A Win and More Confidence in Local Market

JOHN Flood Estate Agents celebrated a win on Thursday night in Sydney when they were awarded best small agency in the state from Real Estate NSW.

Sarah Lorden, principal of John Flood Estate Agents in Scone said they were proud to win over other agencies in both regional and city areas and said confidence is returning to the local real estate market.

The team from John Flood Estate Agents celebrating their win in Sydney.

“There was stiff competition as it was all across New South Wales, both regionally and in Sydney,” said Ms Lorden.

“They measure you on performance, but also customer service, compliance to our legislation it is across the whole business, it’s not about who sells the most it’s a range of criteria,” she said.

“Knowing you can get just as a good a service whether you are here or in Sydney is important,” Sarah Lorden said.

Sarah said they opened their Scone office almost 12 months ago in a tough market, but said they were seeing confidence returning both in Muswellbrook and Scone.

“We opened our office in an incredibly tough market where you could list a property on the internet and in Sydney you might get 45 enquiries in that first day and you could get none here for several weeks, so we had to work out ways to find buyers when buyers were very limited and that’s taken a lot of commitment and hard work, which is proof that if you stick to those principles you can make a success of it anywhere,” she said.

“The market is definitely picking up, I wouldn’t say prices have moved too much but the confidence is returning definitely so enquiries have picked up properties are turning over in a shorter period of time than they were so that’s good news for everybody,” she said.

“Muswellbrook has really picked up as well, I think Muswellbrook usually feels the impacts first, if something happens in Muswellbrook in the market Scone follows suit usually within a couple of months and I would say Muswellbrook picked up before Scone did.

“Scone and Muswellbrook both had a reduction in prices following the uncertainty in mining, but their transactions have really picked up as well,” she said.

“We exchanged contracts between the two offices on about 17 properties last month, which is a return to days we haven’t seen for quite some time,” Sarah Lorden said