Success Stories: Odette from Lower Wonga, QLD

“We felt people in our rural area were almost laughing at us at the beginning, but we had the last laugh in the end, that’s for sure.”

Odette sold her acreage at 185 Abel Road, Lower Wonga, north-west of Gympie, herself through PropertyNow. It went live on 11 November 2025 at $1,250,000 and sold on 19 December for $1,210,000, just over five weeks later.

What makes her story different from most we publish is what happened first. She’d already signed with an agent and paid for the agent’s advertising, and ended up back where she’d started. Then she came back to the idea she’d begun with and sold it herself.

Her own estimate of the saving is $30,000 to $40,000, and that’s about what a Queensland agent’s commission would come to: at a state median around 2.8%, and up to 3.5% in some regional towns, the commission on $1,210,000 would be roughly $34,000 to $42,000 before GST and marketing. She paid PropertyNow’s flat listing fee plus a couple of optional extras instead. Run your own figure on the commission savings calculator.

Odette answered our questions in full, and her answers are below as she wrote them.

The agent detour

We asked whether she’d been hesitant about selling privately.

“So hesitant, to the point where we signed up with an agent, paid a ridiculous amount of money in advertising, to only end up where we wanted to at the very beginning: selling it ourselves. We just talked ourselves out of it, lost confidence, but got there in the end with a great result!”

Losing confidence at the start doesn’t mean the idea was wrong. In Odette’s case the idea was right the first time, and the detour cost her an advertising bill.

What actually helped

“The services which assisted me most was the SMS support team, having the option to add additional features like having someone script my ad, and my photographer who you put in contact with (Kate) was great.”

Two of those are optional add-ons, professional copywriting and photography, which a lot of sellers use and a lot of sellers skip. The third is the support team. Her next answer explains why that one mattered.

The hard part, and the meltdowns

“The hardest part was at the very beginning for me, as it was a little overwhelming actually getting the property to the point of going live. I overcame it by having trust in the support system at hand, as they were really supportive with a few meltdowns I had.”

We’d rather you read that than a line about how easy it all is. Getting a property to the point of going live means photos, a written ad, a price, the contract prepared by your solicitor, and a sign at the gate, and for someone doing it for the first time on a rural block that’s real work. The team is on the phone seven days a week for exactly this stage. Meltdowns included.

Shipping containers and a win-win

We always ask for a story, and Odette’s is a good one.

“What is unique about this experience for us is that because we’ve built rapport with our buyers, I currently have 2 shipping containers on my acreage to help them out, and in turn I need to keep some of my property here after settlement before I can get into my new place, so it’s a win-win all round.”

Dealing with your buyers directly means you end up knowing them, and in Odette’s case the settlement turned into buyer and seller helping each other move.

The last laugh

“The feeling of selling ourselves was electrifying. To save between $30,000 and $40,000 is an unbelievable saving. It was beyond empowering actually. We felt people in our rural area were almost laughing at us at the beginning, but we had the last laugh in the end, that’s for sure. We felt very proud! We have vowed to never use an agent again. We are our own agent now.”

On what’s next: “Our plan is to look for our next property. The sale benefited us by having more money to buy that next property with.”

And her advice to anyone starting out: “Trust yourself and your ability to present your property better than everyone else can or will.”

What to take from Odette’s sale

Nobody knows your property the way you do, and on acreage that matters more than anywhere. You know where the water comes from, where the good soil is, why the shed sits where it does. An agent has to learn all of that from you anyway. Odette’s advice is to trust yourself to present the place better than anyone else will, and her result says it works.

The other thing her story shows is that the private-sale decision isn’t a one-shot. She signed with an agent, changed her mind, and still sold in just over five weeks of listing with us. If you’ve already had an appraisal or a campaign that went nowhere, that’s not a reason to stay on that path.

If you’re in Queensland and weighing it up, our nine-step guide to selling your own Queensland home covers the state-specific bits, including the seller disclosure statement now required before a contract is signed, and the full guide to selling your house privately walks through the rest.

Be your own agent, with our team behind you

Odette listed her acreage on realestate.com.au and Domain, leaned on the support team through the hard first week, and kept the commission. You can do the same.

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