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Jason Boon, Using History as your Anchor


Using history as your anchor

Becoming an expert in your area is the way to fast-track prospecting, but there is always someone who sets the pace. Jason Boon from Richardson & Wrench Elizabeth Bay/Potts Point is that person.

Taking area specialist to the next level, Mr Boon has used various strategies to be noticed over his 15- year career, but nothing has worked as well as his lifestyle photos.

Glory Days

Mr Boon knew if he got into the heart of Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay he would be able to build a great relationship with its residents – and he did this by going back in time and researching the area’s history at the NSW State Library.

He used historical photos of local identities in his marketing under the tagline, 'history is repeating itself'. After a while people started sending him their own photos and stopping him in the street to ask where the photos had been taken.

“When I first started here, I was selling a lot of the modern stuff and it was really hard to get into the older-style apartments because the owners had been here a long time and had relationships with other agents. I wanted to crack that so I had to get involved with the history and the types of characters who were in the area,” Mr Boon explained.

“What I’ve been doing is anchoring myself within the community, showing what Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay used to be like pre-war. It was an amazing, happening place, like a Soho, where everyone came to get their suits tailored and their wives would get their dresses made and they would visit the coffee houses, " he added.

Suburb blueprint

Mr Boon could tell you the rates payable, who the concierge is, materials used, apartment size, whether it has been renovated and where the sun hits for any building in Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay.

“When you phone me as a buyer I pretty much have a blueprint of the entire area. I’ve got all that history in my head from being absolutely obsessive compulsive about it.”

And when Mr Boon says obsessive, he means it! He spent many mornings standing outside apartment blocks between 7am and 9am with keys and a paper in his hand so owners would keep seeing him. “I would rotate that so the whole area would get to see me there as a prominent person in real estate - physically on the street, not just on the telephone - so that started the initial possibility of having relationships,” Mr Boon explained.

It was this perseverance to immerse himself completely in his area and develop a platform for himself that led to people considering selling saying, “I’ll give Jason a call because he knows that area, that level of prices and those buildings,” he said.

“There are a lot of agents around here who hammer people with ‘this is what I’ve sold’ and ‘this is what I can do for you’, as opposed to promoting the area. I’ve tried to be involved with the area as a person first, not as a real estate agent. I wanted to get them to see me as someone who’s married with kids and likes surfing.”

Quote from 1939 “The fact that the majority of the population of this part of Sydney occupy flats, as against the suburban home or cottage, seems to suggest that they subscribe to some extent to the modern conception of living in which the home is but a place to hang the hat and that living should be done in the restaurant and theatre.” - Building magazine 24 May 1939


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Using history as your anchor