The Barry Plant Group has a lot to celebrate following the announcement that the 80 plus Victorian office network has sold close to $4 billion worth of real estate in 12 months. Mike McCarthy, CEO, made the announcement at the recent Awards for Excellence gala event.

He said the actual figure of $3.92 billion was the total value of the 8616 properties sold during the year from April 2012 until March 2013.

“Our overall Auction Clearance Rate was an extraordinary 88.35 per cent, which is a great result for our clients,” he said.

Mr McCarthy said the outstanding results were due to the exceptional people who were recognised on the evening, and also due to the major investment the group puts into sales training. Agent Mark Di Giulio, of the Doncaster East office, took out many of the major awards including Top Seller, Top Achiever and Top Performer, with the Doncaster East office being named the Number One office.

Point Cook agent Ray Harb took out the award for Top Lister, while the Senior Auctioneer of the Year award was won by Luke Brizzi of Northcote.

Young gun Ross Kontossis of the Reservoir office took out the Novice Auctioneer award. Mike said that intensive and innovative sales training continued to be a major focus of the Barry Plant network.

“We ran 77 general and sales training sessions over the year which were attended by more than 1600 of our people, so the results speak for themselves,” Mike said.