Q & A: ‘If I could have a slogan, it would be No BullSh*t Real Estate’
In a way, it’s Cooper Spiller’s fault that his father Simon ended up selling residential real estate. Now the 23-year-old has joined his successful dad – who has been Bayleys’ number one salesperson in Auckland’s north-west for the last 11 years – in the business of selling property in an area they’re both passionate about.
Simon, where are you from originally?
I was born in the UK but moved to Western Australia when I was a baby. I moved to New Zealand with my partner Angela Little, now my wife, back in 1994. She’s a Kiwi and also in real estate.
What did you do before real estate?
I was in finance. When I was in England on my travels I got a job in a bank in London. Back in Perth, I saw a job advertised in finance and got it.
Also in a bank?
No, working for General Motors Corporation – Holden cars. I had to start off at the bottom, and my job was chasing up people who weren’t making their car payments.
After 30 days of not paying I’d give them a friendly call; after 60 it would be a bit more urgent, telling them to come in and make the payment. After 90 there were no more calls, I was out on the road collecting a cheque or the car.
So I was basically a repo man. I went all over Western Australia, including to some pretty remote areas. Sometimes it involved hanging out at pubs at 11 o’clock at night trying to find the car. You can’t take a car off private property but you can take it off public property. If I saw the car outside the pub I could call a tow truck and get it towed.
Was it challenging work?
It could be very confronting. People weren’t happy to see me. Some were serial non-payers. One time, there was this guy whose car I had repo-ed twice before. I called the tow truck, the car was lifted up and it turned out this guy was in it, asleep. He opened the door to get out and his car was off the ground. He saw me and said, “You again.”
There were times when the chase was quite exciting, hunting down the car and getting it back. But it could also be quite sad, because of some people’s circumstances.
How did you then make the move to real estate?
I had a mate who worked for a huge international commercial real estate company. He said, “There’s a job here – if you get it we can go out for lunches together.” I got the job, which involved managing big retail complexes. I was dealing with a diverse range of people from huge overseas companies through to mum and dad coffee shop owners, and the value of the assets I was managing at 22 was huge. It was very corporate and after a while I got tired of the BS. I also found commercial real estate was quite unemotional, unlike residential. It’s just bricks and mortar.
Did you go straight from commercial to residential?
No. I actually ended up in hospital for six months with a very bad episode of Crohn’s disease. My whole large bowel perforated and I was not expected to survive.
But I did come through and when I was trying to get on with life again my dad, who was a doctor, said he thought I needed a change from Perth.
People knew how sick I’d been and they’d say to me, “Should you be sitting in the sun? Should you be carrying that esky?”
He said I needed to get away from that, which was the best advice I ever got. I came to New Zealand with Ange and people treated me differently, asking, “Do you want to go surfing? Do you want to play golf?”
Ange was in residential real estate, but after my experience in commercial, I didn’t think real estate was for me. I had a part-time job working for her dad’s waterblasting business but then Ange got pregnant with Cooper and she needed me to help her. I would see the clients while she did the behind the scenes stuff. I have been in residential real estate ever since.
Your patch is Auckland’s northwest, including Kumeu and West Coast beaches like Muriwai – what drew you to the area?
Being from Perth I love the west, I love the beach, I love seeing the sun going down. The first time I went to Muriwai I thought, ”Why wouldn’t you live here?” It was stunning, and what blew me away was how close it was to the city.
To live somewhere with beaches and forests and vineyards in Western Australia you would have to drive three hours from the city, but here it’s 35 minutes and in those days there wasn’t a set of traffic lights between the motorway on ramp out of the city and the beach.
You’ve done extremely well – what’s the secret of your success?
Showing clients you believe in their real estate. Being good at negotiation. And being a good communicator. Sometimes you need to tell people things they don’t want to hear about their property. That can be hard, but I think, “What would my dad do?” As a doctor, he would tell you the truth, even if it is bad news. I do the same, honesty is important.
I enjoy the whole process – understanding the real estate and what the owner wants, developing a plan, working out the target market and where we are going to find the buyers, through to bringing it all together at auction to sell it for the best possible price. I love seeing happy vendors.
Maybe this is the Australian in me coming out, but if I could have a slogan, it would be No BullSh*t Real Estate. If you are prepared to do the hard work you don’t need any BS.
Cooper, was real estate always your first choice of career?
Actually, after school I went to uni to do a sport and recreation and business degree, I’d thought about sports management. Halfway through my first year I decided sports and rec wasn’t really me and I was more interested in the business side.
I’d grown up around property, I used to go to open homes a lot with mum and dad – I’d be that random kid running around the house – and I would hear them talking about real estate at home all the time. So I did a property and a business degree, and I started in real estate earlier this year.
What do you enjoy about the job?
Meeting new people, building relationships and once you have the listing, working out the best way to market and sell it. There’s not just one fixed way of selling a property, you have to do what is best for that property and the owners. I also like the challenge of trying to figure out the price.
What have you learned from your dad?
The most important thing is doing things properly, doing right by the vendor. We always act as if the home we are selling is our own, and sell it the way we’d sell our own house.
Do the two of you work well together?
Simon: We do. Cooper has picked things up very quickly, he’s very diligent about the valuation process. I’m a dinosaur when it comes to things like social media so it is good to have him to do that side of things.
Cooper: I studied marketing at uni so it’s good to be able to deliver on new marketing techniques. We do get on well together, we’re really close. Simon: It’s never crossed my mind that we wouldn’t work well together because we are great mates anyway.
We do a lot of things together, we keep fit together, we both love surfing and golf. We usually go on two or three father-and-son trips each year. When we could travel we’d go to Fiji for a week and we also love Taranaki.
I was very pleased when Cooper decided to follow in my footsteps because it meant I would have more time to spend with him. I think that the worst day at work is still going to be a great day, because I get to be working with my son.