Ronald Marmara is a property advisor based at Alliance branch in Santa Venera, from where he specialises mostly in properties in the central localities of Birkirkara, Attard, Msida and Gzira and surrounding areas. Coming from a family of traders, he grew up with constant exposure to innate business acumen and instinctive sales training and commitment to good customer service as being second nature.
For much of his adult life, he worked in the family business selling hardware, garden furniture and other miscellaneous goods. “While I worked with my family, I dabbled in real estate as a solo broker (sensar) and did various flips of properties that I bought and sold by myself, or developed for rentals and such.”, he explains. Ron also worked as a barman for some time, and this too exposed him to additional people skills whilst giving him an opportunity to be out socialising whilst earning a living.
“I joined Alliance at the very beginning of the new brand launch and in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, so it was a bit of a leap of faith, and I did this mostly because I believed in the team that I was joining and that this was going to be certainly better than working by myself.”, he continues. Ronald fitted in perfectly well with the team at Alliance Santa Venera, thanks to a lot of support from his manager, Francois Spagnol and his colleagues there; who all share similar objectives and recognise that working as a team helps everyone.
“I was concluding my first sale within a week after I had finished my induction training”, he explains proudly; and continues, “It was a penthouse in Tarxien, and although I had previous experience in closing real estate deals, I will always remember this one very fondly, as it was the first that I had concluded in the pandemic.”. Like everyone else, the global situation in 2020/2021, effected Ronald quite substantially. “I’ve had at least six deals that fell through because of one reason or other related to Covid”, he laments. Despite this, Ronald went on to conclude various other sales and uses his experiences of the most frustrating “goalpost hits”, to fuel his ambition to keep on working harder every day.
Aged 42 and father of three children aged eighteen, seventeen and five, if Ronald is not spending time with his family, he is probably out cruising on his motorbike or working out at the gym.
Asked about his best advice to property buyers and sellers, Ronald suggests a very simple three-word mantra of “Trust your agent”. “I’ve been on both sides of the deal so many times and now that I am part of a serious real estate company that values people like no other, I know the true value of a professional estate agent in the market”, he explains. Unfortunately, it is true that many underestimate the importance of estate agents at their peril as they are unaware of what the job really entails. We hope that through informative series like this one, we are helping change this for everyone’s benefit.
Ronald Marmara is based at Alliance Santa Venera branch and can be reached directly on ronald@alliance.mt or 99425609
