Why This Podcast Exists

Fraser Coast Property Brief is a podcast focused on property, development, investment, and the future of the Fraser Coast. Hosted by Glen Winney, Episode 1 introduces the story behind the podcast and the experience that shapes it.

Glen shares his journey, starting in Hervey Bay in 1981 as an apprentice carpenter, then building a career across construction, real estate, development, and project marketing. Over four decades, he has worked across every stage of the property cycle, from hands-on building to leading businesses and large-scale projects.

He reflects on key milestones, including moving into real estate in the early 1990s, owning a Century 21 project marketing franchise, and achieving top industry recognition. He then transitioned into development and construction, gaining direct experience through major market shifts, including the Global Financial Crisis. Following this, he established a Knight Frank commercial office, which quickly became a top-performing franchise across Australia and New Zealand.

The episode also explains the evolution of Win Projects and the vision behind creating a fully integrated property platform. Today, the business spans project marketing, development, construction, commercial real estate, and project management, offering a complete approach to property on the Fraser Coast.

Beyond business, Glen highlights his long-standing involvement in the community and industry leadership. These roles have provided insight into the economic, planning, and growth challenges facing the region. He also introduces Hervey Bay Commercial Property Management, led by Maggie Brennan, which adds a deeper lens into the commercial leasing and management sector.

At its core, this podcast exists to fill a gap. Glen explains that many of the key conversations shaping the Fraser Coast, including housing supply, infrastructure, population growth, and planning, are often fragmented or not openly discussed. This podcast creates a space where those conversations can happen clearly and consistently.

Listeners can expect future episodes to cover market trends, development activity, infrastructure projects, planning issues, and interviews with developers, builders, planners, business owners, and community leaders who are actively shaping the region.

