9th December 2018 / Sarah Lowry: A century in the business: Rob Fletcher is the head of a long-standing real estate dynasty

Written by EMILY POWER,EDITOR, MAGAZINES (VICTORIA) from Domain NOV 30, 2018

With Rob Fletcher, executive chairman, Fletchers

Walk into a Fletchers office and you might be entering the real life set of My Three Sons. The business celebrates 100 years in 2019, and executive chairman Rob Fletcher is the custodian of a strong family tradition. His sons Nick, 36, and Mark, 38, are real estate agents, and Tom, 32, also works in the busy office. Rob Fletcher has come a long way, from a youngster cutting the vines around the agency's outdoor loo to doing deals for generations of the same families across his company's traditional patch of blue-ribbon suburbs.

Congratulations on 100 years of Fletchers – give us a history lesson.

My grandfather, Harold Fletcher, started the business with a chap by the name of Percy Parker, in 1919, just after the war. Their first office was in the Kew Junction, and then they moved up to Cotham Road. In the early 1920s Parker moved out of the business, then my father John and my uncle David joined the business, and were involved for 40-odd years.

What relics do you have from the earliest days of the agency?

We still have the sales registers, which are all handwritten and rather beautifully bound. When I joined that was one of my jobs – to write up the sales each week.

When did you join the business?

In about 1971. My brother Tim was already in the business, so Tim and I, and my father and uncle, were working together for a number of years. My father was an exceptionally well-known auctioneer, the same as my brother. There was no suggestion that any of us had to go into real estate, it was just something we decided to do over time. As a kid, I naturally went along to auctions and so on. In those days I used to trim the vines at the back of the office so we could get to the outside toilet.

What other passions have played as big a role as property has in your life?

We have a beach house, and as family we love to go down there whenever we can.

We will find you at the beach this summer?

Yes, at Mount Martha. We have had a little place down there for nearly 40 years.

How would you describe working with your sons?

It is the same as it was with my brother Tim. He had been in the business for 50 years when he retired, which was probably 45 years together, and in that time we never had a disagreement, and it is the same with the boys. My upbringing and what I learnt through my family was incredible and I would like to think I have passed that on to the boys.

What fuels the continuing love of your work through the decades?

We see all facets, from matrimonial, to death, first-home buyers, moves from family homes and so on. It is the full gamut of life. And you are involved with those people's personal lives for quite a long period of time, selling their most valuable asset.

Do you have repeat vendors at different life stages?

I was in a home last week where I have sold nine properties for the family, and that is including for their children, so there is that continuation.

There are few professions these days like that …

It is a pleasure. And we sold one a year or so ago in Camberwell for a chap I went to school with, and on the day of the sale he said it was 90 years to the day that they bought the house through us, and we sold it for them.

Visit the Domian website with the article here: https://www.domain.com.au/news/a-century-in-the-business-rob-fletcher-is-the-head-of-a-long-standing-real-estate-dynasty-787200/