Reg de Baritault - Re/max Community Realty - Sales Associate

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I sold my first house 25+ years ago…this is how it all started!

In 1988 while visiting my sister who lived in Rochedale (Queensland), my father had a stroke and could never go back home to Mauritius, so my parents needed to find a house in Brisbane to live. At that time, taking a loan from the bank for the purchase of a home was relatively easy. So I travelled to Australia on a visitor’s visa, with the goal of purchasing a new home for my parents.

We found a house in Rochedale South that was “love at first sight”– though it was at least 10% over the average value of homes in the area—and bought it through a loan from the bank. I then flew back home to Mauritius with the mission to sell the family home so that we could repay the loan in full and have sufficient cash left for their living.

At that time, having neither learned nor experienced anything thing in the Real Estate business, I decided to try selling this property myself. This was by far a crazy idea, especially considering the level of stress on my shoulders for the loan repayments to avoid losing our new house in Australia. Totally ignoring what the market value in Mauritius was at that time, I put some numbers together; what my parents needed in Australian dollars to pay the new house; some money to live decently; and keeping in mind the exchange rate, the price I decided was just over double of what could be expected for the family property at that time. Nevertheless, I kept this very high price for a few months. I got many offers, but all being about half of my asking price. After approximately 3 months on the market, a man drove into our driveway (he had visited many times before), and through the lowered wind screen of his big old BMW, told me to be ready for an official offer in a couple of days and that he had agreed on my “ridiculous price”. It seems like the crazy idea actually worked well! This gentleman loved our place very much and it was strategic to his future business plans. He realised that approximately 5 years later, the value he had paid would match the actual market value but he wanted the place immediately.

In the end, we all won in this deal; he got his dream place, my parents paid the bank in full for their house in Rochedale South, and I had just discovered the exciting world of the Real Estate industry…I was, after all, an excellent negotiator, and I did not even know it at that time.

That was how it all started.

Reg

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