It’s been 10 years since Anita Dobson discovered her passion for real estate. Selling houses has turned out to be something she excels at. Based on Auckland’s Hibiscus Coast, Dobson has been Harcourts’ top agent for the Rodney region since 2021, yet real estate was the very last thing she wanted to do when she was growing up.
Q: Why were you originally against selling houses as a career?
My parents were both agents, working separately, and I saw how much my dad Barry worked. That put me off. Dad was a very successful real estate agent in Masterton and then when I was about 11 we moved to the Hibiscus Coast. It was great for us kids, an amazing place to grow up, but the market crashed and dad went from earning good money to pretty much having to start over again in a new area. He had to work really long hours and my parents’ relationship fell apart. It was a really tough time and when I saw how hard he had to work, I thought, ‘I wouldn’t want to go down that route’. And yet I have!
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In my late teens I worked for a while for dad in his Ray White office in Northcote, doing admin and front of office stuff, but I didn’t want to be an agent. I went off and did my own thing, including becoming a Xero-certified bookkeeper and teaching myself how to build websites. I also worked for a building company owned by my mum and stepdad.
Q: How did you end up becoming an agent?
At the age of 26 I was the mother of two children, aged three and one, I had separated from their father and I had about $50,000 worth of debt. I was trying to work and run a book-keeping business on the side but I wasn’t getting anywhere. Dad, who had Mike Pero Real Estate in Glenfield by then, needed help and asked me to come and work as his PA. I decided to get my real estate licence which I did by correspondence over 12 months, and then I started selling, ending up with Harcourts on the Hibiscus Coast, where I live.
I found that I really enjoyed the job, even though you do have to work hard. My dad has been an amazing mentor. I know I can go to him about anything, and he often comes to give talks to my team. It’s a two-way street though now, sometimes he’ll ask me questions.
Q: Can you remember your first sale?
I was working for dad in Glenfield and it was the day of an America’s Cup race, so he was late into the office. I’d got there early, and we had a walk-in [client]. Because I was there, I got it, but my licence hadn’t actually come through yet. I booked an appraisal for the afternoon and luckily my licence arrived right before I went to do it. Dad came to help me, I got the listing and the place sold at auction a few weeks later.
Q: Have you had any particularly memorable sales?
That very first one is one I will never forget. The vendors were selling to get into a school zone and it was emotional for them, leaving the house. I don’t think we quite hit reserve at the auction but it got to an amount where they were happy to get the deal done. The husband was at the auction and signed the contract; then I had to take it to the wife who was at home with the kids. She was so upset about selling the house and as it happened they’d just got a letter from the school, accepting their child as an out-of-zone enrolment. But they went ahead with selling.
Dobson says her first sale made her cry. "You think a sale is going to be a happy moment but for some people it’s not." Photo / Fiona Goodall
I got back to the office with the signed contract and dad was waiting with a bottle of champagne to congratulate me on my first sale. I walked in the door and burst into tears – I’d got so caught up in the vendor’s emotions after the rollercoaster they’d just been through. You think a sale is going to be a happy moment but for some people it’s not. It was a reminder to me that people are selling their homes for a lot of different reasons and sometimes it’s not a happy event.
Q: What do you love about the job?
I enjoy being part of people’s journey. You get very involved in their lives for a short time and often they will trust you with a lot of information, which is quite a responsibility. It’s very satisfying when a seller or a buyer gets a result that enables them to move onto that next stage of their journey. You can get very caught up in it all.
I also enjoy being able to help my team succeed. I work with six others – four agents and two admin and operations staff. It’s really rewarding being able to create opportunities for them, and now that I have been doing this for a while, it’s cool having that new energy in the office.
I like the fact this is the kind of job where the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. I really put my heart and soul into it.
Q: Why do you think you’ve done so well?
I put in a lot of hours. This is not a nine-to-five job for me, it’s basically my life. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and one of those people who each year wants to do better than I did last year.
My partner and I really want to get ourselves set up while we’re younger so we can give the kids good opportunities and not still be working our butts off when we’re old. You do have to juggle things, especially when you’ve got kids. I have mine half of the time, and my partner is really supportive but he’s away a lot with work. I’m pretty good at being organised ... most of the time!
A lot of people have limiting beliefs about what you can and can’t do but I guess it all depends on confidence, and also what you are willing to sacrifice. I’ve lost connections with friends because I’ve been really focused on getting us set up, but the kids are happy and I’m doing a job I love. I think women in particular need to back themselves – you can do it! If I look back 10 years, I would never have dreamed I would be where I am today, but there you go!
Q: Did you manage to pay off that $50,000 debt?
I did! It took me about a year. I focused on my goal, worked hard and stopped going out and spending money. Also, my partner was working in Australia at the time and said he wasn’t coming home until I’d paid off my debt. That was a pretty good incentive to knuckle down!
Q: What do you do when you’re not working?
I don’t get a lot of time off but we do like to do things with the kids that are adventurous, like mountain biking or hiking. We try to take a week off every school holidays. We’ve got a campervan so we enjoy going away in that. We also enjoy boating but we sold our boat because we’re pretty time-poor and we weren’t using it. We’d love to buy a yacht and travel around the world one day, but at the moment it’s paddle-boarding rather than sailing.
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