PHOTO: Nadene Lomu says she needed to find a way through her grief after Jonah died, so she went back to what she used to love – real estate. SUPPLIED
According to STUFF mention the name Lomu and your mind no doubt goes to the late rugby legend Jonah Lomu.
But almost eight years after the former All Black died, there’s another Lomu making their mark on the world, and particularly the Pasifika community – Jonah’s widow, Nadene Lomu.
As well as raising the couple’s sons, Brayley, 14, and Dhyreille, 12, on her own, Lomu has spent the past two years working full time as an estate agent for Harcourts, based in the Alexandra Park office in Auckland.
Of Samoan and Māori (Ngāti Porou, Ngāphui) descent, Lomu has a passion for helping Pasifika get, and stay, on the property ladder.
“Of course I work with vendors and buyers of any ethnicity, but I have a real passion for our people, of connecting with them and gaining their trust. It’s something that Jonah and I had in common,” says Lomu, who lost her husband in November 2015 following a heart attack linked to his kidney disease.
Lomu’s “patch” reaches mainly across South Auckland and includes the street named after her husband, Jonah Lomu Drive.
She says the main issue she’s encountered while dealing with the Pasifika community is a misunderstanding about the buying and selling process.
“Often people don’t understand how contracts work, or that they’re legally binding. They may have signed a contract to buy or sell a house without fully understanding the commitment because it hasn’t been fully explained to them or because they might not be fully comfortable with the process.
“I will give them advice on what it means and direct them to a lawyer, if they don’t have one, so that they can go through the contract line by line.”
Seeing families who can’t raise the funds to get into the market is also heartbreaking.
“Sadly not all families can quite get there in terms of financial resources, even though they’re working really hard. That’s hard to see.”
Lomu says she’s heard her share of horror stories, or how members of her community have been burned by various get-rich real property schemes.
“They weren’t my clients, because I’d never get involved in such a scheme, but I’ve heard several examples of people sold new build properties off the plans who were told they would make $100K when they onsold it at completion.
“But when it came to completion, they weren’t able to sell it for that much, so they didn’t have the money to settle and defaulted on the agreement. That means they were stung with default interest payments, which is an awful situation to be in.”
The key, says Lomu, is giving her clients good advice.
NADENE LOMU
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