GEOFF CAYZER ON HIS FIRST REAL ESTATE FORAY IN MIDDLE PARK

In 1976 a young stock agent bought his first house in Middle Park. Geoff Cayzer has never looked back.

For a young Geoff Cayzer, Middle Park was a practical location to buy his first home. Working as a stock agent in the Newmarket Sales Yard, a little house in a tree-lined street, in a bayside suburb close to his place of work, simply made sense.

Little did Geoff know he would live in this area for 40 years, and start a Real Estate business that celebrated its 30th anniversary earlier this year.

“Working in this area is a dream,” Geoff says. “It is such a wonderful place. I have seen it transform from an area full of working man’s cottages to homes at the upper end of the market.

Initially I had to sell the houses. Now people buy the houses.

It is a trend that has worked in Geoff’s favour – and it was his first home that set his future course.

“My first house was in Richardson Street, Middle Park, opposite the school,” Geoff says. “I paid $27,250 for it. I remember the auctioneer saying when I was bidding for the property, ‘You may have to sell a few more cows next week’.”

The two-bedroom Edwardian house, on 140 square metres, was a tiny block of land compared to the large blocks of land found to the east of Melbourne, where Geoff grew up.

Geoff says he was hesitant to break the news to his parents.

“When I was younger I was scared of my father as he was two inches taller than I was,” Geoff says.

“He was also a bank manager. He had to come and value my house. I had to tell him at some stage that my new property was only five metres wide! I asked the agents to pull the board down so he wouldn’t know where it was.

“’Where is this place?’, my father asked. As the bank manager at Camberwell he was used to looking at huge blocks.

“When he finally did value it he said, ‘You’re an idiot. You’ve bought a cricket pitch!’

“But I knew better. I said: ‘Dad, I don’t care. It’s mine. I’m going to pay for it’.”

Within three years Geoff was married. He then set his sights on a larger house around the corner in Wright Street.

“I sold the Richardson Street house for $62,000,” Geoff says.

“I remember proudly standing in the street after the auction with the contract under my arm and I walked up to my father and said, ‘Dad, three years ago you called me an idiot. Today, I’ve just doubled my money in three years. All I did was put some pink batts in the roof at 2am. Who’s the idiot now.’

Pregnant pause for a minute, and then Dad pointed to the buyer. He said, ‘that idiot over there’.