Ray White agent Kane Taylor’s fearless, can-do attitude to business, dynamic TaylorMade team and connection with his community have won him many accolades and a booming business over the years. He’s known for selling homes that have attracted international attention, including an Auckland house that once hosted Pamela Anderson.
Q: How long have you been in real estate?
Since January 2017. I started in Remuera at Mike Pero Real Estate with Karen and Graeme Moore – it seems like a lifetime ago now. They owned the business and were super savvy and incredibly hardworking. Karen was a great mentor. I get a bit ahead of myself nine times out of 10, so she was good at reining me in and being a great teacher.
Q: What were you doing prior?
Start your property search
I was an auto electrician out of school. I knew I really liked working with people and that I liked marketing and business, but I quite didn’t know in what capacity that would be. So I went and worked for my dad in his business of 35 years and got my apprenticeship.
I’ve had a few business ventures along the way – I’ve always been keen to give things a crack. I had an events company with a good friend of mine, we did a lot of marketing for that with touring DJs and music events. It was a lot of fun but I also really enjoyed the business side, dealing with the people and looking after the DJs.
Discover more:
- Grant Dalton’s former Remuera mansion snapped up for $20m
- Trophy home linked to failed developer sells for $650,000 loss
- Neighbours fall in love with each other - so who makes the first move?
I had another venture – a payment portal. I was trying to solve the problem in flatting situations where you didn’t have to hand over cash. Now these days you’ve just got an app called Splitwise, which is exactly what we were trying to create 10 to 15 years ago. Then I headed off overseas.
Q: What did you get up to over there?
I worked on super yachts. My dad still to this day says it gave him grey hair when I left. I did it for about six years in the end. I started as a deck engineer then moved up to higher roles like bosun. I’ve still got a little business now called Yachties of New Zealand. We help people get into yachting and talk them through visas and money and all that sort of thing.
It was exciting, fun and fast-paced. I remember sitting on my first yacht. It was a Bugatti blue carbon fibre yacht. We had picked up a guy from Capri who owned a hotel there and he was having a casual conversation on the aft deck with my boss about trading his whole hotel for my boss’s Picasso painting.
Q: What do you put your success down to?
I like the idea of being able to work in a way that what you put in is what you get out.
Taylor’s past career has been varied but he spent a memorable spell working on super yachts. "It was exciting, fun and fast-paced." Photo / Fiona Goodall
Every agent is different in their approach, but for us, it’s presentation, marketing, good energy and a never-give-up attitude. At the forefront of the team’s mind is always empathy and always try to do the best you can.
Q: Speaking of Team TaylorMade, who is in it?
Scott is a salesperson, a young buck and super knowledgeable. Then we’ve got Skye who is an amazing personality, super-hardworking, very good with vendors and buyers. And Casey has just joined the team. We’re a good unit. We have time to do anything – building inspections, extra viewings and that sort of thing – because we have the capacity to do it.
Q: What sets you guys apart from the rest?
Attention to detail is incredibly important to us; the whole team are absolutely on board with this. That comes down to the presentation of the home and ourselves, how we work and talk with buyers, and our photography and scriptwriting. We review these things time and time again before we even get a home on the market. It's often the incremental changes and small things that make a huge difference to the outcome.
We also do a lot of marketing in our core areas in the community. I’m a big advocate for doing things outside the box and doing things differently. What’s the point of doing the same as everyone else?
Q: What sort of things do you do?
In and around Westmere and Grey Lynn, I approached the dairies and we now have billboards up there that no one was doing. I walked into Westmere School and said, “how can we help?” So we sponsor Westmere School – we’re there once a month with our coffee cart and hand coffee out to the parents and marshmallows to the kids. We also go to the Grey Lynn Community Centre the first Friday of every month and do the same thing there at the mum and dads group.
Kane Taylor with his team, Scott Bartlett, Casey Green and Skye Brooke. Photo / Supplied
Taylor sold an Auckland home where celebrity Pamela Anderson once partied for the cameras. The 2014 Woodstock ad featured Anderson with a hapless group of Kiwi lads. Photo / Supplied
I hate the whole real estate stigma so try and do anything to get away from that!
Q: What sales have stood out over your career?
The most memorable would be the first one – it was on Waiheke with Karen way back in the day. Other than that, we sold a really stunning home on the clifftop in Titirangi with 360-degree views. This year we’ve been lucky enough to sell some of the nicest houses in Westmere and Grey Lynn – one of them got a Grey Lynn record for the last two years and the other one got a street record. Both were immaculate, the vendors were amazing and now we’re really good friends.
Last year, we sold a home in Waterview that had been the backdrop to an advert starring Pamela Anderson. We had so much fun with this home, and our owners also owned a terrazzo stone family business so the home encompassed that over both levels, even in the downstairs retro bar area.
Q: A huge achievement in a tough market, how have you been navigating it?
There is always going to be peaks and troughs – like any business you need to adjust and adapt. Homes are always going to sell, so it’s adjusting perspective. Another aspect is asking how we can best present a home to get away from the competition. When there’s plenty of houses on the market, it’s going back to thinking outside the box.
Taylor also sold this impressive Hollywood-style West Auckland home last year. It was one of OneRoof’s most viewed properties of the year. Photo / Supplied
I’ve done everything – when the market really started to change, I’d get saxophonists at my open homes just to make them memorable. I’d hand out coffees for the first two to three opens homes just so that people could have on that coffee cup TaylorMade and they would know what house they had been to. It helps with the interest and therefore it helps sell the house.
Q: Do you focus on particular properties?
I’ve got a real thing for villas and bungalows – the character, the interior style and the architectural design. Whether it be Westmere, Grey Lynn, Ponsonby, Waterview, Avondale or Point Chev. That’s what we really love and what we see a lot of in our core client base.
I’ve got a bungalow myself and renovated that and won House of the Year category.
Q: Tell us about that.
It was an original 1900s bungalow and the builder entered it in the Master Builders House of the Year and we ended up winning the Auckland category for the Renovation under $750,000 which was really cool. Then we went in the National Awards and we got in the Top 100 for Renovation in New Zealand as well.
Q: What do you do when you’re not selling?
I start the day at a gym in Newton called Ludus Magnus – I go there Monday, Wednesday Friday. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I go kickboxing and at the moment I’m training for a ride around Taupo in November. Exercise is my out from real estate to really clear my head. I love travel. I just got back from Bali and am going to Samoa soon with my family. I’ve also been lucky enough that the family has a house in Pauanui and I go down there to escape the rat race and chill out and play some tennis.
Q: What advice would you give budding agents and those just starting out?
Pick an area that you genuinely have an interest in, maybe you go to the local squash centre or play tennis there, or you’ve got heaps of friends there. Pick that area and hone in on that. The mistake I made was trying to do too much and spread myself too thin. I’d be in the office until three o’clock in the morning packing letters and then the next day, I’d be handing them out it Mount Eden, Sandringham, Remuera. I should have just picked one suburb, two or three hundred houses, five, six, seven streets and really got to know the people and the area. That is the key to starting a real estate business and it will only get better and better.
Oh and never give up!
- Click here to find properties for sale in Auckland
