Tim Jones - Profile: AGENT

Tim Jones - Director, Commercial / Industrial Sales

Martin Morris & Jones, Wollongong NSW

Tim Jones is a third generation real estate agent in his family’s 50 year old business. After so many successful years in the “steel city” of Wollongong, Martin Morris & Jones is about to expand into the Sydney market.

"Rarely does an opportunity present itself to work under, and be mentored by, someone with so much experience and with such a good standing in the industry."

Tim, how did you get started in real estate?
I was working in television in Sydney for over three years before I got sick of the Sydney lifestyle and left to move back to Wollongong where I had grown up. When I moved to Wollongong I planned on having a couple of weeks off before starting to look for a job as I hadn’t had a holiday in a while. However, I got bored after about four days off and I think Dad sensed this and asked me to come to come along to a “franchise luncheon” which all MMJ’s salespeople used to attend every quarter. Alan Chaffers, the franchisee of our Dapto office, had consumed a few too many glasses of Brown Brothers at this particular luncheon and I had the pleasure of a short conversation with him in the men’s room. Alan told me in no uncertain terms that I would be “bleeding mad not to get into real estate given the family history”, so I put it to him that if he gave me a job I would be more than happy to start in real estate. Alan said that if I turned up at his office at 9am the following Monday he would give me a job. So Monday came and at 9am I was sitting in the reception area at the Dapto office when Alan walked in. He said something along the lines of “What the hell are you doing here?” When I told him why I was there he looked shocked and said “Ok then, you better step into my office” and as it turned out, he gave me a job in property management with Bob Quinn who is one of the most legendary and long-serving property manager’s in the industry.

What attracted you to the commercial side of the business?

Dad let me do my time in residential management for about 18 months or so before he asked if I wanted to join him in our head office in Wollongong and become the second member of his commercial sales team. Being that commercial sales is such a specialised area and therefore quite difficult to break into, it was an opportunity that I couldn’t decline. In addition, it gave me the opportunity to work with Dad which was appealing, not just from a personal point of view, but also from a professional point of view. Rarely does an opportunity present itself to work under, and be mentored by, someone with so much experience and with such a good standing in the industry.

Do you apply any skills from journalism to your real estate work?

A lot of my old journalism skills, the ones that I remember anyway, assist me on a daily basis in this job. The most notable would be working under pressure and to deadlines. Sometimes I think back to the days in TV and the deadlines associated with it and it was basically a case of if you missed certain deadlines, you lost your job. So working under that sort of pressure has definitely been a good grounding for what I do now. Aside from that, I guess journalism also taught me to do my research and dig a little deeper and I think this is a skill that comes in handy regularly in real estate sales.

This year MMJ Real Estate celebrates 50 years in business. Can you share your vision for the company’s future?

Firstly I think to have traded for this long, a company has to be doing something right. I read somewhere that the average life span of a company is about 13 years. So, to a certain extent we will continue to do what we have done for 50 years because it is a proven formula and our clients generally like it. However, it would be naive to think that this will be enough to trade for another 50 years or more. We have just opened our Sydney office which is a massive and exciting step for us and without giving away too many secrets, we are planning to continue this expansion.

Tell us about the Wollongong area and some typical properties.

Wollongong has always been regarded as a “steel” or “industrial” city mainly due to the long-time operation of the steelworks. Despite its reputation though, Wollongong and the Illawarra as a whole has a very limited supply of industrial land. This is mainly due to the fact that we are geographically limited to a certain extent as we have an ocean on one side of us and a mountain on the other, which means we cannot infinitely expand outwards like many other cities. Regardless, we are fortunate enough to have a good strong pool of commercial industrial and retail property to work with and are confident that we are un-paralleled specialists in what is a “niche” market.

What do you love most about your work?

As the old cliché goes, for me it’s all about the people. I really do enjoy meeting people and this job provides a great opportunity for me to do that. There are many of my clients that I have subsequently become good friends with and if I wasn’t in this job, in all likelihood, I would never have met them let alone become friends with them. I also get a real kick out of achieving a great result for a vendor and I had one recently who was so happy that she gave me a VERY large statue of a pig the day after we sold her furniture store at auction for her. So the pig sits in my office and it has almost become an office mascot of sorts.

Tell us about your team.

Our team consists of three salesmen, Geoff (Dad), Travis Machan and I. Dad has been doing this for 36 years so he is a great mentor. We head-hunted Travis from Colliers earlier this year after we had identified him as a very shrewd operator and someone who would fit the MMJ culture. We also have a great support team headed by Kay Mireylees that keeps us running like a well oiled machine. While we understand the importance and magnitude of the day to day transactions we are in charge of for our clients, we still try not to take ourselves too seriously. We like to make the workplace fun and also like to interact socially outside of business hours.

What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Don’t let the fear of falling stop you from experiencing the thrill of soaring. I think this is not only relevant to business but also life in general.