John Manning was absolutely charming , knowledgeable and “low pressure” from the moment my wife and Inopened our door to Hocking Stuart for an appraisal on our East StKilda garden apartment. When you are considering a selling agency it’s nice to have The Director turn up to appraise your property. With a solid two decades of experience under his belt , and a non-pushy approach to winning our listing ( including an unprecedented flexibility when negotiating his commission and when tailoring our marketing strategy to our budget.) John was instantly a head above the competition by making us feel at ease and reflect an understanding what we love about the property, how it is placed on the market in the area and most importantly how to convey that in our campaign to reach our buyer range (and how to really bring genuine well qualified bidders on our auction day . ) When our property performed well above average during our campaign, we knew we were onto a winner with John . Always available to us , although our beautiful little place was probably one of the smallest in The Red Book ( and comparatively insignificant compared to the featured multi million dollar listings they handle with the same charm) but John, paired in classic “good-cop/good-cop” combination with personable and fresh faced auctioneer Costa Karabatsos -(Kudos to Costa too, see Costa’s review) made us feel like VIP clients. They remained contactable, continually giving us tons of progress reports after each open and answering all my calls and questions. John and Costa facilitated with finesse the runaway bidding war that took place on the most formidable of inclement Melbourne Autumn days . Bucketing down rain till the hammer with five groups competing to own ..which resulted in the best possible outcome - Thanks, John . .thanks for that fabled , triumphant “champagne and high five “ sale (16% above our auction reserve! ) Five Stars to John Manning at StKilda HS for exceeding all our expectations.
