Nerida Conisbee: One of Australia's leading economic voices on how she got her seat at the property table

Nerida Conisbee has been on a plane to somewhere almost every week for the past 15 years.

Think of Ray White’s chief economist, and you might picture a stats whiz, buried in spreadsheets behind a desk – not a road-tripping, town-hopping one like Conisbee.  

One week, she will be on stage at a conference in the ballroom of a Perth hotel. The next? Presenting at Beef Week in Rockhampton, central Queensland. Her diary would look very different had she accepted other job offers after university, including roles with a bank and the federal government. 

“If I was working at a bank, maybe I would not have seen all of this in my career,” she says. “I do enjoy visiting the regional areas – it’s quite fascinating.”

Most of Conisbee’s working life has been in Melbourne (she grew up in Research in the north-east and went to school in Eltham), but she has been based in Sydney for the past decade. 

Conisbee excelled at maths and science as a teenager and originally had ambitions of becoming an actuary. She commenced actuarial studies at Melbourne University but enjoyed the economics component more, and switched her focus after the first year.

She graduated in the ’90s, during a bleak job market, but employers recognised her talent. She had three offers: positions at a bank, at the Department of Transport in Canberra, and in building forecasting models for a company advising commercial property owners. She chose the latter.

“The role working in forecasting matched what I’d studied; it was very data driven,” she says. “It set me on a path into property, which I otherwise probably wouldn’t have taken. I got to deal with big institutional players at the time – companies like Lendlease and Westfield – and meet a lot of interesting people. It ended up being such an fascinating space for me to be in.”

Since then, her 25-year career has included tenures at Jebb Holland Dimasi (now part of Urbis), JLL and Colliers. She joined Ray White almost five years ago and leads a crack team of seven in the research department, producing compelling reports and analysis that shape the national property conversation.

One of Conisbee’s elite skills is communicating complex concepts in straightforward terms. It’s a proficiency she learned from her first boss, Professor Ian Harper, while working as his research assistant at the Melbourne Business School after graduating from uni.

“He ended up becoming the Dean of the Business School, and that was really great for me, because I got to see what an incredible public speaker he is and the way he communicates economics,” she says. “He has been really influential throughout my whole career, and he now serves on the Monetary Policy Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia.”

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Her position as one of Australia’s most sought-after economics speakers was developed by saying yes to opportunities that stretched her.

A “panel pledge” by The Property Council committed to at least one female expert on every panel, and through this, Conisbee found her foot in the spotlight. “I put my hand up and started to get up on stage and [talking] to the audience. I was not a confident public speaker, but it really forced me to get better at public speaking.”

These days, her calendar includes two or three speaking engagements and events a week, content pieces on crucial market movements, and daily interviews with journalists on Ray White’s suite of data.

Conisbee says it is important for the discipline of economics, traditionally delivered through long, often dry reports, to adapt to faster, sharper formats such as YouTube and Instagram. Through these platforms, Conisbee and her team at Ray White communicate with young Australians about the aspects of the market that matter to them.

“Understanding what younger people want to know about property is something that we are very focused on: creating material that they’re interested in,” she says.