While many Super City residents may have an axe to grind with the Auckland Council following the recent release of the Unitary Plan, one man of the land is committed to ensuring people will still be able to make themselves at home, award-winning real estate specialist, Phil Axtens.
– Harveys Papakura (Southern Suburbs Realty) won three major honours at the recent Lj Hooker/Harveys Annual Real Estate Awards. What would you say was the secret to your team’s success?
The secret to the team’s success is all down to working together on a collaborative basis whilst individually striving to deliver excellence in our different roles.
– You claimed the supreme individual Top Salesperson (Income Earned) Award. Similarly, to what do you owe your own success?
My success came from sheer focus, determination and extremely hard work with one clear goal of being the No.1 salesperson in NZ for the Lj hooker and Harveys Real estate group for the past calendar year. This entailed seeking out every possible listing opportunity and adjusting my business by, predominantly, utilising the auction selling process to suit the overheated 2015 property market.
– To what degree has the current market contributed to your success of late?
The very buyount Auckland property market has made an overwhelming positive difference to my success and I maintained the mindset of ‘making hay while the sun shines’.
– Do you sell many lifestyle blocks in Auckland’s southern, rural region of Franklin these days or, with the increasing urbanisation of the area, are supplies of such properties dwindling?
My core business is selling residential properties in the Papakura area of south Auckland. With the ever increasing urbanisation and development in Franklin, lifestyle blocks will definitely be more difficult to acquire in future. With further zone changes, this style of property will be located out even further into deeper rural areas.
-Is Auckland’s urban sprawl inevitable?
One word: ‘progress’. With the gentle, rolling topography of the greater Auckland area, historically low interest rates and new record immigration levels, the urbanisation of Franklin was always going to happen, so I guess it is just par for the course. However it is sad, in a way, to see all those original farms disappear.