In less than five years in the business, Michael Sleiman has gone from selling his family home to fund his transition to a career in real estate to making record sales.
In less than five years in the business, Michael Sleiman has gone from selling his family home to fund his transition to a career in real estate to making record sales and being named the First National NSW Salesperson of the Year.
Sleiman is principal of First National Real Estate Daystar in Padstow in Sydney’s south west. “I think I’m in the right place at the right time,” said Sleiman of his success in the industry, but its not just luck that has seen him set several record prices for Padstow properties in the last six months. “I sold a freestanding duplex for $1.4 million, the most expensive freestanding duplex sold by a long shot,” he says. “Three months before that I sold an attached duplex for $1.15m, which was $150,000 to $200,000 more expensive than the most expensive one before that.” Just before Christmas, Sleiman sold the two most expensive properties ever in the area, which was two properties in East Hills which sold for $5.8 million and a development site in Padstow, four properties side by side, which sold for over $6 million.
His business in the south west part of Sydney is booming, and he believes the area has a lot of room for price growth. “This area has a lot of infrastructure development at the moment. We have a fast train to the city, shopping centres, the M5, we’re not far to the Sutherland Shire, we’re 22 kms to the CBD and over the last three or four years we’ve been affordable, and people have woken up to that,” he says. There’s also the potential for Bankstown council to approve higher density, with proposed changes in their local environment plan. “There’s some risky buying happening in the hope that theses changes come through,” says Sleiman.
Sleiman only entered real estate a few years ago after spending a substantial part of his earlier career working in management for McDonalds. “I started working for McDonalds when I was 14 and 21 years later I was still there,” he said. “The last role I had there was training manager for NSW. I decided that I would follow through on something that was a hobby of mine, which was real estate.”
A father of three, Sleiman started as a commission-only agent. “I took a big risk to leave behind all the things you get with a good package, car and super, to basically be earning zero. I actually said to my wife, ‘We will need to sell our home and move in with my parents and I will go as hard as I can to give myself the best opportunity.’ She was supportive.”
Within three years of doing that, Sleiman’s efforts had helped the business achieve a doubling of turnover in sales. Then in his third year, he bought 30% of the business, and then 12 months down the track he bought the whole company. That was in 2011.
“I’ve been the sole principal coming up to four years now, and I’ve just hired employee number 13,” he says. “We’ve pretty much doubled in staff numbers, and the business the last three years has done double digit growth. I was fortunate that I got the number one agent for First National in 2013, and then I got it again last year.” His business was also ranked sixth office in First National, and the year before that we weren’t even mentioned.
“People tell me, ‘I’ll never buy from you, but I’ll always sell through you,’ and I take that as a compliment because I work for the vendor,” says Sleiman. “I always act in the best interest of the vendor.”