Finding her PLACE:
Sarah Hackett on building a property powerhouse
When Sarah Hackett and her two business partners launched PLACE in 2002, they had a hunch that Brisbane was ready for something different. Twenty-four years on, PLACE is one of the most respected real estate brands in the country, with 26 offices, 800 staff, and $5 billion in sales last year alone.
As Managing Director of PLACE Estate Agents and Principal of PLACE New Farm, Sarah has spent almost three decades at the forefront of Brisbane's luxury property market. She’s been awarded the title of Australia’s Most Influential Woman in Property by REA; named Queensland’s #1 Female Real Estate Agent by The Courier Mail; and holds the record for the highest price per square metre sold in Brisbane.
But for all the accolades, what makes Sarah's story so compelling isn't so much what she's built, but how she's built it. Joining Brisbane's Women in Business Champion, Fleur Madden, On The Couch at the Brisbane Business Hub, Sarah shared the philosophies and pivots that have shaped her journey so far.
An unlikely beginning
Real estate wasn't always the plan. A high achiever in school, Sarah was studying a science degree at university when she realised a solitary life in the lab wasn't for her.
“I left school as a prefect and ended up depressed in a lab coat, thinking about the rest of my life,” she said. “I deferred, fell into real estate, and fell in love with what I do.”
Her parents weren't thrilled – “they cried when I dropped out of a university degree to get into real estate,” she remembered – but Sarah knew she had found the thing that lit her up.
“I like to be around people,” she said. “People who are enjoying themselves, who like what they're doing, who inspire. Real estate isn't about the house. It's about the connections you build with people.”
Entering into what was then an overwhelmingly male industry, Sarah said she was routinely written off.
“I started in my early 20s, blonde and enthusiastic, with not a lot of life experience, and then I met a bunch of male real estate agents,” she said. “All the way through my first few years, I was totally underestimated. I'd walk into a room, shake hands, try to have an opinion. I really wanted to prove myself.”
She let her work speak for itself. “I focused on myself, on building my clients and nurturing them. And after a few years, I started kicking some goals. People started talking. ‘Can you believe she actually did it?’ The fact that I'd been underestimated made me memorable.
“I had to work doubly as hard to be on the list. But once I cracked one client, they all talked. They could see I was hard-working, honest, energetic, and that I could be trusted to be discreet. I don't tell anyone who's bought what, who's selling, who's looking. That's how you have to do it at the high end of the market.”
Three’s company
After just half a decade in the industry, Sarah co-founded PLACE in 2002 with Damien Hackett (now her husband) and business partner Paul Curtain. Nearly three decades on, the three are still working side by side, which Sarah credits to getting the foundations right from day one.
“Our partnership agreement when we started was crucial,” she said. “We didn't want to raise capital, we wanted to grow a business. So in our agreement, for instance, I can't retire and keep my shares in a business I've run for 26 years. I'm out. There are no passive investors. You're either working, or we buy you out.”
Sarah credits one of her long-time developer clients with giving her the test she still applies to her partners today.
“He always had this line: ‘Would you go to war with them?’ Is that the person you want side by side with you in the trenches when someone's shooting at you? Are they going to protect you? And these are the two I'd go to war with.”
One of the most consequential decisions the trio ever made together, Sarah said, was the pivot to a franchise model.
“For our first 10 offices, we owned all of them outright. Then we said, ‘We're going to franchise,’” she explained. “There was no growth path for the agent to go into a leadership role, to get ownership, to participate in a bigger picture. That was really important for us; that longevity plan to keep these people working, excited and planning for the future.”
Under their model, PLACE retains a 20% ownership stake in each franchised office while giving local leaders the autonomy to run their own businesses.
The other key innovation was shared services. “We have a centralised marketing department, contracts and compliance department, and finance department,” Sarah said. “And it's cheaper [for franchisees] than if you had to employ someone yourself. So now we have this business that can grab great talent and give them everything they need, so they can focus on what they do best.
