Setting records and helping her community – Rotorua's Brooke Wood

Rotorua's Brooke Wood worked out at a very early age that if you aren't putting in the work, there will be no progression towards the things you want in life.
The Arizto profile for this month agents spotlights one of the standout salespeople inside one of the true regional strongholds for New Zealand's fastest growing real estate company.
With nearly nine years in the industry having started as a receptionist at another local brand before becoming a personal assistant and then her own salesperson, Wood has made every post a winner since her switch a couple of years ago.
Rapidly closing in on 50 sales for the brand in under 24 months, Wood's has been recognised as runner-up for the top number of sales in the Bay of Plenty during the both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 Arizto national awards season.
She also became the company record holder in October 2023 she secured the sale of a three bedroom estate property with a jetty on the banks of beautiful Lake Tarawera for a whopping $3.675 million.
This record price being paid for a lakeside home rocked competing agents from ‘traditional' real estate companies in the area, many of whom had initially written off Arizto as a fad that wouldn't last.
When that was proven not to be true, they downplayed the brand as a niche digital company which only secured listings because of their low commission levels – thereby lacking the best resources to market premium properties and deliver results.
Wood really proved them wrong.
"Arizto offer all that – we offer access to all the same platforms as big agencies," she said.
"We have all the same access, we have all the same offerings."
It was her personal touch that led to the owners entrusting her with the Lake Tarawera listing.
"I had worked with these clients, as I had been selling investment properties for them and blocks of units for them that other agencies weren't able to sell or weren't willing to sell.
"[Other agents] didn't see value, but I saw value in those listings and they were really successful sales, and because I worked hard to get those perhaps challenging deals across the line, they were able to see first-hand my work ethic.
"That lake listing, there were some big agents circling for that, and very much people who were considered experts in that area at the lake, who were probably quite surprised when I got the listing and they maintained contact [with my vendors] throughout the campaign.
"[They wanted to] pick that listing up once I wasn't able to sell it, but I was able to sell it and I was able to do an exceptional job for my clients.
"A lot of lake listings can sit on the market for a long time – that property sold at the close of tender for an exceptional price."
Wood takes pride in the story about how her delighted vendors then called back one of those agents to thank them for their near-weekly offers of service, but they were no longer required.
The competing agent was then asked on the phone to guess the final sale figure.
"We sold it over a million more than what her expectation was. My property sold $1.9 million above CV, compared to the next best sale in that season that was $700,000 above," said Wood.
"I think sometimes if you believe you know a market really, really well, that you're a specialist in that market and that's where you focus your business, you have a preconceived idea of what a property is worth.
"But I work in a variety of markets with a variety of people, where I'm learning new skills all the time, first-hand.
"There's no preconceived idea about where I can take a listing and that was proven by the lake sale.
"I was potentially being seen as the new kid on the block, and it wasn't expected that I would be successful – because it was such an elite market."
Wood has come a long way since moving to Rotorua with her family as a teenager, having been raised up in the Waikato.
"I grew up in a farming community," she said.
"Most people working really hard to progress their families – that kind of rings true to me today.
"It's difficult to get ahead if you're not prepared to work hard, and I'd say real estate is not an easy industry to be a part of, you've got to be prepared to do the hard yards in this industry.
While her family later moved again, Wood found her niche working in the local real estate market.
"I started my journey in administration, which really wasn't my calling and I knew that wasn't the final destination for me.
"I loved when I became a PA, focusing on more specialised work in marketing and having a lot more contact with vendors and purchasers.
"That led me into the direction of becoming an agent, which was a natural progression.
"When you're in an office environment, you're seeing other people's businesses and observing what works for them, so you can kind of pick and take what you'd like from the tried-and-true aspects of real estate and integrating that with the fresh and new resources available, that other agents probably weren't implementing as effectively at the time.
"It's about finding what resonates for you and then refining those methods to build a strong foundation for your business. "
Wood then transitioned to Arizto because she had grown frustrated with how traditional real estate agency processes worked, finding it restrictive when she knew her personal approach, coupled with her work ethic could achieve better results for her clients.
"The digital world is where we really find ourselves today and we need to be able move with this to offer our clients the best marketing exposure.
"The results I'm able to achieve for my clients give them more money, in a way they can better their position in life without taking exorbitant fees from them.
"When I moved to Aritzo my business tripled, so that was evident that the offering from Arizto worked for my clients and the community, and that Arizto was right for me.
"I've had access to better support and mentoring in this company then I've had in any other company and that really paid off for my clients.
"I think with Arizto we operate quite professionally and we offer home owners a really valuable alternative to the traditional real estate model.
"We didn't make Arizto big, our community did - they saw the results we've achieved for our clients.
"If our community didn't see the value, we never would have become what we are."
As Bay of Plenty's second-largest urban area, Rotorua offers a range of different residential properties from the high end lake listings to the more modest homes for first home buyers.
Wood will have a diverse portfolio of listings at any given time, from the townhouses to the larger family and holiday homes.
She believes everyone deserves the same level of care.
"We are a family community here - we have young people starting off, we have large families, we have holiday makers and everyone is working hard on their journey through life.
"It's just about looking after our community and those people are our community.
"I love working with unique properties - right from that bottom end, through to the top end properties that people have loved and put a lot of time and effort into.
"But equally, I love seeing my ‘babies' - my first home buyers - getting into the market because it's such a sense of achievement for them, a couple of them even called me their ‘real estate mum'.
"There's a lot of gratitude for people when you're good at your job and you look after them – that is very rewarding.
"I have a very diverse client base. You have to be able to deal with people of all walks of life in this industry.
"Life is progressive, everyone who buys or sells property is progressing, one way or another."
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