Desire: How high school dropout Peter Blackshaw became an ACT real estate icon

Legendary Canberra real estate agent Peter Blackshaw still reckons he sold allhomes "too soon" and the real estate website is now worth about $400 million.

But, he happily reports, over a bottle of 2006 Chateau Montrose, he's been "living the life of Riley" for the last six years as a result of that multi-million dollar sale.

Blackshaw and wife Andrea spend much of the year in Europe, they have a house in Sydney as well as their gracious, but relatively modest family home in Red Hill. He plays golf with mates in exotic locations - most recently they've settled on Thailand. ("I hate golf but I love the apres.") Paris is another favourite destination.

"The French do the world's best wine, the world's best cheese, the world's best museums, the world's best architecture. 'Hello, that's a pretty f---ing good start'," he said, in typical Blackshaw bluster.

Blackshaw also sold his eponymous real estate business way back in 2007. But it seems he never left the real estate consciousness of Canberra because the name Peter Blackshaw Real Estate still exists, even though he has no involvement in the business.

His latest venture is as a shareholder with other agents in the Zango real estate site, a competitor to allhomes, which he says is "burning cash" but getting there, including securing more exclusive listings.

"We're making progress," he said, adding he has "put in more money than any other shareholder but I'm still a minority shareholder. Many of these guys have put a quarter of a million in it, they're serious about it. It's well-funded. It's going to keep going".

Blackshaw says an offer to buy his own real estate business in 2007 came at the right time to focus on developing allhomes, which he started in 2000. He says there was no blueprint for the website back then, it was "like grab your machete and cut a track through the jungle". It was a hit. Then came the $50 million payday in 2014.

Blackshaw makes no apologies for his success and his now bon vivant lifestyle. He says it's come from nothing but hard work.

"People talk about inequity in life and I reckon the greatest inequity is in the effort. So many people think, 'I should be richer and he shouldn't be as rich'. But I can tell you, the people who make it, just work hours a lot of people are never going to tolerate."

Personable and gregarious, Blackshaw is a character. "I was born in Paddington. In 1956," he deadpans, before adding "I was born a boy". He laughs, cracking himself up. "You can say that."

He was the second of five children, his mother a homemaker and his father a lawyer, who had a passion for buying, renovating and reselling units. His father is now 96 and his mother 87 and they still live in the family home in Bellevue Hill in Sydney's wealthy eastern suburbs.

Imposing - over six feet tall - his face still boyish at 64, Blackshaw was born with the power of persuasion and a brashness that have held him in good stead in real estate.

He went to Scotch College, never liked school and even a year at Timbertop, the high country campus of Geelong Grammar, made no difference. (But his two children also went to Timbertop, and loved it.) Blackshaw reckons he was "too dumb for uni" and dropped out of school in year 11.

"I just wasn't interested in school, either. I had a bit of a reading disability which they thought might have been dyslexia. I'm not going to say it was but, certainly, I couldn't read until I was in high school and badly. And I don't enjoy reading. I try to read newspapers and keep abreast of things but I don't read for pleasure, I read for information."

After school, he got "the best job of my life. The most fun job". He was a courier for a travel agency in Sydney. "I would walk around and deliver airline tickets to big companies and for me it was just bloody wonderful. I was just chatting up all these pretty receptionists all day," he said.

Then came a job in a travel consultancy. A stint in a record shop ... in edgy Double Bay. And finally, on the recommendation of one of his mother's friends, a TAFE course in real estate. "She said, 'You've got the potential to succeed at this, you've got the ability to win people over, persuade people. Give it a go'," he said.

He also met Andrea, who was doing the same course. Blackshaw says his wife has been instrumental to their success, working side by side him in building the business.

Selling records weren't going to give him the lifestyle he wanted. Real estate could.

"I wanted to make some money. You grow up in Bellevue Hill, everyone lives in expensive houses and drives flash cars. My dad was very successful and I could see what sort of a life you could have if you had some money. So, I thought, whatever you're going to do, you might as well try to make some money out of it. So I tried to make some money."

Early on, he got a job at small agencies and then focused on working for Ron Pillinger, a master salesman with Richardson and Wrench in Double Bay, who put in extraordinarily long hours, nailing prestige properties.

"He was a very generous, lovely guy. I loved him. He really mentored me and helped me," Blackshaw said. "He made me realise that if you really want to be good at something, you have to treat it like trying to be the best tennis player ... you have to keep practising."

The Blackshaws moved to Canberra in the late 1980s, following Andrea's parents to the national capital.

