Where’s Olly?
Rare image shows Peter Brewer Author with his own teeth and hair. (Circa 2000)
My dad, a well seasoned real estate maestro in his own right often spoke about the great wheel of life.
He believed that, with every graceful rotation, that wheel eventually delivered an overdue reality check to one or two unsuspecting travellers who had been making their way through life with their heads buried deep inside their own fundamental orifices.
My Dad had a way with words.
More than 40 years in real estate has taught me plenty. Most of it is even publishable.
But the changing property markets we’re beginning to see across Australia brought to mind an exchange I had several summers ago. It remains a stark reminder that markets come and go. Conditions change. Buyers and sellers adapt, and Albos aren’t forever.
Yet our profession has a curious habit of forgetting its own history.
Worse still, there are always a few people who believe the lessons of history apply to everyone except them.
Where am I going with this slightly premature “I told you so”?
Not so many moons ago, I was invited by the REIQ to deliver marketing training to a group of relatively new entrants to the property profession.
I always loved delivering those sessions to a room full of newcomers with stars in their eyes, freshly ironed shirts and blouses, ambitious goals and an unwavering belief that real estate greatness and a lead role in their own episode of Selling Sunset was just one professionally filtered Instagram post away.
After each of those sessions, the students were required to complete an assessment.
Most did so successfully. One student. Let’s call him Olly passed every component, except one.
Olly’s unanswered question presented a hypothetical scenario.
Olly the agent was responsible for a property that had been on the market for six weeks. It had received 50 physical inspections and several thousand views across the property portals. Despite all that attention and some of his Snapchat wizardry, no offers had been received.
The property remained unsold.
The question asked Olly to explain, in his own words, the conversation he would have with the seller at the upcoming review meeting.
As I worked my way through his assessment, I noticed that the entire section had been left blank.
Being someone with a healthy disregard for unnecessary bureaucracy, I decided that instead of simply failing Olly, I’d pick up the blower and talk the scenario through.
We chatted.
I pointed out that he hadn’t completed the written component. I assumed he would apologise and tell me it’d been a simple oversight.
His response surprised me.
“Peter, the reason I didn’t answer it is because it’s a bullshit question.”
I paused.
“A bullshit question?”
Brisbane’s newest burgeoning real estate rockstar was happy to enlighten me.
“Yep. It’s a bullshit question. Your scenario is preposterous. In my office, our listings have five contracts on the first day and are sold within 24 hours. So there’s no point answering it. It’s not reality”
Okies I thought.
We chatted some more.
I gave the ‘Olster’ a brief history lesson about some of the markets I had worked through. Markets where listings didn’t sell in 24 hours, 24 days or, occasionally, even 24 months.
There were periods when we delivered birthday cakes to sellers whose homes had been on the market for a full year.
Our profession can have a remarkably short memory.
Over the years, I’ve lost count of how many agents I’ve heard say:
“Lord, please give me one more boom, and I promise I won’t waste it.”
And yet, when the next boom arrives, plenty of them waste it.
They confuse a rising market with personal brilliance.
They mistake being present during extraordinary conditions for having created those conditions themselves.
They start believing that every auction result is evidence of their negotiating genius, every suburb record is a tribute to their marketing prowess and every luxury car in the office car park has been personally gifted by the real estate gods.
Now we are beginning to see changes across some of the thousands of micro-markets that make up Australia’s property landscape.
Some are still firing. Some are softening. Some are changing street by street and suburb by suburb.
I don’t believe we’re about to see thousands of homes celebrating birthdays on the market. Not yet, anyway.
But there is undeniably a shift taking place.
Those who have completed a few laps of the real estate block understand that different markets require vastly different skills.
Skills that extend well beyond a phone, a laptop and a Realworks subscription.
For many agents, the order-taking environment they have enjoyed since COVID is changing.
While the Ollys of the world have been busy leasing Beamers, whitening teeth and ensuring their eyebrows achieve maximum architectural symmetry, those five offers in 24 hours days have become less predictable.
I’m not suggesting the market has completed a full 180-degree turn from sellers to buyers.
But I do have a few questions.
Do you remember the hundreds of buyer phone calls you didn’t return during the glorious years?
Do you remember the unsuccessful bidders whose messages sat unread for days?
Do you remember the uncomfortable multiple-offer negotiations where people making the biggest financial decision of their lives were treated as an administrative inconvenience?
Here’s the awkward part.
They remember you.
They remember the lack of empathy.
They remember the silence.
They remember the arrogance. Whether it was intended or merely perceived.
Most importantly, they remember how you made them feel.
And some of those disappointed buyers are now sellers.
So, when the name “Olly” pops up on their phone, what will be the first thought that goes through their mind?
Will they remember the sharp suit, the Rolex and the suburb-record Facebook posts?
Or will they remember the agent who couldn’t be bothered returning their call?
I also wonder how preposterous Olly will consider that assessment question when he is standing in Woolies, studying the reduced-price birthday cakes and preparing for a difficult six-month review with a vendor.
The good news for social media
There may be one small upside to a changing market.
We may finally be approaching a time when every second social media post from the friendly neighbourhood real estate rockstar is no longer a photo of a Rolex-adorned wrist gripping a BMW steering wheel beneath the caption:
“Another street record. #Grateful #Humbled #Blessed.”
Perhaps we’ll see more posts about genuine service.
Maybe even one or two about returning phone calls.
Maybe some posts about helping your Community.
Maybe even just helping the community without the posts. There’s a crazy concept for you.
So, what is the lesson in this tale?
Perhaps it’s that markets create opportunities, but they can also create illusions.
Perhaps it’s that good manners are not a prospecting strategy to switch on when listings become harder to win.
Perhaps it’s that the people you disregard today may become the clients you desperately need tomorrow.
Or perhaps the lesson is simply that no market lasts forever and neither does the reputation built on behaving as though it will.
But I’m interested in what you took from it.
Have you met an Olly during your career?
Have you ever mistaken favourable conditions for your own brilliance?
Did anything in this story deliver a small light-bulb moment?
And, most importantly, what do you think happened to Olly?
Did the great wheel of life eventually complete its rotation?
Did he become a thoughtful, skilled and empathetic agent?
Or is he now selling birthday cakes at Woolies and telling customers the use-by date is a bullshit question?
As always, I’d value your thoughts. Feedback is always a gift.
ps. If you’ve made it this far I think you deserve a copy of my Running Out Of Saturdays audiobook. The first 5 people to leave a comment on this post and to follow this link and type in the code Olly will receive a complimentary copy. You’re welcome!
