Life as an agent in Fiji

For agent Paula Benn, a four-hour round trip to the Fijian capital of Suva is all in a day’s work.

The owner of RE/MAX Tropics, Benn’s home office is in the city of Lautoka in Fiji’s western sugar belt. As she observed, however, Fiji is a small country, and “it’s very normal to be travelling from the western side to the capital for many businesses, regardless of what industry you’re in”.

For Benn, travel is one of the perks of her job, not a hindrance. Being in real estate “takes me to new roads every day”, she explained.

But real estate was not always Benn’s focus in life. Over a decade ago, a number of life changes prompted her to go down the property path for the first time.

“I had just become a single mother,” Benn recalled. “I had no experience, I had nothing whatsoever, but two people in the business community identified me as being good at that, and I thought, ‘Okay, let me try it.’”

In Fiji, individual real estate agents are not required to be licensed. Instead, an agent is first contracted by a licensed real estate business, and then applies for their real estate licence under the company.

For Benn, the ease of transitioning into real estate proved to be a boon. “You learn as you go, and of course under an international brand you have good-quality learning as well,” she said.

Clearly, Benn proved to be a fast learner, because 13 years later she was named the number one Harcourts sales agent in the whole of Fiji – the first woman ever to hold that position.

Now, Benn has taken the “big, bold step” of joining her longtime friend Mala Maharaj, chief operating officer of RE/MAX New Zealand and Fiji, and has opened the first RE/MAX franchise in Fiji.

There have been some memorable highs during Benn’s time as a real estate agent: a $5 million hotel sale and $44,000 per month Naisoso Island rental property top the list of highlights.

But for sales agents at RE/MAX Tropics, day-to-day work life is slow and intensive work.

“You have to do everything,” Benn said. “We do commercial, industrial sales and rentals, leasing, tourism, and also high-end residential.”

Not only do agents have to be adept at covering a wide array of property types, they also need to be on top of marketing.

“Over in Fiji, vendor-paid marketing is not a big thing because of the level of income that people earn, and we don’t have professional photographers,” Benn explained.

“So the agent will actually use their own phone to take their own photographs, and you will probably see if you go on the website that some of the photos are really odd because there is no education here on how to do it all.”

Not only do sales agents have to take on a vast array of jobs, it can take a long time for the agents to see the fruits of their labour.

According to Benn, a general residential listing in Fiji would take four to six months to sell. Following that comes a settlement period of any time between three months and two years, an important consideration given that Fijian agents “don’t get paid upon unconditional, we get paid at settlement”.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, an already difficult job became a thousand times harder.

Election uncertainty, an extended festive season and bank liquidation all meant that late 2019 was already a challenging period for Fijian real estate. And just when Benn thought that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, the pandemic arrived.

“My income for the COVID years was way below the minimum threshold for tax in Fiji – and I was a top performing agent,” said Benn.

“We went right down to the ground,” she said. “It was a massive, massive decline in my income.”

Since then, Fijian real estate has been slowly gathering steam again, and now Benn believes things are back to normal.

“From this year, our tourism industry has kicked off now that the borders are open, and there’s a lot of activity with that,” she said.

Despite the immense pressures of the past few years, Benn still finds pleasure in her work.

“It’s warm, it’s sunny, it’s exciting,” she said. “You look at a vast array of homes, and the interior decoration is so vast in scope here because they have so many cultures coming into Fiij, mixed in with the Fijian culture, so it’s very unique.”

“It’s relaxed but it’s hectic,” she said. “It’s just a very good vibe to be here in Fiji working.”

To find out more about how agents are operating across Australia and beyond, check out REB’s previous articles in the Life as an Agent series.

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