When Matt Lancashire talks about selling over $66 million worth of property in a single weekend, he does it with little fanfare. The Ray White New Farm principal sees it as the logical outcome of months of work, not a lucky streak.
“People said, ‘Oh, that’s a good day,’ and I said, ‘Oh, no, it’s not the day. It’s about the month and months of preparation in advance and years of being in real estate.’”
The weekend, part of his biannual Collective Luxury Auction, saw six properties sell – four under the hammer and two additional deals done on the day.
The results ranged from $7.06 million through to $18.5 million, with a combined total of $66.375 million.
“It all lined up,” Matt says. “It was just one of those weekends that was months in the planning, and then the day came together beautifully and was able to get sell it all, actually. 100% success rate.”
Matt’s approach to the Collective Luxury Auction is anything but casual; every campaign follows a strict structure, and only prestige properties make the cut.
“It had to be a minimum reserve price of $4 million,” he says.
Each property runs on the same three-week formula: three open-home Saturdays and an auction on the fourth.
“That’s standard for us,” he explains. “Our average days for properties over $5 million sits at around 29 days. And we’ve got a success rate of about 92% within that 29 days.”
His team, operations manager Mariana Ferrari and sales associate Will Blewitt, meets every Monday to review campaigns, adjust marketing, and scrutinise buyer activity.
“We go over who’s there, who’s not, what’s working, what’s not working, what marketing we need to change to get a different outcome,” Matt says.
“All of our marketing focus is to get extra eyeballs, and extra eyeballs get extra inspections, extra inspections get extra registered bidders, extra registered bidders get you a better price for the vendor.”
The morning of the auctions
Auction day started early at Hellenika, The Calile in Fortitude Valley, where Matt and his team meet for breakfast and final briefings.
“We looked at our registered bidders and worked out which agent suits the buyer,” he says.
“So across the day we had about 22 registered bidders for our auctions, onsite and many of them on the phone.”
The top sale for the day was a prestige home on Elystan Road, New Farm, where the energy was intense.
“We sold for 18 and a half,” Matt says.
”With so many buyers competing, managing communication became its own choreography … I was on the phone to four different people throughout the auction,” he says.
Every decision is informed by a detailed “order of sale” book, which lists each buyer’s position, conditions, and offers.
“We write down all the buyers’ names, numbers, where their offer was, what their terms are,” he explains.
“So there’s no question that if I’m dealing with a seller, I’ll say this buyer here is at this price, but their settlement was 90 days. This buyer is this, but they’re 30 days.”
That level of preparation allows him to respond in real time.
“We talk strategy – who’s on the phone of these buyers? Have we had a communication with them this morning? I send them group messages on the morning of the auction as well. Just to make sure that they’re definitely going to be there.”
The Buyers who missed out
When the hammer fell, not every bidder left with a property – but Matt says that’s often where the next deals begin.
“After Elystan Road, we had three of the buyers who were over $18 million and two of the five of the buyers were over $17 million. So we’ve now got four buyers that have capacity to spend over 17 million.”
He views that unmet demand as opportunity.
“That’s a pretty powerful position to be in when you want to hit up someone that’s not quite ready to go to market. But, you know, it’s a very, very, very good proposition.”
Rather than let those relationships fade, Matt and his team keep them active.
“We just know exactly what they want and keep sending them new opportunities and go and hit all properties that we think could be suitable for them,” he says.
“And they’ll either say yes or they’ll say no.”
What buyers want
Every one of Matt’s buyers that weekend was based in South-East Queensland; proof, he says, that local confidence is driving the high-end market.
“We have buyers who come in from everywhere, but on that weekend of our buyers that bought for these auctions were all from the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, or Brisbane.”
Obviously, based on that experience, he knows the market still has plenty of momentum.
“It just says that there’s a lot of legs left in it,” he says.
“When you’ve got that many buyers, that little stock, it just creates this perfect storm for sellers.”
Buyers at this level, Matt explains, are more motivated by time than price.
“A lot of the people are turning towards turnkey properties because of the uncertainty of build cost, the uncertainty of time,” he says.
“Time is probably the biggest thing, more than the build cost, because a lot of them have the funds to be able to do it.
“They don’t want to be waiting four years to get into this property. So they will compromise on what’s perfect to get into it.
“If it represents good value and they can afford it, then they’ll just do it.”
When asked what defines a desirable property, Matt doesn’t hesitate.
“High quality product, architectural, very well built, in a good location,” he says.
“So it’s gotta tick AAA. A for location, A for amenity, and A for quality of build. When you have the triple A like that, they will just jump.
Setting a new benchmark
By the end of that bumper sales weekend, Matt had achieved his most successful sales result ever, eclipsing his previous record.
“In a weekend, my next best successful result previously was $47 million.”
He’s already planning the next Collective Luxury Auction, set for March, aiming to raise the bar again.
“We’ve set another auction date for March,” he says. “And of course we want to try to surpass the $66,375,000 mark.”
