The Block's winning auctioneer says his style normally sells cattle, not houses

Even Australians who have never bought or sold a home know Damien Cooley.

The elite auctioneer has been front and centre, commanding the bids on The Block on 12 occasions. Five of those were wielding the gavel for the winning property, and on the weekend he added a sixth, taking Britt and Taz’s winning house to auction.

“I feel The Block has done wonderful things for me, plus it’s also done great things for our clients,” he says. “Some people may not necessarily know my name, but they generally recognise our orange ties.”

SOLD - $3,410,000

3 Cedar Lane, Daylesford VIC 3460

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Cooley’s passion for auctioning can be traced to his school years. He grew up in the Sydney suburb of Rosebery, and his holiday job was strapping horses for Randwick trainer Robert Rosengreen.

This exposed him to the legendary Inglis horse sales and the world of thoroughbred auctioneers, whose pace and projection captivated him.

“I love horses, and I used to really enjoy just going and watching the auctioneers,” he says. “I like the speed and the patter.

“I feel the way that I auction is similar to the way cattle or horse auctioneers do, as opposed to a traditional real estate auctioneer, which generally is a lot slower.

“One of the things that I really focus on is speed, volume and tone; those have the ability to influence the result.”

Cooley joined the industry in 1999 as a property leasing manager – “I’ve never listed a house in my life,” he quips – and was tapped by his then boss, Robert Anderson, to enter a novice auctioneers’ competition.

He won the regional and then state finals and caught the eye of Scott Kennedy Green from McGrath. At the time, only Kennedy Green and agency founder John McGrath were auctioning in the business, and they had found a new talent.

He realised the power of an auctioneer when he watched his late grandmother’s California bungalow go under the hammer in 2000. The theatre and excitement confirmed his career direction.

“It was the catalyst for me thinking about being an auctioneer,” Cooley says. “I remember my dad saying to his brother, ‘Our mother would be turning in her grave to see the price of this house.’”

Cooley’s first auction was in 2001: a one-bedroom unit in Surrey Hills, which sold for $330,000.

“We would always hold a contract and a brochure,” he says, “and I remember Scott saying to me, ‘I think you’d better not hold the contract anymore, because it’s shaking too much.’ I was so nervous.”

Eight years later, Cooley broke a national auction price record as the auctioneer of Le Manoir, a $23 million Bellevue Hill estate, bought by media heir Lachlan Murdoch and his model wife, Sarah.

SOLD - $23,000,000

93 Victoria Road, Bellevue Hill NSW 2023

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Now, as the founder of his own auction house, Cooley estimates he auctions 1300 to 1500 homes a year, and has clocked up 30,000 over his career. Doubtless, there are other price records in that archive of transactions, but Le Manoir is the one he recalls best.

“We had Nine News out the front because we thought it might happen,” he says. “They did a live cross to the news bulletin that night.”

These days, Cooley regularly lends his voice to charity auctions and rests at his Southern Highlands farm, riding horses and running 50 head of cattle with his family.

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