Peter Blackshaw left school with an ill-distinguished academic record.
He was not, he says, academically minded. He worked in a music shop where he sold the latest hits on vinyl records.
“I soon figured that you could work pretty hard to make a sale that would only make a $2 profit and it was probably better to work on a product that was going to deliver a bigger profit than $2,’’ he said.
So at 23 he went into real estate in the eastern suburbs of Sydney where he learnt things that would later transform the Canberra property market. His father, a solicitor, was a buyer and seller of property, so it was inevitable.
Fifteen years ago he took some time out on his father’s farm at Murrumbateman – “2500 acres [1000 hectares] with six k’s of Murrumbidgee river frontage”
Blackshaw had a privileged upbringing, but you can’t help what you are born with. He doesn’t shy away from it or put on some false poverty.
He explains his father’s farm with brief, beguiling openness: “Pitt Street farmer. Tax breaks. 1966.”
His wife, Andrea’s parents had moved to Canberra. So there was a beachhead. They came with their infant son (now 17). They also have a 15-year-old daughter.
“A friend of Andrea’s parents said, ‘You will probably do well in Canberra because it is not as advanced [as Sydney]. And it was not. I can remember looking The Canberra Times and just seeing a sea of type that was all just classifieds — whether it was a great house or just a guvvie on the outskirts.”
He took a job with Richardson and Wrench.
“A listing came up in Narrabundah. In Finniss Crescent. The people had done a lot of work and the house owed them $200,000. But the wisdom at the time was that because of existing prices you would only get about $190,000.
“This couple was from Melbourne so I could convince them to market and auction. At the time a lot of the houses in Narrabundah were selling early which indicated a pent-up demand. Agents were not taking account of the fact that there were multiple buyers. So we put the house to auction and it sold for $245,000.
“It was a bit of a wake-up call for other agents. . . .
“I decided to go it alone. Andrea and I took a little space in Griffiths shops — a tiny office [about 30 square metres].”
Then Blackshaw got lucky. His father bought 18 Monaro Crescent because the National Capital Development Commission said they would allow sub-division, but then reversed its decision after his father had paid $645,000. His father was reluctant to auction “because I told him I wanted $15,000 to advertise it, which in the 1980s was a lot of money”.
“Anyway, about six months after he bought it we had the auction and sold it for exactly one million dollars,” he said. “The thing about the sale is that because we publicised it so widely it put me on the map and put the property on the map.”
Blackshaw bought the place back in 1992 for quite a bit less “and we have been there ever since”.
When Blackshaw came to Canberra not many houses were auctioned – less than 1 per cent.
“It wasn’t just that properties were not being sold by auction, they were not being marketed. There was a Multilist system which virtually every agent was in and basically there wasn’t any marketing of the property. We adopted the principles of marketing which had been tried and tested in Sydney — publicising the house and telling people about the good attributes. Before we came to Canberra houses were advertised in a very nuts-and-bolts fashion — number of bedrooms and bathrooms, nice garden, come and have a look. And that would apply to a house whether it was in Wanniassa or Forrest.
“There were no line drawings which we pioneered as a point of difference and because The Canberra Times was then black-and-white and black-and-white pictures were pretty ordinary. We needed something to attract people’s attention. We ended up getting more people looking at the houses.
“There are parts of Canberra where the demand is greater than the supply and it makes sense to auction because there is the probability of finding two or three people who are determined to buy and put their hand up and keep it up. . . . Nowadays 65 per cent of properties in the Inner South are auctioned.
“Other agents followed because they saw our successes. . . .This is not my genius. I had been taught it to do this in Sydney.
“Before 1987, Multilist was dominant. There was this systematic sharing of listings. It was a bit comfortable. Every agent had all the listings and lists of people who wanted to buy and what their requirements were. And when there was a new listing a phone call matched them up. There was much less reliance on marketing.
“But we have found over the years that there are a lot of discretionary buyers. Marketing can tempt these people who otherwise would not have thought much about moving because they have a good house already. So by marketing we are creating more buyers and more transactions.”
Blackshaw moved to Manuka in 1991.
“We had to change the culture. Before there was a prevailing view in Canberra that you appointed the agent and the agent would do the advertising as part of the price. You charge to the scale fee and the agent would pay for the advertising. Well naturally the agent defaulted to the smallest amount of advertising. So we negotiated with clients and we got them to contribute to the advertising and we were able to persuade them that that was an investment upon which they would get a great return. We could demonstrate that we got and the results. And we still do. . . .”
“The market is now very competitive in Canberra. In fact I have trained some people who are now m
y competitors.”
What drives a man who has enough money to put his feet up and live comfortably without having to work ever again?
“No,” he says, “I have got a lifestyle which requires a serious cash flow. I enjoy good food and fine wine. I like to travel. One of our big goals is to acquire an apartment in Paris in where my brother has been living for the past 15 years.”
He actually uses the word “acquire”. The real-estate jargon has become part of his language.
“Cars. I enjoy Cars. I have got one car a sports car and two motorbikes — both of them twin cylinder BMW’s. One is a touring motorcycle and the other is not,” he says with a smile.
He has to be prompted about charity.
“I am on the committee of the Red Cross Caring Across Canberra program. Writing cheques is part of it. But I’ve also done a bit of leg work trying to raise some money and we raised half a million for that program. In a corporate sense we support the Portrait Gallery and we give small donations to lots of different charities including some hospital equipment last year instead of sending Christmas cards out to all of our clients.”
Blackshaw came in for enormous flak when he extended his house in Monaro Crescent and did a dual occupancy. The total block was 7300 square metres. The new house is about 400 square metres sitting on 2500 square metres of that.
There is a tennis court. He plays “competitive, social tennis at 7.30 every single Saturday whether it is raining or not”.
The case went to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal where he won. And he has spent a fortune matching the pre-war look and feel of the original house.
“We have really tried to do something which is very high quality and we have used architect who has done a great job doing something which is sympathetic in terms of the existing built environment and complements the style of the original house,” he said.
“If it you have a passion for good things you have to keep working hard to pay for them.”