Don’t label Sandra as a “trailblazing” woman auctioneer – she’s just an auctioneer – and a damn good one, too.

Talking too loud, too much, and too fast has turned itself from an annoyance into a career for Canberra real estate agent, Sandra Masters – and she loves it.

For most people, a career as an auctioneer is an unusual and quite niche profession… not necessarily something you dream of doing as a child.

Being in the real estate industry for 20 years, Sandra was eventually led down the path of auctioneering while being a franchise owner, sales manager, and licensed agent. While it may seem like a rogue path to follow, it’s clearly what she was meant to do.

She recently competed at the Australasian Auctioneering Championships where she was the only female competitor, but says she never feels like the odd man out.

Men have been wonderfully welcoming and willing to share their expertise, says Sandra, but on the other hand, she’d still like to see more women have the courage to be by her side.

“Give it a crack!” says Sandra, when asked if she has any advice for women wanting to enter auctioneering.

She says there’s no need to feel intimidated because, “it’s a really different experience to sales. If you put a bunch of salespeople in a room and told them to train each other, they would not, they would be like cats – whoever’s coming out of there alive.

“But auctioneers are like dogs; you put a bunch of them in a room together, they help each other, they play, everyone gets along. Because it’s a very different world. We’re not really competing against each other. We’re all just trying to be better.”

The days of intimidation tactics and aggressive auctions are in the past, according to Sandra, which she assumes has to do with stricter regulations in place that were non-existent back in the day.

In her general experience, the lighter and more relaxed an auction is, the better the outcome and the better the response from buyers.

“I just think that everyone comes out of that with a good experience now, and I would actually say that’s probably my biggest compliment that I get at an auction,” says Sandra.

“I’ve had an under-bidder come up to me and just go ‘I really enjoyed that,’ and I’m like, ‘thank you, I’m sorry you didn’t win’ and they say, ‘we really enjoyed it, we don’t even mind!’

“Well, to walk away and not have the property and still be able to say that is huge. That’s what I love about it; someone can have an unpleasant experience in a really pleasant way.”

But auctions weren’t always rainbows for Sandra. Six years ago, she says she would consistently get the comment, ‘You’re really good for a girl,’ and nothing would get her defences up more.

The last couple of years though, she says such comments have stopped.

“I don’t want to be a good female auctioneer; I just want to be a good auctioneer,” says Sandra.

Referring to the real estate industry as ‘male dominated’ is laughable because, she points out, “I don’t know if you actually looked at the stats?”

“There are more women in real estate than there are men. Particularly, if you look at registrations in the ACT, I think we actually far outweigh the men,” says Sandra.

“There isn’t really a glass ceiling in real estate.”

Specifically, within the auctioneering space, she believes women have a unique set of skills that intrinsically come more easily to them than men.

“You do have a little bit more empathy, you can build a little bit more rapport. I mean, it is true when we say it’s the women who buy houses, so if you can if you can, build that connection with people as they’re bidding as well. I think women do that very well without trying,” says Sandra.

“There’s a real genuine aspect to what we do; we do care. I’m not saying that men don’t care, but I think that comes quite naturally to us.

“And if you can build that into your call, I think it’s a really nice space that we can fill.”

As the first female to sit in the ownership group of LJ Hooker in Canberra, Sandra is reluctant to be put on a pedestal. Although it may sound like a remarkable achievement, she thinks she’s just the first woman to say yes rather than the first to be asked.

“It sounds like I was a trailblazer, but I want to be really clear because it also sounds like it’s been this male clique up until now and I’ve somehow broken some glass ceiling, but not at all,” Sandra says.

“I’ve worked with a bunch of incredibly supportive men who have been all been mentors and assistants to me, and I think other women have been given the opportunity. But for some reason, not as many women step up and say ‘yes’.

“I think traditionally we want to make sure that we know everything, can we have all our ducks in a row, and that we’re going to go into it and we’re going to be really successful and good.

“Whereas I think, and it’s not everyone, but a lot of the times men just say yes, and they just work it out later. Like ‘oh yeah, I’d be good at that, that’ll be fine,’ and jump in,” she smiles.

Finding supportive people who will lift you up in a new role is key, says Sandra, and she thinks more women should just say ‘yes’ and figure it out later.

She doesn’t feel held back by anyone, and, if anything, feels as though she’s been given an incredible amount of support by her male counterparts.

“And I still don’t know what I’m doing, by the way, I still don’t have it all sorted out. You know, learn along the way and get the support.”

Sandra is always conscious of being seen as a trailblazer because she never wants it to seem as though it’s “us against them”. In particular, she eschews overloaded emphasis when women achieve a milestone because “it just should have happened before”.

“We want to be treated as equal, but then when we do something equal, we want it to be highlighted and make a big note of it. So, I’m just always very conscious of that.

“If I can encourage more women to step up and take opportunity by both hands or step into a field that they thought they might not be great at and just give it a crack, that would be great.

“But I certainly am conscious of not saying ‘look at me, I’m a female and I did something great’. It should just be part and parcel of what we do.”

Don’t get her wrong; Sandra understands women have challenges that men don’t face, and she knows them well herself.

Sandra is a mother of two and recalls choosing to put her career on pause and then having to restart and rebuild.

“We do have those factors that sometimes build that mental barrier of ‘maybe I won’t jump in yet because I’m going to have a family’ and we do have to carry the children, there’s no two ways about that,” she says. “But I just went, ‘oh, I’ll do it. I’ll have kids at some point, it’ll be fine, we’ll make it work’.”

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