Mr Placks has been a director at Ray White Double Bay since January 1, 2011 after moving to the office in 2003 and winning sales awards ever since.
Mr Placks started his real estate career with an agency in Bondi Beach doing cold calls in 2001 after studying commerce at university.
At the time he was also working a boutique restaurant at Rose Bay and in fact he was “working in real estate to save enough money to buy the restaurant”.
“I was getting 10 appraisals each week and I was only 20. I was good at it,” Mr Placks reflected recently.
Faced with the decision between buying the restaurant, he shifted to real estate full-time.
“The great thing about the restaurant in Rose Bay was I talked to a lot of people about their property and I got a lot of leads,” he said.
“That’s the unique part of real estate, sometimes you can sit at a coffee shop and chat to people and get leads.”
Soon he became a sales assistant at McGrath Real Estate and after two years he’d written a business plan and wanted to move into sales.
“I knew my target area and my commission based on the leads and appraisals I had created over the last two years. But (then McGrath CEO) John McGrath wouldn’t see me. His sales agent said I was too young and told me to stay as an assistant for a few more years.
“But I knew in my heart that I was ready and if he didn’t see the vision, I told him I’m going out to see who else sees it.
“I just wanted to become a sales agent, so I marched down to Ray White Double Bay and spoke to (former director) Trevor Leach, Craig Pontey and Mike Finger.
“Within the first half hour Mike told me I had a job, and that he’s never done that with anyone before.”
In his first year of selling real estate in 2003, Mr Placks was named the number 3 top selling agent for Ray White in NSW and since then he’s consistently been a top 10 sales performer within the group.
Ray White Double Bay now has a staff of 70 staff and is looking to grow its property management business.
Mr Placks has a junior sales agent and an EA and comfortably manages 6-8 luxury listings at once.
He strives to achieve work-life-balance with his wife Lauren and son Remy, 3 and daughter Jade, 5.
“I try and be present for my children until bedtime but to be successful in this industry, there isn’t that much free time as such. There is flexibility but it is very hard to take if you want to be successful,” he said.
“You need to be totally engrossed and involved or you’ll miss opportunities but I have built up a lot of relationships over many years so my business is thriving. With technology rapidly coming into real estate, information is received so fast.
Buyers and sellers want information quickly and I aim to deliver that.”
