How Australia’s Leading Buyer’s Agency Built Its Queensland Team From the Ground Up
A decade ago, if you were buying property in Queensland, you were largely on your own. That’s no longer true.
There was no shortage of selling agents working for vendors. But genuine, professional buyer representation, someone whose only job was to find the right property, at the right price, exclusively for you, barely existed north of the NSW border.
This month, Cohen Handler Queensland turns ten. What started as a one-person operation with a business plan and a phone has grown into a team of 37 specialists across Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, backed by a national buyers’ agency that has purchased more than 5,000 properties across Australia since 2009.
| 10 years in the game | 1,450 purchases since Oct 2015 | 3 markets across QLD Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast |
What a decade of buyer representation actually delivers
The honest version of a ten-year story isn’t just transaction counts and team growth. It’s the client who almost overpaid at auction because they were emotionally attached to a property, and didn’t. It’s the interstate buyer who purchased in a suburb they had never visited, with complete confidence, because they trusted the person inspecting on their behalf. It’s the investor who was steered away from a property that looked right on paper but had problems that would have cost far more than any fee to fix.
Those outcomes invisible to the market, meaningful to the people involved, are what define professional buyer representation in practice. A buyers’ agent earns their fee in the problems their clients never have to deal with.
How Cohen Handler Queensland started
Jordan Navybox spent years working within the Cohen Handler Sydney team, learning the buyer representation model that CEO Simon Cohen had built since 2009, first from a single desk above a Paddington pub, then across a national operation. The core principle was straightforward: buyers deserve the same quality of professional representation that vendors have always had through selling agents.
The conversation with Simon produced a business plan and a clear brief: establish a Cohen Handler presence in Queensland, build it on results, and do it the same way Sydney had, one client at a time.
What the early days actually looked like
The first office was unremarkable. The ambition wasn’t.
The team was small, the brand was unknown north of the NSW border, and the concept of a buyers’ agent was still foreign to most Queensland property buyers.
Within the first year, clients who had engaged Jordan’s team were purchasing properties they would never have found independently, at prices that reflected genuine market value rather than vendor expectation. Selling agents, initially sceptical of a new entrant, began to recognise the Cohen Handler team as serious, prepared and reliable counterparts in a transaction. That credibility opened off-market access. The referrals followed.
Why Queensland’s property market now demands professional buyer representation
Queensland’s growth over the past decade has been significant, but the post-pandemic shift changed the pace of everything. Interstate migration brought a surge of buyers from Sydney and Melbourne, many of them purchasing remotely in markets they didn’t know well, competing against locals and investors who had been watching the same streets for years.
Brisbane house prices rose by more than 60 per cent between 2020 and 2024. The Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast saw similar gains, driven by lifestyle migration, infrastructure investment, and a structural undersupply of housing that continues today.
The buyers who fared best in that environment were the ones with a professional buyers’ agent on the ground, someone who had already inspected the stock, understood the agent relationships, and knew what a property in that suburb was genuinely worth before the price guide was even set. That is exactly the capability the Cohen Handler Queensland team had spent years building.
What Cohen Handler Queensland looks like today
Cohen Handler Queensland has now helped clients purchase more than $2.5 billion in property across 1,450 transactions spanning Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. The team has grown from one person into a connected group of specialists, each with genuine local knowledge in their market and the backing of Australia’s leading buyers’ agency.
Brisbane From inner-city prestige in New Farm, Teneriffe and Ascot through to family markets in Paddington and Bardon. With a median house price consistently above $900,000, local expertise matters more than ever. | Gold Coast Beachfront prestige in Main Beach and Mermaid Beach through to emerging family suburbs. Our team knows which buildings to avoid and where the next wave of growth is coming. | Sunshine Coast One of Australia’s fastest-growing markets. From Noosa Heads and Sunshine Beach to the Hinterland, our team helps buyers navigate a market where relationships make the difference. |
What the next ten years look like
Population growth, the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, major infrastructure investment across South East Queensland, and shifting lifestyle preferences will continue reshaping demand across the state. Having a buyers’ agent who understands where value is forming, not just where it’s already been priced in, is how informed buyers will navigate what comes next.
Buying property is one of the most significant moments in anyone’s life, whether it’s a first home, a long-held aspiration finally within reach, or the next step in building something for the future. Everyday Australians deserve to have someone genuinely in their corner when that moment arrives. For the next ten years, that is exactly what we intend to keep doing.
Ten years of results. Talk to the team that built them.
Whether it’s a first home in Brisbane, an investment on the Gold Coast, or a lifestyle property on the Sunshine Coast, Cohen Handler’s Queensland specialists can help.
Contact our QLD Team