{"id":29649,"date":"2020-12-15T17:17:10","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T04:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/propertynoise.co.nz\/au\/?p=29649"},"modified":"2020-12-15T17:17:10","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T04:17:10","slug":"my-47-years-of-real-estate-neville-lewis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/propertynoise.co.nz\/au\/my-47-years-of-real-estate-neville-lewis\/","title":{"rendered":"My 47 Years of Real Estate | Neville Lewis"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOTO: Half a century in real estate: Retired real estate agent Neville Lewis has written a book about changes in the industry. He’s donating the profits to the 3BA Christmas Appeal. Picture: Lachlan Bence<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Journalism’s loss was the real estate industry’s gain in 1967 as a young Neville Lewis finished school.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Armed with shorthand and typing skills, the school-leaver headed to\u00a0The Courier<\/i>\u00a0for a cadetship as a young reporter.<\/p>\n

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But it was not to be. Knocked back at Ballarat’s newspaper, young Neville was left looking for work when fate came knocking, in the shape of an estate agent’s gavel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Now 70, and retired for sometime, Mr Lewis said he saw an ad in the paper for another job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I saw an ad in\u00a0The Courier<\/i>\u00a0for a real estate, reception, and office work-type job, and as I had the skills of shorthand and typing, the agent – PV Sullivan and Company – did a background check on me… there were 49 girls and I was the only bloke applying for the job, and I got it!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“They were in Lydiard Street South, just down a bit from Her Majesty’s, number 27. I was with them for 10 years, until I left in 1978 and joined Dalgety’s, the stock and station agency.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dalgety and Company (later Dalgety Ltd and Dalgety Plc) was Australia’s most powerful stock and station agency for most of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0Century, and Mr Lewis stayed with them for the rest of his career, retiring in 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I was their real estate man there, they had blokes selling, stock and merchandise and insurance, but for the first five years I was doing houses in Ballarat plus small acreages, up to 100 acres,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“In 1973 they said to me, ‘It’s all open slather to you now, you can do everything,’ and I got out of the houses and concentrated on the farms, on the bigger properties.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Massive<\/div>\n

<\/i>\u00a0Massive properties: Neville Lewis at Snizort, outside Creswick.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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