” he says, and another problem is agents who “forget” to put money away when they have a good sale to cover them in downtimes.
While Thompson says not many agents have left the company this downturn, there are always some who may have been trying to drive an Uber to make ends meet as well as selling houses, but that generally does not mix.
Experience through good times and bad counts, whether the agents are selling in diverse and spread-out Auckland or smaller cities like Hamilton: “Real estate is the same basically right through the world.”
Always on call
At number eight on OneRoof’s list is Glenn Collins, from Lodge Real Estate in Hamilton. He says his team should close in on an overall $1.5bn in sales this year, which is not too shabby for a smaller town.
He cites a close-knit team, which includes partner Sonia Christison, son Jack and Sonia’s sister Sheree Crawford, and says around half their business is repeat or referred.
Lodge has a great reputation, having been a local brand since 1969, and that goes a long way, but he says his team – which unusually does not have a PA – is hands-on, hardworking and efficient.
Working 70 hours a week is not uncommon for him, and he says giving genuine advice is important – he would rather miss out on listings than give a price an owner wants to hear but which is not realistic.
Other top listings agents in Hamilton are Yvenna Yue, number two on the OneRoof list, and her business and romantic partner Craig Annandale, who is number nine. Both work for Harcourts Hamilton Central City.
Harcourts Hamilton agents Yvenna Yue and Craig Annandale: “My phone goes at 1am, 12am, 11am, you can phone me anytime, 24/7, my phone’s right beside me.” Photo / Alan Gibson
Yue has only been selling for seven years but was a Hamilton businesswoman before she moved into real estate and she says first and foremost a good agent has to be a decent person.
People think real estate is about the money but it’s not, she says.
“When you get more and more into it and the more volume you do you realise we’re actually here to be helping people.”
On average she does a deal a day and is virtually never off-duty: “My phone goes at 1am, 12am, 11am, you can phone me anytime, 24/7, my phone’s right beside me.”
Annandale says the couple lives and breathes real estate, all day every day. His pet peeve is agents who only have one or two listings who never answer their phone.
“I mean, we’ve got 40 or 50 listings and we always answer our phone so I suppose it’s that whole commitment thing.
“The people that are at the top of the game, they are committed to their sellers. As an agent once said to me when I first started, if you want to get your house sold go to a busy agent.”
He says the couple has branded themselves in a very visible way, on digital billboards and in the cars they drive. “If you ask Hamiltonians, right, Yvenna and I both drive Porsches.”
It helps that Yue is “very iconic” in the Chinese community with a “pretty massive” reputation and Annandale is happy to not compete for the limelight – he says her Porsche says Yvenna, and so does his.
Paperwork woes
Back in Auckland, another agent with strong visibility is Diego Traglia, from Harcourts Northwest and number five on OneRoof’s list.
Traglia’s visibility is such he starred in the recent reality TV show Rich Listers, but that’s because of the profile he built up since starting out door knocking and cold calling eight years ago.
Now, he is Team Diego with 13 people in his team, including support agents and PAs.
Like others, he says he tells clients how it is and sometimes a sale is not in their best interest, saying he has advised clients who wanted to cash up in the last couple of years to hang in there until the market improved.
“Once you start having those conversations with vendors your reputation gets magnified and expanded and vendors then talk to other potential vendors and let them know that we’re not just an agent, we’re actually a trusted adviser.”
At the time of the interview, Traglia had around 45 listings on the go, describing managing them as a bit like a pilot flying a plane – the pilot does not serve the drinks and Traglia doesn’t do the paperwork.
Harcourts Auckland agent Diego Traglia has found fame on TV but what he loves doing most is selling. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Harcourts agent Fiona Li: “I'm good at negotiating and selling so I just want to do this, but I get headache with my paperwork and everything so I think it's important that you have a really good team.” Photo / Fiona Goodall
“It allows me to literally just focus on listing and selling properties. I don’t do anything else but listing and selling properties.”
Another top agent out west, Fiona Li, from Blue Fern Realty/Harcourts Henderson Heights, also made OneRoof’s top 10, coming in at number seven, and she agrees agents should do what they are good at.
“I’m good at negotiating and selling so I just want to do this, but I get headache with my paperwork and everything so I think it’s important that you have a really good team.”
She feels sorry for some of the new agents who are not members of teams, who have been door knocking and leaving flyers in vain, saying some ask if they can join her team but she says she does not have available positions and that she hand-picks her team.
Li says while her team is multicultural, and she speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin, it’s not about the country you come from, it’s about the skill levels of the people in the team.
Word of mouth
Down country, agent Scott McGoun works with Sharon Donnelly, numbers 14 and six on the OneRoof list respectively, for Bayleys Wanaka/Lake Wanaka Realty.
McGoun also talked of hard work and long hours, saying the team has a work ethic second to none but that he draws the line at Sunday afternoons so he can spend time with wife Rebecca, also a top agent, and their three boys.
In a town booming with subdivisions and house and land sales, around half of their buyers come from outside the area, meaning agents have to be available whichever day of the week they arrive, he says.
With life so busy, his philosophy is if you want to get ahead in real estate get a PA, and he says the team had four at one stage.
In a small town like Wanaka, McGoun says honesty and reputation is everything if you want to stay in the game for the long haul because word of mouth travels fast.
“I call it the supermarket test. I’ve lived here since I was nine years old. If I need bread, I want to walk down that aisle and be able to look at whoever’s in there with my head up rather than dodge the aisle.”
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By the numbers: What the OneRoof analysis found
Analysis of more than 100,000 residential listings published on OneRoof in the 12 months from August 2022 found that the average number of listings per residential agent was 14 – just over one a month – at an average value of $800,000.
However, 1246 of the 10,632 active agents – 11% – had only one listing.
Three hundred and ninety-two agents managed to list 50 or more properties over the period, but only a handful of agents – 0.04% of the total working in New Zealand – were listing machines.
Forty-three salespeople managed to sign up 100 or more listings over the 12-month period, and of those, only six managed to list more than 200 properties.
The super-listers are also reaping big rewards for their efforts. The total value of the stock brought to market by the top 60 listing agents was close to $8 billion.
Bayleys agents Gary and Vicki Wallace. They listed a total of 34 properties with a total value of $180m. Photo / Fiona Goodall
The number one agent by volume of listings, Cameron Bailey, of Harcourts Gold, in Christchurch, listed just over $300 million worth of real estate in the 12-month period. His 250 listings had an average value, by search price, of $1.2m. Number six in the rankings, Sharon Donnelly, from Bayleys’ Wanaka branch, listed fewer properties (202), but the value of her stock was higher at $326m.
The analysis also found that agents operating at the very top of the market could potentially earn the same amount, or more, than the super-listers, by bringing to market fewer properties. Graham Wall, together with his sons Ollie and Andrew, listed just 36 properties on the open market between August 2022 and August 2023, but the total value of their listings was $298m. Gary Wallace, from Bayleys Remuera, listed 34 properties with a total value of $180m while Michael Boulgaris, who operates in the same patch, listed 19 properties worth $90m in total.
While the OneRoof rankings didn’t take into account sales and sales prices, only listings volumes and search prices, it did show that the super-listers were getting results, with the majority of stock attached to their names selling.
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