Monique Lavers
cto: sydneycoveproperty.com

SYDNEY — Monique Lavers spent the first years of her career negotiating contracts in a corporate law office. Nearly two decades later, she spends her days negotiating something far more personal: the sale of a home, often at one of the most difficult moments in a client's life.

Lavers is a sales agent at Sydney Cove Property, a boutique agency specializing in city apartments, particularly waterfront buildings around The Rocks and Sydney's harbourside precincts. Over the past 12 months, she has sold 41 properties with a combined value of roughly $38 million, according to figures published on Domain, at an average sale price of about $1.2 million. Her listings have spent an average of 49 days on the market before selling by private treaty.

Her path into real estate began almost by accident. Lavers studied a combined commerce and law degree at the University of Sydney after finishing school at PLC Croydon, going on to work as a corporate lawyer at Freehills, one of Australia's top-tier law firms. The rigor of the work, she has said, was not something she wanted to build a 30-year career around.

"It's a rigorous, demanding field," Lavers has said of corporate law. "If you don't have that complete passion for it, it's not a sustainable career. I didn't see myself doing corporate law work for the next 30 years. I wanted something with more interaction with people, where you could get out more and have more flexibility."

The move into property came through her landlord. Lavers was renting an apartment from Sydney Cove Property when she mentioned to the agency that she was considering a career change. She was offered a job as a sales agent in 2006, despite having no prior experience in real estate.

That unconventional entry point, she has said, is more common in the industry than people assume. "A lot of people who are really successful in real estate come from such a diverse range of backgrounds," Lavers has said, describing the profession as intensely competitive and demanding of self-motivation. "You're a bit of a lone wolf too," she has said. "You run your business within a business, with your own clients."

Since joining Sydney Cove Property, Lavers has built a track record around some of Sydney's most recognized waterfront addresses, consistently achieving record prices in landmark buildings including Highgate, Cove, Quay West and Portico. Her single highest recorded sale over the past year was a two-bedroom apartment at 127 Kent Street in Sydney's CBD, which sold for $2.5 million. Earlier in her career, she sold a sub-penthouse in the Cove building for $7.5 million.

"That's a thrill when it's such a high dollar value," Lavers has said of the sale. But the sales that stay with her most, she has said, are not always the largest ones. "Some sales are memorable because you're dealing with spectacular properties," she has said. "Other times, it might be a one-bedroom apartment but you remember the sale as the people have been so lovely to deal with."

It is that human dimension of the job — not the transaction itself — that Lavers has said shaped how she approaches the work as her career progressed. Early on, she has said, closing the deal was the primary focus. That shifted as she spent more time with clients going through major life transitions.

"When I started out, I just thought it was about getting the deal done," Lavers has said. "As you progress, you start to really put yourself in your clients' shoes. You realise that when people are selling a property, it can be at a pivotal moment in their lives. They might have lost a partner or divorced or had children. You have to be sensitive to that."

That sensitivity has become a defining feature of how she is described within the industry. Her profile with Sydney Cove Property notes her large client database and high rate of repeat and referral business, attributes the agency has tied directly to her reputation as an intelligent, dedicated negotiator with a strong record of client satisfaction.

Lavers works alongside colleagues Bryn Fowler, Brenden Taliana and Grant Ashby at Sydney Cove Property, a firm that has operated in Sydney's harbourside apartment market for years, built specifically around the city and waterfront property niche rather than a broader residential offering. That specialization has allowed Lavers to build deep familiarity with a small number of landmark buildings, rather than spreading her focus across the wider Sydney market — a strategy reflected in her repeated record-breaking sales within the same handful of addresses.

Away from work, Lavers has spoken about the life she has built outside real estate, including a move from Sydney's inner city out to the north-west suburbs with her husband, in part to accommodate their three American Staffordshire bull terriers, Hunter, Brock and Belle. She has described spending much of her downtime walking and playing with her dogs, alongside dining out at Sydney restaurants and Japanese cuisine in particular.

For a client base often navigating one of the most stressful transactions of their lives, Lavers has positioned that combination — a rigorous, deal-focused background paired with an emphasis on empathy — as central to how she works. Nearly two decades after leaving corporate law behind, she has said the shift in mindset, from getting deals done to understanding what a sale represents in a client's life, is what has kept her in the industry.