Life as an agent in Coober Pedy

Approximately 150 million years ago, this area was covered with ocean; but today Coober Pedy could not be more opposite. At the height of summer, this desert town swelters under temperatures of almost 50 degrees, transforming the whole region into an eerie ghost town as residents retreat beneath the earth to escape the heat.

Warren Andrews, the CEO and director of Andrews Property, knows this town and its environment intimately.

“Where they have been mining the opals, with all the shafts, it actually looks like a lunar landscape,” he said.

“They don’t advise you to walk through it because you can step backwards to take a photograph or something, and find yourself going down a very deep mine shaft – and probably wouldn’t be able to tell the story.”

Since he first founded Andrews Property 22 years ago, Mr Andrews has opened an astounding number of offices across Australia’s scorching interior. There are representatives in Roxby, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, Katherine, and of course Coober Pedy.

“We jokingly brag that we cover 3,000 kilometres,” Mr Andrews said. “As far as we’re concerned, Australia is our playground.”

Of all the properties that Andrews Property sells in Coober Pedy, the most unique are the town’s fabled underground homes, or “dugouts”.

“It’s quite a hilly region,” Mr Andrews said. “They cut a flat surface onto the side of the hill, which becomes your front wall, then you cut your doorway and your front windows, and then you start tunnelling in from the side of the hills.”

For the uninitiated, dugouts might conjure images of rough-and-ready holes in the ground, but Coober Pedy’s higher-end dugouts can be luxurious.

Mr Andrews shared: “We sold one about a month ago which actually had three different levels to it. It had a dining room on one level, a billiard room on another level, and the bedrooms further down.”

“I’ve seen houses with underground plunge pools and spa baths,” he said. “They will just dig another hole in the bottom of that room, line it all, and all of a sudden they’ve got a plunge pool in their dwelling.”

In fact, adding creature comforts is easier than it seems – as Mr Andrews explained, “if you suddenly want a bigger walk-in robe, then you just get a couple of mates with a pick and shovel, and you start chipping away at the wall”.

The prices of property in Coober Pedy are perhaps the biggest drawcard for east coast buyers. A typical dugout in Coober Pedy will sell from $250,000 to $350,000, while above-ground homes will sell for just $50,000 to $100,000.

The higher end of the property market is dominated by government workers who provide public services to all the residents between Port Augusta and Alice Springs. Tourism workers, mine workers, and those in the town’s burgeoning film industry are also keen to get their hands on a Coober Pedy home or rental.

For the Andrews Property team, one of the biggest challenges they have had to overcome is communication – with clients, but also with each other.

“We have people two time zones away, and they are 3,000 kilometres away, so to speak. Communication is a big thing for us – we need to take it to another level.”

When Mr Andrews first started his real estate career back in the 1980s, his team was making do with fax machines and film cameras. Technology has come a long way since then, and Andrews Property now makes the most of it with a closed-to-public YouTube channel, extensive digital floorplans, and exhaustive property guides which describe every room, item by item, from floor coverings to skirting boards.

“Coober Pedy is nearly 900 kilometres north of Adelaide, so it’s a two-day trip to drive up there and two days back,” said Mr Andrews. “We have to be adaptive in making it easier for them to buy without having to invest six days of their lives.”

Despite the logistical challenges of buying property in Coober Pedy, Mr Andrews believes it is the “romance” of this town that keeps house hunters coming back.

“I think this is the thing that captures a lot of people’s imagination – it’s just the uniqueness of living underground,” he said.

After two decades working in the local real estate market, Mr Andrews still finds beauty in the wild desert landscape that lies over the horizon of the town proper.

“There is a place called Breakaways where you can sit and watch the sun go down – it’s very picturesque and the colours of the landscape come out very nicely.”

“It’s quite amazing to see in the raw,” he said.

Despite the substantial changes that Coober Pedy has seen over the decades, Mr Andrews believes it still has a strong future ahead.

He concluded: “It’s a little town that never says die.”

To find out more about how agents are operating across Australia and beyond, check out REB’s previous articles in the Life as an Agent series.

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