Latest / Brick to the Future: Property Investment Show / Season 5: Episode 17 - The Truth Behind Falling House Price Headlines

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Season 5: Episode 17 - The Truth Behind Falling House Price Headlines · Brick to the Future: Property Investment Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Investing's dead.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Investing's dead.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Prices are going backwards.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's uh it's fear central in the media.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Media make their money through clickbait.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go, oh my god, holy shit, price is gonna drop by 20%.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want to understand between CBA forecast at the start of COVID, the prices are gonna go backwards by 32%.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh banks are not in the business of lending money, they're in the business of mitigating risk.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Impossible because we're a hundred thousand um uh trade is short to be able to build.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean if you just do what everyone else has done, you're only gonna get average, and average is not be greedy when others are cautious and cautious when they're greedy.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now is actually the right time to be greedy.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they don't ring a bell when the market's at the bottom.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the reality is certainty is an illusion.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like actually, the biggest risk is it's not buying at all.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to Brick to the Future.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'll Lewison here with Michael Boser Beresford.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: How are you, Bos?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Great Al.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to being involved.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Got a pretty exciting episode today.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the truth behind falling house price headlines.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh lots and lots of talk in the media, savage talk in the media since uh the budget on just how decimated the property industry pricing, uh, whole industry, go back to that is.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it's going to be great to unpack it today.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Investing's dead.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, prices are going backwards.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's uh it's fear central in the media for that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any point shying away from it.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like anyone you talk to, anyone with a pulse and who's breathing is hearing about it every day when they get in the car or turn the TV on.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um a great example was the um Sydney Morning Herald.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Major bank warns a 15% property slump uh price slump.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um ABC, house prices downturn deepens beyond falls in Sydney and Melbourne.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's just anxiety invoking, uh, and it's not necessarily true.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Not across the board anyway.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we go back a few years.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: One of my personal favorites when CBA forecast at the start of COVID the prices were gonna go backwards by 32%.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: I love it when uh they bring these American experts in who don't understand our um our housing structure and just say it doesn't seem right, like yeah, you it's gonna collapse, you'll lose 50 percent.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um they say it, they go back to the states, and it never happens, and we move on.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, people listen to them, and that's the whole purpose of today is to try to unpack this for everyone and help you all understand some of the uh the truth behind the headlines.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we're probably getting a lot, but if investor calls you today and says, look, uh headhead red house prices are going to drop by 15%, I'm thinking about investing, what should I do?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Where do we go from there?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first question I'd ask them is so uh when you say house prices are dropping by 15%, what are you looking at?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And having asked that question through every market downturn since I started investing uh to my family and friends and clients, you get silence.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: You might get uh No, the paper told me the price is going backwards, right?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Channel nine said this.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um what's what's really important to understand is is what are house prices?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for those of you listening, talking marks, what are uh the house prices?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's not one market in Australia, there's not one market in Melbourne as a capital city, for example, there are markets within markets.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: What does house price actually mean?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is the median house price which is critical to understand.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's probably the the first thing for us to to unpack.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for me to work walk through that.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely absolutely keep going.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you see prices dropping or prices fell by X or prices grew by X, all they're referring to, because the only metric on uh of house prices in Australia is the median house price.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if we take ourselves back to whatever it is, year eight maths, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the median is the middle value in a set of data.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll try and keep it really simple.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say that you've got in a particular suburb uh five properties that have sold recently.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one's at 600,000, one's at 700,000, one's at 800,000, one's at 1.2, and one's at 1.5.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if we take the middle value out of that data set, uh then that third sale, that middle sale is 800k.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be the median house price at this point in time for that suburb.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's say the market conditions change, and we'll unpack all those things and why.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but let's say that the uh sales were then 500,000, 550,000, 600,000, 700,000, and 1.4 mil.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so at the bottom end, we're pretty similar.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: At the top end, we're pretty similar, but the distribution of sales means the median is now 600,000.