Auctioneer Brayden Coldicutt likes to be first.
When he was 22 years old, he became the country’s youngest ever RSA president and just last week, at the age of 28, he was named Harcourts National Auctioneer of the Year.
Coldicutt was the only competitor under 30 in the agency’s open auctioneering competition. He was also one of the few entrants who wasn’t a full-time auctioneer.
The Harcourts Hawke’s Bay agent found himself competing against veterans calling auctions in some of the country’s busiest real estate markets.
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He told OneRoof his victory hadn’t quite sunk in.
“It’s surreal and quite humbling, but it’s also cool [the winner] can be someone from Hawke’s Bay. The winners are typically from Christchurch or Auckland, where they do auctions all day every day.”
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A week after the excitement of winning the contest, in which his skills were tested in front of a crowd of hundreds, he was back in Napier selling houses.
Coldicutt started in real estate in 2017 after graduating from Massey University, in Palmerston North, with a marketing degree.
His father had suggested it as a career and put him in contact with an agent. He met the branch manager of Harcourts Taradale to find out more and within 20 hours he was filling out papers and on the way to getting his real estate licence.
But the start of his real estate career meant the end of working part-time at the Taradale RSA. When he told his bosses he was quitting, they encouraged him to join the committee.
Within a year he was vice president and at 22 years old he was president (the youngest RSA president by some 34 years).
Coldicutt joins a raft of high caliber auctioneers who have won the Harcourts National Auctioneer of the Year cup. Photo / Supplied
A year after joining the real estate industry, Coldicutt put his hand up to join the agency’s auctioneering training programme.
That same year he won Harcourts annual novice division of the auctioneering competition before even having called a first proper auction.
Fast forward six years and he is now competing and – at least for this year – winning against the big guns in the open division.
But despite his track record of doing things early, Coldicutt had decided to put the brakes on doing anything else - for now.
“I’m quite happy doing what I’m doing at the moment,” he said.
“I said I wouldn’t make any changes or decisions before I’m 30 so I will keep doing what I’m doing until I’m 30 and then I will kind of reassess. What I love the most is that there is no limit to what you can do – I can do sales, I can be a full-time auctioneer, I can do management if I want to.”
He recently got engaged to his partner, Beth, and said part of his plan is to work hard now to set himself up for their future.
“This is probably why I’m working so much like this now so I don’t have to do so much when I’ve got kids. Everyone goes, ‘Do you even see Beth?’.”
He added: “A lot of people tell you the best thing about real estate is the flexibility. There is no flexibility – it’s all the time. It’s actually about people. And we are dealing with the biggest asset someone will ever have. It’s not all happy times – and I think some agents forget that. We are dealing with death, we are dealing with divorce, we are dealing with debt. Just to be able to help people through that process is rewarding.”
Harcourts national auction manager Shane Cortese, who runs the agency’s annual auctioneering competition, said the winner’s cup had some pretty phenomenal names on it.
Coldicutt, he said, had gone up against three of the company’s more experienced full-time auctioneers.
“It’s about getting the numbers right, it’s about engagement and he was the audience favourite as well. He did really well and he showed immense skill. He managed to make the call of his life and he beat them on the day.”
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