‘I had five properties sell under the hammer while I was lying in a hospital bed’

Barfoot & Thompson’s Alex Baker has a passion for property and people. After spells working in the hospitality and legal sectors, he has combined the two into a successful career as a real estate agent in Auckland over the last 25 years.

Q: Have you always loved property?

Right since I was small. I used to love looking at houses with my mother. I grew up on a dairy farm in Taranaki but never wanted to be a farmer, I wanted to be an architect. I came to Auckland to go to architecture school but I realised that it wasn’t my calling after all. I left university with a plan to return to do a BA but in the meantime I started working in the hospitality industry and I ended up managing and then owning restaurants in the 1980s. I enjoyed it, but I decided I wanted to go back to university to study law.

I sold the business I owned a month before the sharemarket crash in 1987, which was more good luck than good management. I worked part-time in hospitality while I was at law school.

Q: Was it difficult going back to university as an older student?

I think being older was an advantage – I was very disciplined and having worked for years, I treated studying as a job. I graduated in 1992 and got a job working for Simpson Grierson, the biggest law firm in the country at the time. I specialised in building and construction law, which proved to be very useful when I later got into real estate.

I enjoyed what I did but you work all the hours known to man for rewards that are not huge. Despite what people think, law is not that well renumerated. About four years into it, I looked ahead into the time tunnel and asked myself, Is this what you want to be doing for the rest of your life? The answer was no.

I had friends who worked in real estate and I thought, I can do that. As soon as I started, I knew I had found my calling. I absolutely loved it. And in my first six months, I earned three times what I had earned in a year as a lawyer.

Q: Can you remember the first house you listed?

I was very lucky; when I told people I was leaving law to go to real estate one of my colleagues, who was moving to America, asked me to sell her house for her. To have a listing right from the get-go is very fortunate – I think it was because she trusted me, even though I was just starting out in real estate.

Baker says his brush with cancer has made him want to reprioritize parts of his life. Photo / Fiona Goodall

I took that property to auction which was a baptism of fire because I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. It didn’t sell at auction but sold soon after, and was a real learning curve for me. In the meantime, I actually sold another house before that one, after meeting buyers at an open home. It just snowballed from there.

Q: Do you specialise in particular types of property?

No, I’ll sell anything! I do sell mostly in Remuera, but I have very varied sales, from small units to multi-million dollar homes. In recent times I have been doing more of the top end houses, including a property I sold last year that set a record price at the time. But I think the market is too small to only specialise in those kinds of properties. I have always said the small fish are sweet, and I will take on anything. I love helping anyone sell their home, no matter how big or small it is.

Q: What do you love about your job?

The relationships you get to have with people. We may be in the property business, but it’s about people, and being able to help them. I love seeing happy outcomes. With law, there is often a winner and a loser but in real estate it is usually a win, win situation – happy vendor, happy buyer.

I have some very loyal clients – a lot of my business is repeats and referrals – and I have made some wonderful friends over the years.

I also love the flexibility of real estate. You do work long hours, but you can organise your time to suit. My partner Bart Meo and I love to travel and when we could go overseas, I would arrange things so we could go away several times a year.

Also, Bart has two daughters and we have five grandsons. I love to spend time with them, I do school pick-up once a week and take them to swimming lessons. You couldn’t do that in other jobs.

That flexibility has also been important to me since I was diagnosed with bowel and liver cancer last August. My life got taken over with surgery and treatment and initially I carried on working while I could. For the rest of the time I have been in the background while my colleagues have been fronting things. I’m about to return to the office, but in the meantime, despite the fact that there was a lockdown and I only really worked for seven months, last year was my best ever in real estate. I had five properties sell under the hammer while I was lying in a hospital bed. I was thrilled about what we were able to achieve.

Q: What’s the secret of your success?

Hard work, consistency, determination, building up credibility so that people know they can trust you. My clients know I will always be honest with them. It’s also important to be able to make personal connections.

Having a great team also helps. My PA Raewyn Anderson has been with me for over 20 years and she’s amazing. Plus I have incredible support from Bart, who is an architect. I couldn’t do it without him – the hours can be crazy.

Q: What do you do when you are not working?

I like to keep fit, so I go to the gym three or four times a week. In winter I ski whenever I can. I enjoy spending time with our grandsons – they are a joy to have around.

Real estate has been very kind to me and I’m a big believer in giving back as much as you can, so I have always been involved in charity work. I have been a supporter of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra for many years and done a lot of fundraising for them. I was also on the fundraising committee of the Sculpture in the Gulf event on Waiheke.

Because of my experience with cancer, I would like to get involved in some philanthropic way with a cancer charity. The number of people who’ve been affected by cancer is mind-blowing – I heard about so many cases when I told people what the scenario was with me. I told everyone – I wanted to be upfront with my clients. I have tried to be positive and make the best of everything all the way through. Having a major illness when there is a pandemic has had its challenges, but I’ve always said there is no way this is going to beat me.