June
Barry Plant’s Top Sales Person of the Year
Mark Di Giulio of Barry Plant’s Doncaster East office scooped the pool at the network’s Awards forExcellence in May winning a number of individual sales person awards.
Mark Di Giulio has built a reputation throughout the City of Manningham for being an impressive real estate agent whose professionalism and attention to detail ensures outstanding results for clients. His status as one of Barry Plant’s leading sales people was further cemented at the Group’s 2013 Awards for Excellence when he took out the most prestigious award in the sales category – Top Performer.
In what was a hugely successful evening for Mark, the title of Top Performer was icing on the cake, as he was also named the Top Seller, Top Achiever and third in the Top Lister category. He was also a finalist for the Senior Auctioneer of the Year award, and announced Number 1 in the Million Dollar Club, as well as being included in Barry Plant’s prestigious Diamond Club which is made up of the top 5 per cent of agents within the network.
To put these outstanding achievements into context, the Barry Plant Group is Victoria’s leading real estate network employing in excess of 450 sales people over 80 offices. To be ranked Number one in these categories is remarkable and speaks volumes for Mark’s ongoing dedication, focus and commitment.
“The Barry Plant organisation is one of the most highly respected brands in the real estate industry with many skilled and experienced sales professionals in employment. To be recognised in the top echelon of such an extremely talented group of individuals is an honour of which I am extremely proud,” Mark said.
“I could not have achieved all my goals if it were not for the support of Doncaster East office, the Barry Plant network and the local community.”
Mark first entered the real estate industry after graduating from university with a Marketing degree. This, combined with his strong background in retail sales has proven a winning combination, enabling Mark to create innovative property marketing campaigns that reach the maximum number of buyers while achieving superior results for clients.
June
Barry Plant Group Welcomes New Head of Financial Services
Barry Plant Group’s mortgage broking division has received a major boost with the appointment of experienced loans manager Peta Siebert to the position of General Manager, Financial Services.
Peta will leave her current role of Regional Sales Manager with Aussie Home Loans to take up her new position with the major Victorian Real Estate network on June 17.
Mike McCarthy, CEO, who made the announcement said he was thrilled that Peta has agreed to take on the challenging role to help build the mortgage broking arm of the Barry Plant Group and believes she will make a significant contribution to the group.
“Peta has a wealth of experience in mortgage broking and in particular recruiting and supporting brokers to build strong relationships with referrers and she currently manages approximately 28 brokers,” he said.
“Her appointment underlines the commitment of the Barry Plant Group to develop a successful financial services division and support the activities of our offices in forming broader and deeper relationships with our clients.”
Peta Siebert, General Manager, Financial Services, Barry Plant Group.
June
Barry Plant Group Almost Cracks A $4 Billion Year!
The Barry Plant Group has a lot to celebrate following the announcement that the 80 plus Victorian office network has sold close to $4 billion worth of real estate in 12 months.
Mike McCarthy, CEO, made the announcement at the recent Awards for Excellence gala event. He said the actual figure of $3.92 billion was the total value of the 8616 properties sold during the year from April 2012 until March 2013.
“Our overall Auction Clearance Rate was an extraordinary 88.35 per cent, which is a great result for our clients,” he said.
Mr McCarthy said the outstanding results were due to the exceptional people who were recognised on the evening, and also due to the major investment the group puts into sales training.
Agent Mark Di Giulio, of the Doncaster East office, took out many of the major awards including Top Seller, Top Achiever and Top Performer, with the Doncaster East office being named the Number One office.
Point Cook agent Ray Harb took out the award for Top Lister, while the Senior Auctioneer of the Year award was won by Luke Brizzi of Northcote.
Young gun Ross Kontossis of the Reservoir office took out the Novice Auctioneer award.
Mike said that intensive and innovative sales training continued to be a major focus of the Barry Plant network.
“We ran 77 general and sales training sessions over the year which were attended by more than 1600 of our people, so the results speak for themselves,” Mike said.
May
Barry Plant High Achievers in Customer Service
The Barry Plant network is celebrating the recent announcement of the 2013 Australian Achiever Awards which saw each one of their 80 plus offices ranked in the ‘Highly Recommended’ category of customer service, for the ninth consecutive year.
Eleven of the offices received scores of over 99 per cent. The top ranked offices were Craigieburn and Woori Yallock who each scored 99.47 per cent, followed quite closely by Wantirna, Diamond Creek, Wheelers Hill, Werribee, Parkwood QLD, and Hampton Park.
Overall, twenty-three of the offices scored over 98 per cent, and most of the offices scored over 90 per cent.
Barry Plant CEO, Mike McCarthy, said the awards recognised the hard work and commitment by Barry Plant Agents.
“When you consider that 80 per cent is deemed ‘Highly Recommended’ the offices who achieved 99 per cent plus are obviously providing truly outstanding customer service,” Mike said.
The Australian Achiever Awards are an independent, unbiased award system based on assessment ratings from a business’s own customers – an indication of a well -run business where satisfied customers are a sign that a business is healthy, worthy of praise and increased customers.
“The Barry Plant network prides itself on providing outstanding customer service and to ensure each office continues to meet each customers’ high expectations, they are required to take part in the annual Australian Achiever Awards, which can be viewed as an external auditing of their performance from the people who matter most, our customers.”
May
Barry Plant Takes Over in Rowville
Barry Plant Rowville has cemented its position as market leader since recently buying out Chris Bell Real Estate, formerly Ray White Rowville.
Principal, Brenton Wilson, who has been with the Barry Plant Rowville office since it opened its doors 19 years ago, said the former Ray White business had been around for 20 years.
“The recently acquired office was the 2nd Real Estate agency to set up in Rowville and we were the third. The first one is no longer around, so that now makes Barry Plant the longest standing.”
The strategic acquisition which included employment of five Chris Bell Real Estate staff members, plus a substantial rent roll, has boosted Barry Plant Rowville’s business position to a substantial 35 to 42 per cent market-share in the local real estate industry.
“We now have 36 staff members which make us the largest local employer in the industry, and I believe there is still room for more growth and more staff, if we can secure the right people,” Brenton said.
“Our rent roll now sits at just under 900 properties which makes us one of the largest residential property managers in the City of Knox. We have a sizeable pool of potential tenants that we are in touch with on a weekly basis and we are able to provide our landlords with the best quality candidates.”
Brenton, who grew up in Knox and has lived in the area all his life, says he is not surprised that Rowville has grown to be such a popular residential area.
“When I first opened the Rowville office it’s fair to say there were almost more cows than people in the area,” he said.
Things have certainly changed now. Even though Rowville is Knox’s newest suburb, it has had the support and infrastructure from the established City of Knox, so as the population has grown, so has Rowville by way of schools, shops, roads, etc. Now with Eastlink and our closeness to the Monash freeway, it’s no longer considered an ‘outer’ Melbourne suburb.
Brenton said that Rowville’s median house price reflects the Melbourne average.
“The last REIV quarterly median figures for March show Rowville at $561,000 which is pretty much the Melbourne median for the same period.”
“However in Rowville you can get a whole lot more for your money. The real estate market is extremely buoyant here – we cater for everyone from first home buyers, to luxury multi-million dollar house buyers.”
Barry Plant Rowville is one of the Barry Plant network’s most successful offices. It has been named ‘Number One’ out of the 80 plus office group in 10 out of the last 18 years.
