From humble beginnings with one real estate office in Crows Nest, Queensland, Ray White has expanded its expertise and now has a referral network that includes property management, auction services, commercial, rural, hotels, marine, insurance and Concierge. Ray White is well placed to offer our customers a value-added service for any real estate and property service.

The Ray White story is defined in our publication ‘His Name. His Values’.

It was a humble beginning in an old shed on a railway siding in the smallest of country towns. Yet it prospered. It grew. It relocated. Ray added services. Most importantly, he created a business his family took pride in. A pride reflected in a determination to keep testing its potential. Forever expanding with new members and new services.

Ray’s philosophy was simple and enduring. He and his subsequent leaders had a basic text for everything they did and do. An overwhelming desire to bring benefits to whom they transacted business with and to all those that trusted their careers to the ‘Ray White’ name.

Click here to see the full history of Ray White in our e-book

Australia’s entrepreneurial pioneers
Ray White was one of Australia’s entrepreneurial pioneers.

From the now-famous shed — which started life as a railway siding building at the end of a line — Ray’s business journey began.

He started with numerous different activities, including selling farm machinery and insurance, and holding a weekly pig auction.

He was the first in the town to understand the benefits of offering a broad range of services to the local community.

He also had an innate understanding of the auction process and its benefits.

Ray White was renowned for his community spirit. There are many stories of him assisting those in need. Ray was particularly generous if they were clients of his! Pig farmers had their butcher and grocer accounts covered by him during periodic hardships.

Legend has it that families in Crows Nest used to go to bed every night praying for their children, for mother and father — and for Mr Ray White.

Links to the community are still a big part of Ray White’s business culture today, with the family and the company major charitable benefactors across Australia.

The second generation

Ray and Florence had two sons, Max and Alan who both became real estate agents and two daughters Marjorie and Joyce.

Eldest son Max White, born in 1908 in Toowoomba, was in fact a powerfully built and fiery middle-row / back-row forward who played for the Wallabies.

He performed with great distinction on Australia’s first ever tour to South Africa when thrust into the unfamiliar loose-head prop position against the toughest scrummagers in world rugby. He was also a fighter pilot in World War II.

Ray’s second son Alan, in particular, played an important role in revitalising the business after the difficult years of the Great Depression and World War II.

The Second World War had decimated and damaged all businesses. Suddenly there was post war optimism. Businesses could now be rebuilt. Ray’s son Alan joined the business that had been severely restricted during the war years. Market leadership was wide open. Alan’s hands on drive and energy was what was needed. He was the right man in the right place.

Alan embraced Ray’s instinctual understanding of the value of property marketing. Ray White had become a stand out agency in the 1950s. By then, his brother Max had joined the business. Expansion began with the first 15 company owned offices by the late 1970s.

Much of the success of the business is down to the work of the first two generations.

Ray and Alan created the springboard. The job of the third generation was to jump on it and Brian and Paul did.