If you walk into a cafe in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs and spot the familiar face of The Bachelors’ star Alesia Delaney, she won’t be there with her boyfriend from the reality TV show, but she will likely be meeting with a real estate client.
Alesia, who has split with bachelor Jed McIntosh, has returned to her real estate roots, recently joining the Adrian William team, and she says building strong client relationships and maintaining them form the backbone of who she is as an agent.
“Today I had breakfast with two of my vendors that I sold for, one was about three years ago and the other was about two years ago,” Alesia says.
“We’ve caught up every month for the past two years. It’s the same with quite a few of my vendors, and to be doing it so often, it’s because I love the relationship that you build.”
In the beginning
Alesia’s real estate career started six years ago when she left her job as one of KOOKAI’s top sales assistants and joined BresicWhitney.
“A girl I was working with said to me, ‘this is so silly that you’re selling clothes, you could sell ice to Eskimos, you should be selling houses,” she recalls.
“So the next week, I did my real estate course, completed that, and I’ve been in real estate ever since and I’ve just loved it.”
Like most new agents, Alesia started in leasing, but after six months, she was eager to get into sales and made the big move seamlessly.
She says her first sale was a two-bedroom terrace at 41 Iris St, Paddington, which she says sold quickly.
“It was a great first sale to have,” Alesia says.
While one might expect to come up against a few hurdles as a new agent, Alesia says there were no perceived challenges as she has an open, honest approach to communication and deals well with what others may view as “conflict”.
“For me, I feel like there’s no such thing as a hard phone call; every call is just a call, whether you need to raise your price guide, drop your guide,” she says.
“It’s just about having the best interests of the party that you’re working for at heart.
“If they believe that’s what you’re there to do, then there are no hard phone calls because they trust you in the process.”
A genuine approach
Alesia approaches each day and each listing fairly, noting that she’s not there to win at all costs.
“When people meet me, they can see I’m genuine,” she notes.
“I’m not just there to win any listing. For example, yesterday, I had an appraisal, and the vendor said he hoped to exceed $2 million. I said, ‘As much as I would love this listing, it’s not going to be good for me to take this on and I can’t sell it. I am not seeing value here in this price range’.
“He really appreciated the feedback… and I think I stood out as a point of difference.”
Alesia says another point of difference is that she’s remained true to wanting to stay an Eastern Suburbs specialist.
When she was with her former agency, she was among the top three agents in Elizabeth Bay and Rushcutters Bay, and these two suburbs still form part of her core market, along with Potts Point, Darlinghurst and Surry Hills.
After growing up in the Eastern Suburbs, Alesia says she wanted her passion for the area to feed through to buyers and sellers in those suburbs.
“I’ve always wanted to stay true to selling what I love and not just selling to sell,” she explains.
“That’s why I’ve maintained selling in the East because it’s where I’ve grown up. This is what I love, and I don’t want to sell any four walls in any area.
“I think you can tell when an agent is there to sell, make a commission, and move on to the next one.
“But if someone buys a property, I want to tell them, ‘Have you tried Zushi on Crown St, or have you had Raw Bar in Bondi’.
“There’s so much more to this area than I think people know if they’re coming from outside (the area), and I think it’s really nice to relate to a buyer on that level.”
The Bachelors
And it’s that dedication to remaining true to herself that saw Alesia appear on The Bachelors, and while she and Jed have since ended their relationship, she says she has no regrets about the experience.
“In real estate, you’re working six or seven days a week and nothing was working for me in terms of finding someone in my personal life, and I thought I’d take the eight weeks for myself and see what could come of it and if it was a way to meet someone,” she says.
“I have a really great relationship with the guy from that, and while he wasn’t the one for me in the end, it was a really good experience.
“My intent was always to come back and hit the ground running in real estate again.”
Alesia admits her season of the reality TV show is the first one she has watched, but she says she was never concerned about how she would be portrayed on the show or what perceptions might be cast to potential clients.
“I wasn’t worried because I am happy within myself, I know who I am, and I love when I meet people they say, ‘you were so authentic and true to yourself’,” she says.
“You’ve got nothing to be worried about if you’re a good person, if you’re kind and if you’re not there with bad intentions and you’re not involved in drama.
“I think everyone goes there for their own reasons and I think mine were very clear and very pure.”
Future goals
When she returned to real estate, Alesia said she wanted to work with an agency that would help take her career to the next level, and she had worked with one of the owners at Adrian William previously.
“They’re only two-and-a-half years old, but they’re already one of the leading agencies in the market,” she says.
And what about Alesia’s goals for the future?
“I want to keep selling in the east… and eventually, I’d like to be the top agent in the east,” she says.
“I personally don’t have a timeline because I think if you’re just really loving what you are doing, it just comes.”
