Tales of trust

Burgess Rawson directors Raoul Holderhead and Ingrid Filmer maintain the success of the agency’s clients depends on the expert advice they dispense when their buyers and sellers question market conditions.

The following accounts highlight the depth of Burgess Rawson’s expertise to advise clients in their best interests, despite what they perceive as market or personal risks.

Darwin investor Joe Scaturchio flew into a Burgess Rawson Portfolio Auction in Melbourne, hoping to walk away with a supermarket leased to Coles at Geelong. But he was outbid.

Just five minutes later, he was the proud owner of a Bunnings Warehouse-leased property at Kangaroo Flat, in another regional city, Bendigo.

“He bought the property sight unseen and then said ‘Firstly, where is Bendigo?’ and then ‘OK, now you manage it’,” Burgess Rawson managing director Ingrid Filmer recalls.

“We managed that property for about five or six years, and the time came for Joe to put it back up for sale through our auctions,” Ms Filmer said.

“He bought it for $8.68 million and sold it for almost $14.5 million to another one of our clients.

“We still continue to manage the asset for the new buyer, and since that sale we’ve renegotiated the entire lease as well as facilitating a major redevelopment and extension of the store,” she said.

Burgess Rawson director Raoul Holderhead says the mark of any good business is not the big, one-off wins that are easy to crow about, but rather the customers and clients who quietly keep coming back because they trust the people they’re dealing with.

For Dubbo developer and investor Brett Anderson, a tip from a friend to give Mr Holderhead a call developed into a trusted, ongoing relationship.

“A mate suggested Raoul and we started with one property – a small office building in Forbes in central western New South Wales – to see how it would go,” Mr Anderson said.

“The result was actually quite famous in the region. A lot of the valuers from around Wagga all still talk about it because it was such an outstanding outcome. It sold for about 15 per cent more than what we thought it would.”

He said that he had since sold more than half a dozen properties through Burgess Rawson during the past two years.

The agency says the level of its repeat purchasers speaks for itself.

“More than 80 per cent of our business is repeat clients,” Mr Holderhead said.

Published in the Herald Sun