Rapidly growing national real estate and advisory firm LAWD has today announced the appointment of highly respected property sector leader, Rob Blain, as Board Chair at its National Conference in Brisbane.

A veteran of more than four decades in real estate, Mr Blain has held a number of high-profile executive and non-executive positions throughout Australia and Asia. He has extensive experience in transactions, property and asset management, strategic development, cross border investments and capital raisings.

Mr Blain spent 20 years in Hong Kong at the helm of CBRE Asia-Pacific, during which he developed long-term relationships with multiple global institutions, high net worth individuals and prominent family offices in Asia.

In 2020, he and wife, Julianne, returned to Australia where they acquired 1760ha of prime beef cattle farmland on the Barrington and Manning Rivers on the Barrington Coast of New South Wales.

Mr Blain said his new position was one that held great appeal to him both professionally and personally, given the strong foundations he has in the agriculture sector.

“Like LAWD, which continues to evolve its service offering across the property industry, I have strong early connections with agribusiness having been born and bred in the Riverina region of New South Wales,” Mr Blain said.

“I feel fortunate to have been invited by LAWD to take on the role of Board Chair, in a business that not only leads its field in rural property transactions and valuations, but also has a very strong and growing presence in the development sector and specialised property market.

“LAWD is committed to introducing its investors to attractive opportunities and I look forward to working with CEO Enda Foley and his team, many of whom I have worked with before, to achieve successful outcomes for our diverse and growing range of clients.”

Founded in July 2020 and led by some of Australia’s most well-regarded and proven property professionals, LAWD has quickly established itself as a genuine leader in specialised property transactions, valuations and advisory. In that time, it has also attracted some of the property industry’s highest performers, with almost 60 professionally qualified team members now based in headquarters in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, as well as regional centres.

To date, LAWD has overseen more than $3 billion in transactions across the agriculture and development sectors and completed the valuation of more than $17 billion of property assets.

Over the next two days, more than 60 LAWD team members will meet to discuss current property trends and outlooks, hear from external speakers on specialist areas, and share how the company’s strategic direction is evolving to become a business with broad but boutique real estate appeal.

LAWD CEO, Enda Foley, said the LAWD senior leadership team was delighted to have a real estate leader of Mr Blain’s calibre join the business.

“Since inception, LAWD has placed a clear focus on bringing together the right people with the right expertise to create what we believe is a firm of unrivalled quality in specialist property services,” Mr Foley said.

“Today’s announcement of Rob as our new Board Chair reiterates this commitment to excellence and we now look forward to working closely with him to continue to evolve the LAWD brand and our offering to our clients across the nation.”