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you're reading the paper, the headline will say house prices drop 200 grand.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Say collapse.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: House price collapsed.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: A whole bunch of drama, right?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but one thing I did see uh not long ago, a couple of weeks ago, was in the Sydney Morning Herald, Michelle Borlock, the uh RBA governor, uh, was quoted as saying, even with a 20 percent house price slump, it wouldn't spark a crisis.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that talks to exactly what we're talking here, where she knows the measure of house prices, and she knows that a median dropping by 20 percent doesn't mean that every property has lost twenty percent of its value.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's the really important distinction that we want people to understand is it's a metric of where the market activity is at any point in time.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that every property in Australia or in a location has lost that value.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So using your numbers there, you get five numbers.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if I keep all of them the same but drop the middle one by fifty thousand, the median has dropped by fifty thousand dollars.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: House prices plummeted fifty grand.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it wasn't painted, so it's over less the whole market's collapsed.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that makes it really hard because I don't think a lot of the media get it.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: They just quote something they read, which is the how the median house price dropped.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: But if you look across all of Australia and they're saying Australian median has dropped, a lot of houses sell.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's some in Darwin, some in Broome, some in Tussie, some in Sydney.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: To pick a middle number that's gone down and make an overarching statement that the whole market's collapsed is a pretty difficult one for people to well knocks their confidence, basically.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and I think I'm I'm always big on, you know, clearly, if we're talking about these kind of market conditions uh and any any you know supposed downturn or or drop-in consumer sentiment, uh they're they're the tough periods for investors to write out.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we know over the long term that property works, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's how do you navigate these kind of scenarios?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, understanding what is the media's motivation.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just blindly believe what you read.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Think, what are they trying to do here?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you look at any headline in the news, quick scroll, it's all full of these emotional words.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Collapse, plunged, you know, like you know what it's all it's all overdosed on emotion.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh media make their money through clickbait.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go, oh my god, holy shit, price is gonna drop by 20%.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to understand that click, job done.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter what's in the article, doesn't matter what's explained.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So just bear that in mind, and uh and this is why we're trying to unpack the reality for you.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So would it be on the news?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in the car, the 10 o'clock bulletin comes on, would it say status quo for mums and dads, property prices remain exactly the same?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't sell the headline, does it?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not quite the same ring to it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I think if you know if we took to kind of come back to what are the key things around pricing to remember, one, it's only the median house price that we're uh that we're measuring here.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Two, uh, there's not one property market in Australia or in a capital city.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are different types of properties and there are different price points of properties, all of those behave very differently in different market conditions.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So can I call a spade a spade, but I was all right.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm thinking about buying a property, and then I think, you know what?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a shitty time.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Interest rates are up, government's changed some policies, media's telling me that um it's the wrong time to buy.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty easy just to put the cue back in the rack and go, it's the wrong time.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: But because I've been in it a very long time, and Warren Buffett's very great at it, be greedy when others are cautious and cautious when they're greedy.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now is actually the right time to be greedy.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's good buying out there, there's a good chance that the interest rates will change and swing the other way.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: How do people start to get their mindset right to go, you know what, I'm hearing all this noise and all this is happening, but how do they remove the anxiety from it and get down to the emotion of going, you know what, here's why I should be doing it right now?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are a couple of things to it.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: One is understanding human behavior, and you know that's my background, so I'm passionate about it.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the second is understanding and being crystal clear about why you're doing what you're doing.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So uh first things first, if we think about how humans behave, there's a certain comfort in following the herd, right?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: The black sheep has always been outcasts.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be the black sheep, you don't want to do something differently.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is, uh ask yourself: are the majority of people that are reading these headlines feeling zero out of ten confidence at the moment around the property market or eleven out of ten confidence?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Answer's clearly zero.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's very hard and recognize that it's very hard to do something different.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, if you just do what everyone else has done, you're only going to get average, and average is not great.