Professionals Tamborine Mountain 
While it may surprise you to see another real estate feature on our website, the relationship between what you may think are rivals is far more amiable than many assume. Managing director Andrew Brown of Harcourts Scenic pulls the curtain back on the truth.
by Kyle Hitchmough
Some people may not fully understand why Professionals is featuring this interview with what they might see as a rival agency. Could you explain the working relationship between Professionals and Harcourts?
I think most of the agents in this area work well. Our job is to sell people’s properties, and that’s what we need to do so they can get on with their life. Whether we’re working on the same property for a sale, one of their agents has a buyer for one of our properties, there’s no dramas with that. We’re all focused on getting the job done. That works well. If you go into some of the high-res areas, you don’t see that as much, it’s more competitive, people aren’t as willing to share some of the commission to get a result. Here, we’re results focused. It’s about getting the best result we can.
What goes into your role as managing director?
Everything. As a director, you need to know everything about your business. I’ll do the occasional routine inspection, exit and entry reports, I’ll go out on appraisals for sales. I also do recruitment, accounting, property management, help with the maintenance… I’ll put my hand into everything so I know what we do, how we do it, if there’s any gaps where we can improve.
What made you want to enter this field?
I used to be in engineering for a long time, and I spent a lot of my time offshore, training engineers. What I found was I wasn’t getting involved in my community, I was never home. I got tired of it. I wanted a change, and a friend was an owner of another real estate. We had a chat and I decided to get into the business. I worked with Harcourts for a while before I decided I’d like to have my own agency. That’s how I got started. It gets you involved in the community, it gets you to know people. You talk to everybody, tenants, sellers, buyers, landlords. I got involved with the Anzac Day Memorial down in Tamborine Village, I was part of the community to get that up and running.
Is there anything that particularly affects housing prices in this area?
Surprisingly, we get property price increases, but we don’t get the boom and bust that we see in some of the major areas. When prices go down, generally prices in our region are stable or still going up slightly. It’s very interesting. Even when there’s a boom, we get an increase—we won’t get the 20% per year, but we still get an increase. But during the downtimes, we find we don’t really drop that much. I think that this region is less transient, people who come out to this region generally want the lifestyle. We find that the number of properties available, the turnover, is not as high. In that situation you don’t get a lot of people rushing out and putting properties on the market.
Are you a local? What’s your opinion on the area and the community?
Yes, I live down in the village. I’ve been there for just over eight years now. It’s an evolving community and can see the change of the younger people coming in and the more elderly moving out. I think the community has a strong feel for looking after the mountain and that comes across a lot. They’re doing a good job of that balance of improvements but maintaining the way the mountain should be. And because you have such a diverse range of people, we’d go to the Zamia theatre, to their plays, and you’ve got such a range of people that it’s so interesting to talk to. All different types. It’s great.
Buying or selling a home can be a stressful experience. What do you do to mitigate that stress for your clients?
You get those that have sold five houses in the last six years, and they’re okay with it because they know what’s going on. Then you get those who are new to the market, first purchase or first sale. The idea obviously is to make them feel comfortable, explain the process really clearly, what’s going to happen and what we’re going to go through, explain the emotions they’re going to experience, and the big thing with any sale is as soon as you have a contact on a property, every buyer thinks they’ve paid too much and every seller thinks they’ve sold too cheap. It’s always the same. It’s handling that process, and making sure people feel comfortable about what’s going to happen. People need to be feeling like they’re being looked after. It’s a big emotional change.
Do you have any tips for your clients on easier selling their home?
Everything is the first impression. It’s from your front gate to your front door. Most homes, the photo that you’ll see is of the front of the house. People do drive-bys—your fences need to be in order, your gardens, your driveway, your front door, everything in that entryway. You need people to drive by and want to come back and have a look. That’s where you start.
Do you have any particular favourite locales on the mountain? Places to eat or stay?
Eating’s a hard one because you have to try everything! There’s so much to do. There’s such good local food and produce. We visit the Tamborine Mountain Pizza shop, Michael does a great job there, that’s one of our favourites.
We are always looking for new topics for our blog. If there’s something you like to see more of, email your suggestions to: social@professionalsserendipity.com.au
Or email the writer at kyle.hitchmough@hotmail.com, and follow me on Twitter @realcasualrvws.
