Michelle Percival: building her career in the 1980s, and how life led her back to Port Macquarie

Michelle Percival’s first job in real estate involved mopping floors and cleaning windows. The Port Macquarie-based veteran agent now oversees one of the north coast town’s leading agencies as principal of Percival Property Sales.

Here, she talks of her driving ambition, equality and how a cancer diagnosis changed her whole outlook on life.

Tell us a little about your early years and getting into real estate.

I grew up in Port Macquarie. Mum was a cleaner and dad worked at the council; they were very involved in the community. I left home at 16 because of family difficulties. I was living with Michael, whom I later married. My mother heard about a receptionist job at a real estate agency. I did everything from answering phones to cleaning windows and mopping floors.

Have you always been based in Port Macquarie?

Michael and I moved to Canberra in 1980. His mother, Helene Baker, was one of the city’s early leading female agents. Michael and I worked with her. I was her secretary. I begged her to let me become a salesperson but she said I was too young, so I got a job at a TV station. I missed real estate and offered to go back working on commission only for three months. I told Helene if I didn’t succeed in sales, I’d go back to being her secretary.

Can we assume you didn’t fail?

I sold five houses in my first week. At the time, Canberra had a system of compulsory multiple listings.

You started your family around the same time, too?

Michael and I married in 1982. I started selling real estate a year later. My daughter Camille and son Jesse were born in 1985 and 1986. Michael stayed at home for three years looking after them while I worked.

That must have been an unconventional choice for that era.

I had to be quite careful about who I told. People would judge you. They would say, “What does your husband do?” I would tell them he was very busy working. When they asked who was minding the children, I said, “We certainly have very good help”. My daughter now has children of her own. She works and she loves her children. I fought hard to have equality because I didn’t see it when I was growing up.

We moved back to Port Macquarie so my children could be closer to their grandparents. Both my children are now environmental scientists. We became a carbon-neutral office in the 1990s, which was very progressive.

You’ve worked alongside your husband for nearly three decades. That’s not for the faint-hearted.

It is very challenging but I think we have a great passion. I met Michael and fell in love with him around the time I fell in love with real estate. Those were both defining moments.

When did you open your own business?

We opened Laing and Simmons in Port Macquarie in 1995. I sold the sales part of the business in 2010 being diagnosed with breast cancer. I had a mastectomy, chemotherapy and 12 months of treatment.

How did your illness change your outlook on life?

I didn’t want to wrap myself in cotton wool. Michael and I started Percival Property Management in 2011 and Percival Property Sales in 2013. I never dreamed I’d be establishing another business at 50. I never dreamed I’d have breast cancer, either. I think you just have to love every day, whatever it looks like. There’s always someone doing it tougher than you.