Booth & Lee – 30 years young for Ray White

ON Saturday, 1 April 1989, Trevor Booth and Phillip Lee took a step into the unknown.

They walked away from their roles with other real estate agencies and went into partnership together, establishing Booth & Lee.

“We both were really keen to do things a bit differently and saw the opportunity in the marketplace,” said Mr Lee.

“We we’re probably full of excitement and enthusiasm and didn’t think too much about it, to be honest, and it’s bloody hard work starting a business from scratch.”

“I think you needed to be young because if we knew then what we know now we may not have gone through with it,” Mr Booth added with a laugh.

There was a sense the pair would be successful from day one.

“We were overwhelmed when we opened on the first of April 1989,” Mr Lee said.

“The phones just started ringing like we’d been in business for the last 10 years. People didn’t say, ‘awwww, you’re a new business,’ the phones just rang, and people enquired on properties like we’d been around for years.”

The business was a diverse one, the Booth & Lee moniker was ‘Estate Agents, Auctioneers, Valuers.’

It wasn’t easy in those early years.

Apart from the challenges of starting a new business and seeking to establish themselves in a highly competitive marketplace, there was something big around the corner.

“Six months after, the ‘Recession we had to Have’ came along,” Mr Lee said. “That hit us pretty hard and we had to work very hard through that. Overdraft interest rates hit 20.5 per cent. So those early years were tough.”

Yet Booth & Lee weathered the storm of high interest rates and declining property values and went onto become one of the region’s leading rest estate agencies.

Along the way they have played a hand is some of Ballarat’s biggest projects.

Mr Booth conducted the valuations on land that became the Western Highway’s route around the city and the firm sold large sites including the Humffray Street State School and Glenfine Homestead.

“Glenfine Homestead was big in our early years,” Mr Lee said. “Trevor had to pick up the late Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.”

“I had to drive him down to the homestead, down Lismore way,” added Mr Booth.

The firm also launched the first display village in Ballarat, brining together three different builders. The site was known as Bonshaw Park.

In August 2011, Booth & Lee joined the Ray White Group.

The change to Ray White Ballarat was a good fit right from the start.

“That’s allowed our business to move up to the next level,” Mr Lee said. “It’s enabled us to grow, provide more services and have more back up in relation to training and marketing.

“We joined a family business, because Ray White are a family business into their fourth generation.”

There are 23 staff currently working at Ray White Ballarat, with the vast majority under 30 years of age.

Both Mr Booth and Mr Lee agreed that a young, vibrant office environment pushes them to seek new ways of doing things and be constantly adapting.

“We have a young, energetic team,” Mr Lee said. “They drive you, because they challenge us and they want to do new things. There’s no doubt the young ones keep us going.”

Ray White Ballarat will celebrate 30 years of business, including their time as Booth & Lee, at an event on Monday, 1 April.

Next week we’ll look at how the agency has reacted to, adapted, and embraced technological change in the real estate sector over 30 years.