Chasing Donovan: a niche in the equine property market

Cover image courtesy of Donovan + Co. Property Specialists

As far as nice guys go, there are few better than Clint Donovan. At a tick over 40 years old, he’s squeezed a lot of career into the last 25 years as a stock and station agent, bloodstock manager, auctioneer and real estate guru.

Donovan is best-known in the industry as a chief whip of the Magic Millions bloodstock team, and as one of the chirpy faces on the sale ring podium, but these days he’s the principal of Donovan + Co., a real estate firm specialising in equine property sales.

It was a move he made in March 2021, stepping away from his full-time role as a Magic Millions bloodstock manager into self-employment. However, he wasn’t lost to the company. Donovan remains a Magic Millions consultant and popular auctioneer.

Moving into property wasn’t exactly a career change. It was more a return to his roots, in a way. Donovan grew up in a family-owned stock and station agency in Grafton, in his own words “getting off the school bus at the cattle yards” and spending Saturdays at the clamour and chaos of clearing sales.

“When Magic Millions put out the press release last year that Dane Robinson was taking over my role as bloodstock manager and I was getting into the property business, I got a call the day after from Murray Murdoch, who was selling Figtrees Farm,” Donovan said. “It had been for sale with a Brisbane agent for three months, and he said I knew the horse people and I knew horse country, plus I had the contacts, so why don’t I try to sell his farm.”

Donovan did sell Figtrees, getting $5.25 million for Murray and Sue Murdoch. The couple were clients that landed in his lap on day two of going solo, and on day four he got a similar phone call.

“I couldn’t see the forest from the trees at that point,” he said. “I knew I wanted to concentrate on the property industry, and I had a background in it, but this niche in selling equine properties wasn’t something that was immediately obvious to me.”

In a short space of time, it became very obvious though. Donovan + Co. began to take contracts for farms and racing stables in southeast Queensland, both urban properties and those regionally.

The company has now sold racing stables in the Gold Coast Equine Precinct, over the fence from Magic Millions, and extensive properties like the $6 million pre-training and spelling facility 'Archer Park' in Stanmore, Queensland. All the while, there’s not a squeaky suit in sight.

“It’s beautiful now,” Donovan said. “I still get to wear my RM Williams and do my country thing.”

A surprising niche

Eighteen months on, Donovan + Co. is flying. Its portfolio is now well-beyond southeast Queensland, extending into New South Wales and even further south into Victoria, and that wasn’t something Donovan was expecting.

“There was a niche for specialising in equine properties and that surprised me very much,” he said. “Traditionally, that part of the market was serviced by local agents or pastoral houses like Elders, but with my many years in the bloodstock business, I’d met a lot of people and travelled to most farms in the country, and that, on top of my business partnership with Magic Millions, enabled us to grow the biggest database of equine lovers in the world, probably.”

Donovan’s presence as a face of Magic Millions made him well-known, well-considered and well-liked across racing. This has been a huge fillip for his business, even if he’s reluctant to be vain.

“In this business, people are trusting you with the biggest asset in their life,” he said. “The number one key to a successful agency, as I see it, is that the vendor trusts you. That’s come around on me twofold because a lot of people already knew that I wasn’t full of shit, so to speak. The trust was there in my case right from the very start.”

Donovan will deflect that nice-guy image, but for a long time he has been one of the cheeriest, most pleasant characters in bloodstock. It goes a long way when dealing with clients in the real estate game and, while the figures are a little different, they’re still huge figures in both industries.

So, while his everyday working life changed a lot when he switched to property, the client base wasn’t overly different. He’s enjoyed that, and he’s enjoyed the new identity of being self-employed.

“I’ve really enjoyed the satisfaction of owning and running my own business,” Donovan said. “My parents did it for 20-odd years and I admired that, and to be able to do the same thing is quite incredible.

“To create your own brand and reputation comes with challenges, but a lot of freedom as well. The buck stops and starts with you, and there’s an element of pressure there but diamonds are made under pressure.”

A literal Gold Coast

Donovan runs his company alongside his wife, Telena Donovan. They live in downtown Burleigh Heads with their three children, “the greatest place on earth”.

Southeast Queensland is a dynamo economy in Australia broadly, and it’s been a rich base for Donovan to grow his business, even as it reaches interstate.

“This week I’ve been to a couple of farms in the Southern Highlands and several inspections and appraisals across Victoria too,” he said. “I’ve got an auction in Riddells Creek, two doors down from Spendthrift Farm, and then I’m back in Beaudesert. It’s all very easy and accessible with planes and hire cars these days.”

