How did you start in the real estate business?

I was an accountant, actually. I was financial controller for the Real Estate Institute of South Australia at a time when the CEO retired (in 1996) and I was asked to fill in while they did a search for that role. After four weeks, they said,’ We think you’d be good for the job, would you like to consider it?’ and I said I’d love to, so I made the leap from financial accounting to managing a not-for-profit organization. I was CEO until December 1999. I moved to Melbourne in January 2000 for the REIV CEO job. Next February it will be 15 years in the role.

What do you love about your job?

My job’s a little different from a straight CEO of a membership organization, we’ve got a number of commercial operations, which I enjoy, managing, the online businesses realestateVIEW.com.au and propertydata.com.au, they always add a different dimension to my job. I like what’s happening in the digital space, I like to get involved. The part of it not-for-profit that I enjoy is making sure that we do good things for our members, provide good services and make sure their rights are protected and help them run their businesses more efficiently.

What would you say are the biggest issues facing the Australian real estate industry at the moment?

There are a number of issues from a number of directions. One is obviously the impact on real estate transactions due to modern technology, what’s happening on the internet, products and services available, people taking more and more of the real estate transaction as new ways of searching for property and finding property information becomes available. There are new industries starting up doing part of the transaction which is a potential threat, but I think that if real estate offices can adapt to the new way of doing business, and that does involve a whole rounded approach of not just face-to-face but social media, online, tablet and mobile, that’s where a lot of people will be doing their research for property. At the end of the day they’ll still want interaction with the estate agent, and that’s where the skill comes in, the empathy, and the qualifications that they have.

The winds of deregulation seem to be blowing around. I think governments have become fixated on the fact they’ve got to cut red tape at all costs and they don’t always consider the consequences of doing that, the consequences of lowering standards, of allowing unlicensed and untrained people to handle some parts of real estate transactions. That’s a real disruptive danger to real estate where governments, and we’ve seen that through the notional licensing authority a couple of years ago, and in states like Victoria where the Napthine government decided in blissful isolation of anyone else that it would deregulate commercial transactions. I think there’s a real danger when governments do not understand the industry they are making changes in.

What would you like to see done differently in the industry?

I’d like to see more stringent qualifications. I think you’ll find that the new breeds of estate agents coming in these days are generally tertiary qualified. I’d like to see the lifting of qualifications and standards, and we can’t do that on our own, it needs buy-in from government and all stakeholders, consumers and the people working in real estate as well.

What’s your advice to a young person thinking of entering the real estate market?

My son is actually an estate agent, and the one thing that you need to do in real estate is have empathy with people and understand what it is they want, and not try and tell them what it is you think they want. You need to work with them at their level and in their time frame, and be honest with people. Do the best you can, and never, ever, ever, ever cut corners! Your integrity is priceless and once it’s damaged it’s hard to repair.

What was your first home?

I was born in Adelaide in Trinity Gardens.

Where do you live now?

Now I live in a suburb of Melbourne close to the city called Balwyn, which was a good real estate investment from the time I bought it to now.

If money were no object, what would your dream property be?

I’ve always had this passion to have some plot of land, I don’t know where but where I could grow vegetables and am self-sufficient. I like to have stuff that’s grown in the garden without any pesticides, I tend to buy organic now. I’d like a nice relaxing place in the country, it could be Australia or the south of France or Tuscany, just a place where I could potter in the garden and drink copious amounts of red wine and just relax!