PR OFILE


capital, Brisbane. There he started out again at the age of 46 and built the real estate empire that has grown to more than AUD$46 billion ($35.3 billion) in unconditional sales revenues today. Yet the link back to Crows Nest is a vital one to this day, says his grandson. “When our centenary was approaching we had


to find the shed. By then of course all the railway line had been pulled up and everything had been dismantled. We put adverts in the local paper and finally found some guy [who owned it]; the sign was still there, but very faded. We put the shed back together and renovated it.” The setting for Ray White Group today is a world


away from that small Queensland town. When we meet, Brian White sits in the modern boardroom of Ray White’s Sydney headquarters, 17 floors up in the heart of downtown Sydney. The patriarch is a picture of calm as builders scuttle around the skyscrapers. Next door is Loan Market, a retail mortgage brokerage set up by Brian’s son, Sam, in 1995. Alongside the original Ray White real estate business and Loan Market, the White Family Group of companies now includes financial adviser Wealth Market, Home Now, property manager Living Here, real estate investment and advisory firm White & Partners and Concierge. Brian’s second eldest son Dan runs the Ray White Group day-to-day and has led White & Partners since 2001. Third son Ben oversees property technology firm Ailo and the Leading Property Managers Association (LPMA). Brian’s brother, Paul, is joint chairman of Ray White and chairman of Ray White Rural,


while Paul’s son, Matthew, owns the Ray White franchise in St Kilda, an important area for the company, in Melbourne. Today Ray White has more than 13,000 people,


spread throughout 1,000 offices from Australia and NZ. Its reach also extends to Indonesia, China and as far away as Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. But it wasn’t always this way.


CLIMBING THE PROPERTY LADDER Ray White’s son, Alan, had taken over his father’s fledgling business and expanded Ray White Real Estate to include 15 company-owned offices through Queensland in the post-war period. White, now in his mid-70s, recalls one of his


clearest memories was when he was about 13. His father stood up at the dinner table one night to make an announcement to his small family. One of the big rival real estate firms from New South Wales had approached Alan with an acquisition offer. “I remember so strongly, he said: “I’ve got an


announcement to make, “I’ve decided not to sell; we’ll hang on for as long as we can”. I remember those last words,” says White. Alan stepped back from the business and handed


the reins to White in his early 30s. Taking charge in the face of rising competition led to a bold vision to expand beyond Queensland’s borders. They chose to become a nationwide business in the mid-1980s using the franchise model. “Alan created the springboard. The job of the


third generation was to jump on it and take the company to an international operation,” White says in a background on Ray White’s history.


16 CAMPDENFB.COM ISSUE 74 | 2018


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