- My name is Karen Elliott,
and I'm one of the directors at Place Newmarket.
We've been in real estate now for around 15 years
and have owned the business for nearly 14 years.
We're incredibly fortunate in that we are
located in a beautiful part of Brisbane
in the northern suburbs,
and we've enjoyed great success in both sales
and property management.
Real estate first appealed to me from a very young age.
My grandfather was actually a real estate agent.
He was a beautiful English gentleman
and he would put his cravat on and he would go
out in his car and he would take people for drives.
And he would come back two hours later,
my grandmother would rush to the front door.
She'd have a clipboard and you could feel
the excitement in the room when they walked in.
Grandma would go into her little room,
she would type up a contract.
And my grandfather was happy
and the people were happy
and for me, that's what real estate was about.
It was about exploring a journey with people.
It wasn't about listing and selling a property,
and I still don't think it is about that today.
It's about the journey, from how you get
there to how you get here.
Today, people still want to matter,
but they need to matter quicker,
and so we've had to move with the times
to let that happen.
We wanted to build a new website
because what we had previously was fairly static.
It was okay, it met with our branding,
it looked okay on the front of it,
but it didn't, actually, help us to create
those relationships with people.
And at the end of the day, that is our business.
It is about finding opportunity,
not just for ourselves but for our clients.
We partnered with Stepps because I needed
somebody that understood real estate.
I'd met Josh a number of years ago at a conference
and I immediately took to him.
He's just a lovely, genuine fellow
and he understood real estate.
There's lots of agencies out there that are
building websites and because they don't get
the unique nature of our business,
they can't build a website to suit it.
Stepps can. Stepps has provided
for us a multifaceted marketing opportunity.
It looks at our listings and our sales,
which are really, really important.
It has helped our agents grow their exposure.
It's also provided us with leveraging opportunities.
So, if we are looking at promoting a property,
it's allowed us to utilise social networks
so that we can get our message out there quicker,
broader, and in a more timely fashion.
I'm really looking forward to working
with Stepps so that we can continue to evolve
our business and also the people
that are working within our business.
It's incredibly important
to me that together we have huge success.