Big leap – smooth landing
Stepping off the plane without ever having even visited the city you are about to call home might seem a leap of faith, but for Adam and Lynne Binns, Dunedin has turned out to be a match made in heaven.
Originally from the North of England, they came to the city in 2004, armed with extensive experience in the property profession, Adam as a chartered surveyor and Lynne on the administration side.
After deciding they wanted to emigrate, Adam sent his CV to various companies and he and Lynne then came to New Zealand to take a closer look at the opportunities.
He was offered a position with DTZ who wanted someone in Dunedin as part of their expansion plans so Adam and Lynne made the move south.
Adam found it quite straightforward getting up to speed with the New Zealand scene. DTZ colleagues took him under their wings but he also feels the co-operative way the profession works in Dunedin helped him as well.
“They knew I knew what to do. It was just a case of tweaking it for New Zealand specifics.”
Both Adam and Lynne had always hankered after their own business, so when the opportunity came to go out on their own they jumped at it, as Lynne explains.
“It’s one of those things where you think: ‘I just can’t afford to do it right now’. You’ve really never got the money but if you don’t take the chance and make your own luck and opportunities you’re never going to do it – you’re just always going to talk about it.”
“Our motto is: Don’t talk about it – just do it,” says Adam. “If you are not going to do it, don’t talk about it.”
Adam is doing both commercial and residential valuation and consultancy work while Lynne is dealing with the day-to-day management of the business, both on the administrative and financial sides of things.
They have found setting up business in Dunedin very easy.
“Because it is a smallish city people get to hear about you which tends to result in a few calls out of the blue,” says Adam.
Adam and Lynne have also been tapping into the Dunedin City Council’s Economic Development Unit’s resources and have also found the Otago Chamber of Commerce a huge help.
“We have done so much in the last five years and I am not sure we could have done it anywhere else. We’ve come out here, we’ve had two kids, we’ve become New Zealand citizens, we’re in our second family home and we’ve also bought two investment properties and started our own business – all in the last five years. If you were Kiwis going to the UK you would struggle to do that in a life time,” he says.
