How an early mistake helped Mario Sanfrancesco become a top-performing agent
When Canberra’s Mario Sanfrancesco started his career in real estate, he was eager for his first sale. So when he was approached by a buyer with a budget of “around $800”, he lined up three houses to drive him to, as agents did 30 years ago.
At the first property, his client said he loved it and wanted to take it. “But hang on,” the young Sanfrancesco told him. “The next house is even better!”
Inside the following home, his client’s eyes grew rounder. “Yes, you’re right,” he agreed. “I prefer this, I want this one.”
Delighted, Sanfrancesco started the paperwork, thinking how easy his new profession was turning out to be. At this rate, he told himself, he could maybe manage 30 sales a month.
And then came the moment of truth.
“How long is the lease they’ll give me?” his customer asked. Heartbreakingly, it turned out he was actually offering $800 as a weekly rent; not the $800,000 the over-excited agent had assumed.
“That taught me a very valuable lesson early on,” Sanfrancesco says, laughing. “In this profession, you have to listen carefully and ask lots of questions. Always lots of questions. It’s something I’ve never forgotten.”
It’s stood the veteran realtor at Blackshaw Manuka in extremely good stead, too.
Sanfrancesco, now 56, is one of the top agents in Canberra, being ranked 20th – and the only ACT agent – on Australia’s Top 100 Agents list.
Also a Real Estate Institute (REI) ACT Agent of the Year, he has won the REIACT Agency of the Year award an astonishing eight times, and has been named REIACT’s Auctioneer of the Year on three occasions.
In the last 12 months alone, he’s sold 67 properties, with an average sale price of $2.3 million and total sales valued at $118 million.
“I think one of the proudest moments of my career, however, was speaking at AREC [the Australasian Real Estate Conference] on the Gold Coast,” he says. “I also had some great mentors. In the early days, I flew to the US a lot of times to meet with America’s number one agent, Bob Bohlen.
“He’d been out here, speaking at AREC at Sydney’s then Sheraton On The Park as a guest speaker, and I was lucky enough to shadow him for a week. He then coached me for a period of time.”
Another important influence was the legendary US global business mentor and life coach Dr Fred Grosse, with whom Sanfrancesco worked for a long time. “I learned so much from him,” he says.
Surprisingly, real estate was never on his horizon as a young man, and he studied hospitality with a view to becoming a hotel manager instead. But when he met a few real estate agents socially, he found them a good fit and decided to give it a try.
He trained intensively to enter the industry but describes himself as a slow learner; the very opposite of an overnight success.
“I probably under-estimated how challenging it was as a career,” Sanfrancesco says. “I just stumbled my way through at first, and it was quite some time before everything started to click.
“But I really enjoyed the dealing and interaction with clients and the buying and selling of real estate. It’s still the one thing that drives me to get into the office with a bit of a spring in my step.
“I value the relationships you make, the integrity and hard work, as well as great communication and good negotiating skills – and sales give me such a buzz!”
These days, having been in the business so long, Sanfrancesco loves selling people’s houses for the second or third time, and counts many of his clients as his friends.
Most of his work is centred around the capital’s luxury properties, and he’s proud to have clinched the ACT’s record sale of $8 million at auction for the five-bedroom house at 4 Wickham Crescent, Red Hill.
In his spare time, Sanfrancesco has run hundreds of auctions for a range of charities, including the Starlight Children’s Foundation, Canberra Cancerians, Menslink, AFFIRM, the Red Cross, South Care Helicopter, and the RSPCA.
He also enjoys working with his wife Fiona, a former travel industry professional and public servant, who’s now part of his team at the agency.
“She’s the backbone of my career,” he says. “At the office each day, she effectively manages our team. We’re very different personality types and I think that’s part of the reason we work together so well.”
And, of course, he’s always careful to listen to her …
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