For Donovan + Co., the spread in the portfolio these days is fairly even, but the company has had an extraordinary run on the Gold Coast alone. Right now, it has three racing facilities for sale on Ken Russell Court, opposite the Gold Coast Turf Club.

“We’ve sold just on $24 million worth of commercial stable facilities on the Gold Coast in the last 18 months,” Donovan said. “We’ve got another massive set of properties coming up over the Magic Millions carnival, which are the private training facilities of Gundaroo stables, where John Morrisey trained. A lot of our business has been inside that equine precinct.”

Part of this Gold Coast boom is because of the investment by Racing Qld and the Queensland government into the racing infrastructure of the area. Multiple trainers from the south have opened satellite yards on the Gold Coast, including Chris Waller, and it’s driving up demand.

“People can see there’s a big future on the Gold Coast,” Donovan said. “Couple that with an opinion shared by so many that it’s such a great place to live. Put that lifestyle with a future metropolitan racetrack and it’s an area that has become very popular for investors and larger trainers, like Waller and Neasham, looking to have a second base.

“In a nutshell, the Gold Coast has become the number one choice in southeast Queensland.”

The rush on property hasn’t just been felt by Donovan on the Gold Coast, however. Every style of equine property he’s handling seems to be on the hitlist. It’s a sentiment that is also being felt in the Hunter Valley, as we discovered last week when we spoke to that region’s property specialist, Michael Burke.

“There’s a massive thirst for all styles of equine property right now,” Donovan said. “We’re all hearing about interest rates in the mainstream media and what effect they’re having, but in times like these I think the rich get richer and that’s translating into the property game.

“Right now, for anything over $5 million, most transactions don’t need the bank. With a lot of our deals north of that figure, the banks aren’t involved.”

For Donovan + Co., most of his market is domestic buyers with equine interests, and racing interests specifically.

“While most of our properties are racing orientated, we’re probably getting a name for equine properties as a whole,” Donovan said. “I’m getting more and more callouts to show jumping and polo farms and the like, so that equine-focused network is where we’re pitching our tent.”

The hits

Much like Burke, Donovan explains that the current gold rush on equine property is prizemoney-related, in part. The sheer investment into prizemoney returns by racing clubs and state governments has surged down the line almost everywhere.

“Most of the money for our properties is domestic,” he said. “I think it’s driven by healthy prizemoney levels and wonderfully healthy breeding and sales returns here in Australia, but the buck really starts and stops with that return on prizemoney.”

As far as southeast Queensland goes, where Donovan specialises, its point of difference is something he calls “a lack of scalable stock”.

“What I mean by that is there’s not a lot of larger-scale horse farms or training facilities in Queensland, so limited stock has driven the price up,” he said. “Washpool Lodge was a nice example recently. It was a good-sized farm and we had a successful auction campaign, and we got that property sold for just over $7 million.

“I guess what’s setting Queensland apart is that lack of supply of established horse farms which is driving the prices up. Coupled with that is a migrating trend north. A lot of people, including horse breeders, are looking to get to Queensland for the warmer weather and the benefits that come with it.”

Probably the biggest hit for Donovan so far has been his handling of the sale of Spendthrift Australia this year with Magic Millions, which included the property, the breeding and racing stock and all the fixtures. It was the whole shebang... liabilities, debtors and all.

The buyer was David Moodie and Ash Hardwick's Hesket Bloodstock in the end, with dozens of expressions of interest at play. For Donovan, it was a career highlight.

“To be entrusted with that sale was incredible,” he said. “It was technically very complicated, and we only learned about it in January this year, when we’d been in business less than 12 months, so that really catapulted us because we were being seen to be able to handle the largest transactions.

“It wasn’t that we hadn’t done any larger sales. It was just that they hadn’t been made public at that time. So the business off the back of the Spendthrift deal has been phenomenal, and there’s a lot of people to thank for that.”

In a nutshell, Donovan hasn’t looked back in 18 months. He’s worked hard, stayed himself and enjoyed the financial and lifestyle benefits of his new career. More than that, it was something he’s done for himself.

“It was a big gamble,” he said. “But I just knew I had to do it for myself at the age that I was. I was 39 and I had 15 years of hard grafting behind me, and I didn’t want to keep doing that for someone else, if that makes sense.

“I absolutely adore Gerry Harvey and Katie Page, and Barry Bowditch and the whole Magic Millions family, and I’ve learned so much from them all, both directly and indirectly. So I’m really fortunate that I’ve been able to maintain that relationship with them and extend it with this conjunctional business relationship that we have in the property business.”