When I was a sales consultant, I had lots of people wander into my display home and when I asked how I could help they said, “I’m just looking thanks” and would try to run past me to the back bedrooms to hide.

WELL, by the time they walked out again, they had signed up to build and paid a deposit. They would dive in headfirst without giving it a second thought. They were excited, impulsive, and gambled away their life savings without really considering the risks. I mean, how did they know if I was actually doing the right thing? They didn’t check my credentials or references. It was just blind trust.

Still to this day, one of my favourite clients was Kat, she loves to tell the story of how we met. Kat and Andrew were planning on selling their place and buying an established home but they came to the display village just to kill some time between viewings. They had no intention to build whatsoever but then they wandered into my display they got chatting to me about the option of demolishing. Well, the next day they made the decision to knock down their house and build from scratch!!

They absolutely adore their new home and we still laugh about it every time we chat. The moral of this story is, it’s easy and natural to get swept up in all the excitement but, you are making a life changing decision and that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

The best and worst thing about the building industry is that you don’t need any qualifications to sell a home. They’re not like real estate agents. You don’t need to complete a course, or even know how to build a house for that matter. You could be a car salesman or a vac salesman, if you have sales experience, you can sell a home. Now don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely fabulous well-respected professionals in the industry. However, there are some tumbleweeds too. They roll in, collect as much money as they can and roll on out again.

When you’re working with your consultant, check their references, ask what experience they have and keep in the back of your mind that they are trying to sell you something.

HERE'S WHAT KAT HAD TO SAY ABOUT HER EXPERIENCE WITH ME

"When we (my husband and I) met Jess, it was in a season where we were expecting our first baby and stuck with a very small, very old, very unmaintainable house on a beautiful piece of land. We wanted to sell and move home; not because we wanted to, but purely because doing anything else felt like too much for us to handle. For inspiration (and a laugh), we went to visit a couple of display homes on our way to our established home viewings. We ran into Jess at one of these homes and, with very little persuasion, we comfortably opened up our hearts to her about the crazy idea of staying on our land, demolishing our house and building a new home. She didn't even blink. After finding out she had worked with a lot of people who had demolished and rebuilt homes before, we 'accidentally' fell into another meeting with her, where she laid out her years of experience and passion in the industry in the form of showing us how our "unrealistically crazy" dreams could very easily be a reality. She was so patient with our ideas and the million tentative questions we asked. We also laughed a lot, which made it such a joyful experience.

Within six months, we had designed our dream home with Jess, knocked down our house and, before we knew it, the slab had gone down. We actually went back to Jess often throughout the process, through all the people we met at each stage of building, with our questions about contracts, decisions and timelines - she was a bit of a stable ground for us. Five months later we were living in our new home with our almost one-year old. It has been four years and we are still absolutely in love our new home - and recommend Jess to anyone who will listen! Not only is she so valuable for the bigger processes in dealing with housing, but there are things in our home that Jess helped us with that we would never have known or thought to do on our own. From the big dreams to the little details, to have someone in the industry who is genuine, listens, isn't out to 'make a buck', and lives out what she is passionate about for the sake of other people... we could not recommend her highly enough."