FRANCHISE NEWSNEWSQLD

The Bundaberg agent making million dollar deals with China

RE/MAX Precision prinicpal Scott Mackey told Elite Agent how he’s using his city’s China connection to boost the Bundaberg economy.

Scott Mackey has been in real estate for 22 years and spent all of his career working in Bundaberg. He’s come to know the market like the back of his hand and says there’s more diversity that you may think.

“Our market has a few different layers to it. You’ve got normal residential and general regional city commercial, but our agriculture is probably where the biggest growth has been,” said Scott.

Bundaberg also offers a great coastal lifestyle, with beachfront properties and a nesting population of loggerhead turtles, who have brought with them a tourist trade and new development.

The regional city ticks a lot of boxes for both locals and investors, and it’s those investors that Scott has been keen to target. He’s tapped into the Bundaberg sister town of Nanning in China and is making great connections there.

“I’ve been over there twice, I’m really activating the role of our sister city, which has generally only been government to government,” said Scott.

Nanning is the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China and had a population of 6,913,800 as of 2014. Scott has visited the city twice to present to investors, taking some agents from his office with him the second time, and he plans more visits in 2018.

“Through the connections, we’ve made there we’ve had settled transactions. When a lot of people talk about doing deals, it’s for things that haven’t actually settled, whereas we’ve had settlements in the rural sector and through into residential development, including apartments.”

Targeting the Chinese market is about being able to offer them something they need, and something with value, just like working with any buyer. In Scott’s case, Bundaberg has some great assets to investors from the congested city of Nanning.

“Food supply is such a big thing. We can farm 12 months of the year, a lot of other marketplaces can’t do that. There’s also the lifestyle, the weather is good and there’s attraction to a lot of good golf courses,” said Scott.

Bundaberg is also tapping into one of the most important things for foreign investors – education. In particular, pilot students from Nanning are forced to learn to fly on simulators due to the congested airspace in their region. That isn’t the case in Bundaberg, which has an airport, a university and clear airspace to offer.

In regards to the foreign investment changes in the last few months which are credited with dropping the bottom out of the Sydney and Melbourne markets and allowing first home buyers back into the field, Scott says while they have changed the way investment can be done, they haven’t affected Bundaberg.

“There’s a lot of Chinese living in Sydney who have been here for 20 years and have relationships back to Nanning and the province that Nanning is in, who are looking at coming into this area,” said Scott.

It isn’t just about selling real estate for Scott, he’s interested in these connections as a long-term aid for an economy which has, “been pretty flat for the last 10 years”.

“We’ve seen people struggling because they’re using equity from their property to invest, whereas being able to have that cash injection, or the guarantee for supply, or partnership in investment is what we’ve been pushing for, rather than direct sale. It’s allowing businesses in our region to be able to upscale their technology or their infrastructure to be better.”

This method of tracking down buyers or investors should be no different to how agents are working normally, according to Scott. It’s about making sure you’re looking in the right places.

“Where some agents go wrong is they sit waiting for an email to come from a property, or follow the old days of putting a sign-up, or an ad in the paper or online, as opposed to actually fishing where the fish are,” said Scott.

Considering the level of censorship in China is very different to what we’re used to in Australia, posting an ad online isn’t guaranteed to meet keen buyers from overseas. Which is why Scott prefers the method of going to where the buyers are.

“We’re able to continue to grow and build that relationship the same as any ongoing real estate transaction,” said Scott.

“Agents have to look at how they can continue to grow and develop new business, rather than sitting back and waiting for it to come to them. There are opportunities in other markets if you go out and explore.

“We’ve had several multi-million dollar transactions that have occurred because of our dedication to continuing this.”

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