General News
3 March, 2026
Full circle for real estate veterans
REAL estate in the Wimmera will take on a new look with the acquisition by Horsham Real Estate of NorthWest Real Estate in Warracknabeal. From this week, the two businesses have become Wimmera Real Estate.
For director, Nola Brown, she couldn’t be happier to welcome John Haldey into the combined enterprise – not exactly unfamiliar ground for both of them.
Nola started in Horsham in 2001 and said her business relationship with John actually goes back to 2008, with an expansion into Warracknabeal revolving around the fact that he lived there.
“We actually started NorthWest Real Estate as a business venture,” she said.
“I knew John had a good work ethic, so I decided to approach him and see if we wanted to do a joint venture, which he jumped at, because he's got a wife and family in Warracknabeal, so that was a win-win.”
So after “for about eight and a half years”, including his acquisition of Nola’s rent roll, John eventually decided he wanted to run the business himself.
“That was probably ... maybe 10 years ago, he had completely bought me out,” Nola said.
“Now he's at the stage where he'd like to basically just do sales, and I've bought the rent roll back, so it's done a full circle.
“So John will stay on with me. Nothing changes. He will just do sales.”
For John, the underlying reason for the change was practical – his aforementioned work ethic was taking its toll.
“I took over NorthWest Real Estate in December 2016, and I've just been doing it as a small independent agency for a while, and I'm in my late 50s, and decided that I should start looking towards retirement or slowing down,” he said.
“Nola's got a couple of sons in the business (and) she's looking to expand, so she approached me about selling, and I said, ‘Yeah, fair enough, let's do it.’
“So it was all fairly straightforward. I'm going to work back with Nola for the next two years, and one of my key staff is (business development manager) Fiona Knight, coming across into Wimmera Real Estate.”
Citing his current six-day working week with long days that start at 7.30am, John said the change to reducing hours was timely.
“Running and owning your own small business – everyone thinks, ‘oh, it's a great idea, heaps of money, and you're in control of your destiny’ – that's all good and well, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that people don't think about, especially in the real estate industry,” he said.
“We have compliance and all sorts of issues, and the government seems to be making it harder and harder – that's all over and above your normal workday work.
“I've been in real estate for 25 years; it wears you down.”
He said he saw it as a win-win as he’s looking forward to a bit more time for family and travel in his seldom-used caravan, and was confident the newly combined business under the Wimmera Real Estate banner would do well.
“I think the name’s quite fitting to the area,” John said.
“We cover a big geographical area. We go way up into the Mallee, up as far as Speed and Tempy and Walpeup and Underbool and then across to St Arnaud, Birchip and Wycheproof.”
Nola said with the market “crazy at the moment”, she was confident in the new venture.
“The sales market ... that's been driven by the new industry that's coming, and investors are sort of trying to get ahead of that,” she said.
“So we're sort of busy on the sales side of things.
“I’ve bought a fair few real estate offices over the time, I think this is number six.”
She was thrilled about the new arrangement, and with her sons, Daniel, a half-owner and overseeing the property management department, and Ryan, stepping into sales.
“It's a family-run business, and we care about what we do,” Nola said.
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