Blackshaw first worked with Cec Hodgkinson at Richardson and Wrench. Blackshaw couldn't believe agents in Canberra were not selling by auction and pioneered the practice in the national capital.

"Everything in the eastern suburbs of Sydney was put to auction. The only time you saw a price on something was when it went to auction and it didn't sell. There's so much diversity there, it's hard to price stuff. So [real estate agents there would] just sort of say, 'We don't really know. It's kind of between this and this. Let's put it to auction and see how we go'. There was a real culture and it wasn't hard to sell and that's the way I knew how to sell," he said.

"I came down here, and no one was auctioning houses. No one. There was the multi-list system and it's a weird kind of socialism where everyone has the right to sell everyone's listings.

"I said to 'Cec, I want to sell by auction, I think the market's right for it'. And at the time, I remember in Narrabundah, everything was 'Sold While Listing'. Everything had a pent up number of buyers and as soon as something came on, it was sold. And I remember thinking to myself, 'If that's the case, there's two, three buyers for everything at the moment. This is auction mania'."

Blackshaw remembers the first property he auctioned in Canberra, in Finniss Crescent, Narrabundah.

"We sold it for 20 per cent more than what [another agent wanting to multi-list it] had said it was worth," he said.

"And the woman whose house it was came over and gave me a big kiss and said, 'I'm going to buy a car with the money I didn't think I had'. So many people saw that and all of a sudden it was, 'Shit, this is pretty cool'.

"The beauty of selling at auction, is that you usually sell it more quickly. If you can sell a house in 35 days rather than 85 days, you're miles ahead. And that's the name of the game, it's turning properties over."

Then came his own business, first at the Griffith shops and later Manuka. He was "this upstart from Sydney" but soon dominated the market. The people he employed such as Richard Luton, Bill Lyristakis, Stephen Thompson went on to open their own successful agencies.

Walking around the garden of his own home in Red Hill, the camellias and Japanese maples stunning, Blackshaw is just enjoying life. The house, built in 1927, the same year the first Parliament House was opened, is significant. His father first owned it and Blackshaw sold it for him in 1989 as a means to launch his real estate business and make a splash.

It sold for $1 million, a lot back then, the first of many seven-figure sales. Peter and Andrea then bought the house some three years later, in 1992, for $800,000 as interest rates shot through the roof. It's not a show home, it's beautiful, but comfortable. It still draws back their children, Edward, now 34, working in IT, and Annalise, 32, who runs a cafe in Sydney.

Blackshaw said he has had overtures to return to real estate as a partner with other agents. He believes "never say never" but "at this stage I don't think I'm interested". He's happy to enjoy life. When he was approached to sell allhomes.com.au, he wasn't looking to do so, but it was a good offer.

He says being a successful agent was like "being in a constant state of heightened anxiety and it takes a toll", to always be on the front foot and looking over your shoulder for the next competitor to knock you off your perch. That meant 30 years of rarely having a weekend off and working late into the night.

"It is not only hard to keep reinventing yourself and being a leader, but it's increasingly difficult to blow the whistle and say, 'Charge' and expect people to follow you. It was time. It was kind of like retiring after a really important bout as a boxer, rather than keep going until your brain is bashed out. I really felt like I finished on a high in real estate," he said.

"In life, it is the case you usually have enough time and not enough money or enough money and not enough time. And so much of my time, I had enough money, working 70-hour weeks, but not enough time.

"We did have some great holidays but I never saw my kids play school sport. I have a very good relationship with my kids and I think they would say they're very happy, looking in the rear vision mirror. I don't have any regrets about it."

Zango is something else.

"The real estate agents wanted my involvement because of my experience with allhomes and their motivation is, yes, they'd like to have a piece of a successful business and make some money but there's another motivation. And that is, they are very concerned at the way the big portals are going and the data that they're capturing," he said.

"Their fear is there will be an opportunity for the portals to get between the agent and the client and take an increasingly big chunk of what would otherwise be their fee. They're worried that the whole business model is under threat and ultimately they will be working for Rupert Murdoch and they really don't want that. They can see that is a real possibility."

Canberra is still home to Blackshaw, even more so with overseas travel virtually impossible during the coronavirus pandemic. His friends keep him in the national capital. This night he was preparing to put on a "pork and pinot" night for a few mates. He loves Canberra restaurants such as Rubicon, Ottoman, Pomegranate.

Blackshaw is comfortable with what he has achieved. His philosophy?

"I think, don't succumb to this belief the world is impossible and you shouldn't get ahead and you shouldn't strive to live a better life,'' he said.

"Just give it a go."