Our Journey

Early Days, by David Hamilton

“I didn't start out to become a real estate agent. When I moved to the Gold Coast in 1972 it was a job transfer  and I was a Company Secretary for a mineral sand mining company at Kingscliff.
 
In those years I had completed 3.5 years, (7 Semesters) of Barristers and Solicitors Board Examinations before issues with my lack of NSW residence after buying a house in Palm Beach for $22,000, and an overactive social life led me to discontinue the studies.
 
I started selling real estate in  the terrible 1982 market, for Roger Greene and Stan Levy, who had Forge Burleigh.
 
At Burleigh. I quickly realised because of my background that if I could write a special condition that allowed to willing buyers and sellers to complete a transaction it probably would happen.
 
Palm Beach office opened in January 1984 with a copy of our Daily News advertising taped to the window and we made a sale that week.
 
In April 1986 I bought the office from Stan and Roger coincidentally the same month that Bob Hawke put a stopper on interest rates at 13.5% and the banks went on strike. They point blank refused to lend at 13.5%. After a standoff for a couple of months what developed were “Shandy Deals” maybe 75% of the loan at 13.5% and the balance on a long term Personal Loan at 16% or more to top it up.
 
Myself and another guy, with the assistance of our purple haired receptionist, it was the 80s, did 4 sales that first month, 2 were cash and 2 were subject to finance. Building Societies were not affected by the rate limit and thanks to a Solicitor friend who acted for Suncorp on mortgage documentation Suncorp came to the rescue and all four went through. It was a very hairy start for a bloke with 2 big mortgages, a small overdraft and a credit card.
 
In the first six months we managed to do 43 sales in the area despite the horrendous interest rates. We added an extra salesperson in October 1986 and in the next six months three of us managed to do 59 sales for a total for the first year of 102 sales.
 
There wasn’t much west of the M1 at that stage but Elanora and Currumbin Waters were high growth areas and we naturally found ourselves selling a lot of subdivision land in Ware Drive, Beaumont Court and Killara Court off Simpson's Road. That was followed by an acreage estate of Dudgeon Drive, Tallebudgera and then Belrose Park a 300 block subdivision at Varsity.”
 
With this growth came the takeoff of the Property Management Department in 1990  driven by Dot Hamilton and next came joining First National in 1997 when the opportunity arose.
 
“We started trading then as Palm Beach First National and in 2000 we bought the Pines Realty office at the Pines Shopping Centre which began trading as The Pines First National. The “Power of 2” had arrived.”
 
David Hamilton was elected to the National Board of First National in  2005 and served until 2016 including 2 years as Chairman of the Board.
 
What followed was a period of strong growth which continues today interrupted only by the 1987 Black Friday slump, the GFC, the Tech Wreck and a couple of other market slumps including the current one. Grit is always a long  term requirement when you are building a real estate business.
 
In 2016 we bought the old doctor’s surgery  site in Sixth Avenue corner and built the office we are based in now.
 
Just recently with a partner we have acquired the Neuman Sales building at Currumbin Waters and relocated the Elanora office there.

Tech Changes

In 1982 there were no faxes or mobile phones in Palm Beach or small office copiers to speak of, but there was plenty of carbon paper and foolscap paper, email was in its infancy, listings were kept on DL-sized bits of paper, only big businesses had telex machines. We ran on two-way radios and golf ball computers but it was all about to change. The DOS P.C. and Microsoft had arrived.

We moved from trust accounting manually with cash books and ledgers to software that initially did little more than keep the books and manage distributions but did it quickly. By the mid nineties, we had websites, contact management software, faxes and mobile phones.

Our Property Management software now handles lease renewals, rent increases, maintenance, open houses, enquiries by more than 1000 people every month and emails vacant properties to matching potential tenants.

David Hamilton recalls more than 15 years ago, a major player in the travel industry telling a Real Estate Conference, that we would be finished in 10 years because the internet was going to cut out the middleman. We are still here and servicing our market better and more efficiently than ever thanks to that internet. We have better tools and certainly in our case a strong culture to serve our community.

Trading Name Change

In 2022 we decided that in  the digitally dominated marketplace we work in now and the spread of sales beyond our home suburbs it was far more effective to just have one trading name so the three offices became First National Real Estate Property Solutions. We also decided to install a new CRM software to handle the after sales service for the 8000 plus properties with sales history  we have in the area.
 
It is an unfortunate fact that if you are renting you can never be sure of anything past your lease so it pays to know what's coming on the market and what the rents are. There are   30,000 tenants in that database, some of who rent from us now, the rest take a strong interest in what we have available and coming up.

Logo and Colour Changes

First National moved from Red, White and Blue to a fresh Logo and Blue, White and Charcoal in 2009, with some minor changes they have stayed with it since.