This episode sets the foundation for the series, with a clear goal: to give you a better understanding of where the Fraser Coast property market is heading, and what that means for you as an owner, investor, developer, or local.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Fraser Coast Property Brief, the podcast where property, development, and business leaders share what's really happening across the Fraser Coast. Each episode brings you insights into local projects, market trends, and the people helping shape the future of our region. Why does this podcast exist? The podcast we're about to talk about is property development, investment and the future of Fraser Coast. I'm Glenn Winnie and if it's anything to do with property in this area, I've probably had something to do with it over the last 40 years. I'll be your host and I just want to first segment I want to do is talk about my history and you know, so you get an understanding of who I am and what involvement I've had in the property industry. So to go through, I've been here since 1981, started off as an apprentice carpenter, went all the way through the 80s during that, did some commercial construction, late 80s, I did financial planning. Then by 1990-91, I got into real estate for the first time, started with LJ Hooker and set up a specialized project marketing division within their business. Went through that for a few years. Then one of the builders I was actually selling to actually asked me if I could work with him. So I put a submission and I became the manager of the business, which was SNS Rind. And we did seven years in that business growing quite substantially. During that period, I got the passion for development. So in the mid-90s, we started doing small office developments and industrial buildings and things like that, and grew that during there. Late 90s, I believed that a marketing arm was missing in there in the business. So we started Century 21 Project Market in Queensland. By 2000, I felt that was the direction I really wanted to go. So I actually left SNES Rhine, took over Century Project Market in Queensland, grew it myself within the first couple of years. Um there we were in the I was in the top two percent of salespeople in the world and won the Centurion Award, kept growing it for about seven or so years, doing developments on the side, but um the passion was to grow a project marketing arm within this region. We were also doing commercial by 2007-2008 era, um SNS Ryan owner decided to retire, so I ended up buying that business back out that I own that I was running in the 1990s. So by the 2008 around the GFC, when everything went really bad, I had a construction company, a real estate company, and we're doing developments. So we rode through those years. 2010, um, after development slowed down, I jumped back into real estate again and took on a cent a Night Frank project marketing office, uh, where we focused a lot on commercial. We we focused a lot on development sites, grew that within year two of that. I was the franchisee winner of uh Australia and New Zealand for Knight Frank. Grew that business right through to about 2015. I saw the market swinging, I saw land starting to come back in this area by then, so I went on to changing the name to wind projects and started focusing more on land sales and development sites than in my traditional commercial. So from 2015 to today, we've had wind projects growing year after year, and we probably control most of the land subdivisions in the area under a project marketing. The development arm has grown within the business. We do developments for ourselves and we do for external clients. We also got a construction which is wind constructions, which is still going and going well in there, and we do project management for people, we do a lot of consulting for clients, so got civil engineering, civil, sorry, civil construction side as well. So there's a whole arm, so the whole purpose was it was creating a one-stop shop for property. So that that's the journey I've had with the business side of it. During that one-stop model, I've also got very involved in the community side and the leadership roles within the Fraser Coast area. So I was vice president of the Chamber of Commerce in the 1990s. We set up the UDIA many years ago. I was one of the initial presidents of the UDIA, and about five or so years ago, we won a more localized thing to deal with Fraser Coast issues solely. So we set up Fraser Coast Property Industry Association, which I was founding president, and I am still currently the president of that. We have over a hundred corporate members within the region. Many of those are in the development industry, finance, accountants, lawyers, consultants. So it's a very widespread industry. And again, thinking I had not enough to do, last year I decided to jump back into Harvey Bay commercial property management. So I set up another division, which I brought on Maggie Brennan, who will be guest on these podcasts from time to time, and she set up a commercial property management arm for me. So we really have the complete one-stop shop here. So why are we doing this podcast? Um over the years I noticed the market's been misunderstood, it's been underreported. Um we get trapped into regional like wide bay statistics or sometimes just Fraser Case statistics. You don't really get an on-the-ground understanding of what's going on about population growth, about where the developments are, about planning decisions. So I wanted to bring on experts and get into different topics each week and talk to a town planner or talk to somebody from council or an economist and actually talk about things like um land supply, talk about affordability issues, talk about downsizing, talking about our aging population, which is you know is chronically high, where we need to start diversifying, talking about youth attraction, how do how do we change the future? So the podcast's got to be informative, it's got to have different subjects, but it's purely based on the phrase of coast and purely based on the property industry, which is a very wide sector in here. So you'll hear a lot about different views from people, and you'll hear opinions from me. Um, we'll have some debates from the other side of the fence on many topics, and we'll actually try and to get down to the nitty-gritty and work out what's going on in this area and how we can improve the future. So I've been involved in this industry for a very long time. I'd say there'd be very few people that have would have the in-depth knowledge I'd have. I've got a very broad spectrum of knowledge. Um, I've been involved in so many things from you know, Frasco Opportunities, which is a council-led economic development forum. So I've been involved in many things. I we sit down and talk about New Town Planning Scheme, which there is a package out now that we're going to be talking about probably over the coming weeks and what that means to the future developments. There's a thing called gentle density that they're bringing in. So the land size is going to change, the housing types will change, what does that mean for our future? And I also want to work out how we get the youth back to Harvey Bay, especially in Harvey Bay, because we've got a very high age population, which the average age is 51, but we've got 21% of our workforce working in the health industry, 30% of them were probably going to retire for the next 10 years. We've got a growing population over 65. So who's actually going to look after these people in 10 years' time if we don't attract a youth right now? That just doesn't mean giving them jobs, it means giving them things they want to do, from amenities to housing styles to nightlife. We've got to change our demographics in this area if we're going to survive in the long term. So, in closing, my goal is very simple. I want to give listeners a clear understanding where the Fraser Coast property market is heading, whether you're a property owner, whether you're an investor, where you just want to understand the market, where you want to understand town planning a bit further. But we're going to dive deep and we're going to have some serious conversations about different topics as we go through. So, listen out for our podcast, some early ones, we're going to be talking about commercial property management. I'm also going to bring Carla on to talk about branding in the market and what's changing. We're living in an AI world and where social media and everything is dramatically changing. So, how does that affect the property industry? So that's it for me for my introduction. But I want you to come back and listen to it as they come through on a weekly basis. So thanks for listening to Fraser Coast property brief. I hope you enjoyed this episode and follow the podcast. If you're interested in anything to do with property on the Fraser Coast, next episode we'll start looking at what's actually happening right now in the property industry. So talk to you soon. Thanks.