“For us as business owners, that's recurring income. So that's what we've pivoted to, and that's what we're really excited about going forward.”
Compete with yourself, not the market
In an industry as cut-throat as luxury real estate, you might expect Sarah to have a long list of competitors she'd love to beat. Instead, she has a long list of competitors she gets on with, and a philosophy that the only opponent worth worrying about is the one in the mirror.
“The person you should compete with the most is yourself. That's the biggest competitor,” she said. “Analyse yourself. Focus on you. What are your strengths? What's working? What are the failures? What can we improve? Spend your energy focusing on your business and your clients, getting their feedback and looking after them.”
That philosophy was forged through one particularly humbling moment when Sarah lost a riverfront listing in New Farm, the kind of golden opportunity that rarely comes onto the market, because the owners believed she was indistinguishable from her competitors.
“They said, ‘You're all just the same, we don't know how to pick,’ and that was probably the most valuable lesson I could have learned,” she said.
“They were right. We did sound the same. We pitched the same. We looked the same. I restructured my whole business a month after that, because I'd rather be me and have them say, 'We don't like you'. At least that way I'm being authentically me.”
Embracing what’s next
Innovation has been one of PLACE's core values since the company was founded, and Sarah said the company's appetite for change has only sharpened over the years.
“We're at a size where we can change quickly and adapt to new things,” she said. “Once you get to 3,000 people, it takes much longer to get everyone on board.”
That instinct was tested during COVID, when PLACE pioneered virtual open houses to keep the business moving through lockdowns.
“That experience taught me how good change can be when you embrace it,” Sarah said. The same instinct is now shaping how PLACE is approaching AI; another wave of disruption the business is choosing to lead rather than follow.
“There's a huge amount of documentation involved in selling a property these days, and AI is now generating all of it for us,” she said. “We've got a chatbot that handles enquiries after hours, because we get a lot of midnight enquiries. We can also predict who's likely to sell, just by watching what they're looking at and how often they're enquiring.
“AI can predict who's going to buy your house, too, so maybe I'll be out of a job,” she laughed. “But I don't think I will be, because what I really do is nurse the gap between what the seller and the buyer want. You can't just take photos and put them on the net and get the business. You've really got to be creative.”
The real value in this technology, Sarah said, is freeing up agents to spend their time where it matters most.
“AI lets us bring in people who are more high-touch, who can focus on making the service exceptional,” she said. “The moments when you're meeting a client and they're deciding whether to pick you; that's the $10,000-an-hour work. Let's focus on doing that better, rather than having people process forms and tick boxes.”
The runway to 2032
Looking ahead, Sarah's prediction for the Brisbane market is one of compounding opportunity, particularly as the city's runway to 2032 begins to reshape demand and infrastructure.
“We are in growth mode [at PLACE],” she said. “Our prediction was that by the Olympics, we wanted to get to 36 offices. We now think we'll be over 40.
“This is the place to be living. The amount of infrastructure that's coming our way, the amount of migration… people are moving here and saying, ‘It's the best thing we ever did.’”
Sarah urged local businesses to learn from what happened in Sydney in the lead-up to 2000.
“There were catering businesses in Sydney that just transformed,” she said. “People who made the chairs for the stadiums; their business transformed. They're now worldwide leaders, because they took it seriously. They were the best at it, and now they do every stadium in America. So let's take advantage of this.”
For PLACE, taking advantage means staying disciplined about what got them here. Sarah's focus now is on what the Japanese call 'kaizen'; the discipline of continuous, one-percent improvement.
“Now that we've implemented the systems and put the hard work in, we just have to keep tweaking it, keep improving it,” she said. “It's all about the service, the lasting impression, and scalability. That's our hyper-focus.”
After almost three decades in the industry, Sarah is as excited about what comes next as she's ever been.
“There's no ceiling to the growth and potential of your career,” she said. “That's what keeps it exciting.”
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