Harcourts’ driving force

Press, 29 September 1988, Page 39

Harcourts’ driving force

At the age of 24, Stephen Collins became one of the youngest real estate licensees in New Zealand. Two years later he had his own firm. It was to be the first step in a career of rewriting the rule book of New Zealand real estate. From one office in Rotherham Street, Riccarton, Collins Real Estate began its exponential growth pattern, introducing new ways of selling and of thinking to the New Zealand market. While studying real estate at the University of British Columbia in Canada, Stephen Collins was also studying the way overseas agencies operated, and was quick to realise that future success lay in intensive marketing, training and computerisation. Armed with these ideas,

he descended on the Christchurch market with a 1 vision of what real estate could and would become in the future, and began building a sales team with a new pride in themselves and a new commitment to their organisation and their clients. Through a combination of motivational skill and clever marketing, Stephen Collins had built up Collins Real Estate to contain five suburban offices and to hold the number one sales position in Christchurch when it merged with Harcourts in 1985. Now the managing director of Harcourts Real Estate and a director of the Harcourts Corporation, he continues to be the major force in the company’s bid to offer a complete nation-wide property service.