Wow what a year. I’d like to thank you for your support in what has been the biggest year in our business’ history. On top of our usual high standards that we set ourselves as real estate agents, our team has made huge efforts with numerous charity drives in the lead up to Christmas. We have also engaged in an exciting strategic expansion that will yield fantastic customer service benefits.

In December, our office has a strong tradition of devoting countless extra hours on top of our regular jobs to charitable causes through our ‘A Little Ray of Giving’ present drive. This year we teamed up with The Rotary Club of Southbank to support the Gippsland Drought Relief, Steps Outreach and Launch Housing. The drive was focused on collecting gifts for the children who would’ve gone without a gift this Christmas. This year we collected over 200 gifts and collected large donations to pass onto homeless shelters.

Our staff pulled out all stops. Special mention must be made of our star Administration Manager, Georgina Shanahan, who coordinated the whole drive along with Amritpal Singh from Rotary.

Once again, we collected gifts from our amazing landlords, tenants, vendors and buyers along with people from the general community who responded to our radio, newspaper and social media campaigns.

One of the key campaigns was our ‘A Little Ray Of Giving’ Ice Cream cart where we gave away ice creams in the street in exchange for donations. This proved to be a master stroke until our drought relief ice cream cart got washed away by torrential rain. Hopefully our good deeds brought the rain and ended the drought once and for all.

In other news, December was the month where we took over the Ray White Port Phillip franchise and merged 2 of the most professional & funniest groups under the one roof in our Clarendon Street office. We are seeing some of the predicted strategic and cultural benefits already.  The decision was made as we felt our location, strong culture, leadership, systems and processes created the perfect platform to create synergy between the two businesses to improve our personalised customer service, staff training and technology platform. We believe we can be the best in the industry and we look forward to your feedback in the new year.

With the year almost over, most of our staff will be going on well earned breaks. Many will be travelling large distances nationally and abroad to be with their families and recharge their batteries for an even bigger and better 2019. The office will be closed however inspections will continue through the holiday period.

As for me, I’ll be taking my family to the Italian alps to share in my other passion, outside of real estate, Skiing and Italian food.

I wish you and your families all of the best during this holiday season and we look forward to servicing your real estate needs in the new year.