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you have to do something differently, and that feeds into the second part, which is being clear about what you want to achieve.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone that invests in property, I hope, would want to improve their financial position and make money over the long term.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if if if you could buy well under market value or at a good time with less less competition, are you going to outperform those, the wait to see some growth and pay 100 grand more?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone would say, Yeah, I want the extra 100,000 in my pocket.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that that time is right now.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it takes that mindset shift to actually be able to take the action and um have the confidence to do so, even though everyone else is not doing it.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny, isn't it?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because people think the right time to buy is when there's 50 people at auction putting their hand up.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: They think, shit, homie's out, herd mentality, I better jump in.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: The smart ones are when there's zero people at auction, got their hand up and buying the property at the right price.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the difference.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe something that can help people uh thinking of analogies that that uh help clients over the journey.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you could uh if you could pay another topical one right now, cost of living, if you could pay$1.80 for petrol, or you could pay$2.05 for petrol, which one would you pay?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: $1.80.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's prices today.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're going to auction and competing with everyone else, or you're waiting for the warm and fuzzies because the media are telling you it's a good time, you're actually getting exactly the same thing for a lot more.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the media is also, if people dig into it, I guess now that I'm thinking about it in the light of what you've just said, you know, we talked about it's a terrible time to our property because everyone told me.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if you break it down further, the media is also saying nothing's getting cheaper.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's more expensive to buy things, it's more expensive to produce land, more expensive to build a house.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Fundamentally, that would to me, and it does to me, tells me that prices can't come down on the on certain types of properties, that is, sorry, I should say.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um because they're not getting cheaper to build, not getting cheaper to put the land out.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So so what ultimately happens is the prices will go up.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: So am I saying we're at rock bottom?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to know when that is and if we're there, but the market's certainly at a point where there's upside.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's there's a big time pack there.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we if we come back to what the median is, you know, and uh we we've been saying um for a good 12 months, expect the prices will come backwards.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The reason being, if you look at all the things that have happened uh in the last 12 months, like government announcements, uh not just the the tax changes for established property uh in the budget, but we look at the interest rate rises, we look at the first home uh 5% home guarantee that got launched in October 1 last year.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: All of those initiatives are driving activity and dictating buyer behaviour at the more affordable end of the market.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, given that spectrum that we talked about about what a median is, if you've got more sales below the median house price 12 months ago, then naturally that median is going to shift backwards.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it it's it's completely expected from our point of view that the headlines would start to do what they do and and say that they're coming backwards.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, when we look at the last three years, um all of the data that we uh you know that we we we talk about on these podcasts and we present to clients has shown that the affordable end of the market has outperformed the middle and the premium end of the market consistently quarter on quarter.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we talked before, you said you'd ask people questions.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: They come and say, I'm concerned about this, I'm worried about that.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: You'd ask them some questions.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: A question I would always ask them is if you could factor in that you can sustain the interest rates if they go up another half percent, quarter percent, heaven forbid, hope they come down.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: But if they don't, can you sustain the repayments and and the interest rates?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: If the answer to that is yes, now is a great time to buy.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because as the interest rates start coming back down, the rates start going the prices start going back up.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So these people are sitting there on the fence going, Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: The question should really be: can I afford to do it today with a little bit of risk buffered in?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if I can, it's probably the best time there's been in three or four years.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: But but buffers are critical.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: They they have been, they always always should be.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: How do you keep a little bit left over?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, how do you refinance the lending that you've already got to be able to save money and those savings can give you the buffer in case rates go up or whatever it might be?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, if you've got cash savings on the side, great.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got surplus equity in your house, you know, borrow that buffer.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you need, let's say, you know, 200 grand for deposit and costs, for example, borrow 220, 230, 250.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're not uh paying interest on that that extra 20 or 30 or 50 grand unless you use it, but it just sits there and it it allows you to be able to weather the storm, but you're able to hold the property for the long term and get the benefit of the price growth.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you look at it and go, will prices still be where they are in three years?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, they will have moved 100%.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can go into a property, got your buffers, uh, that makes it a great time to buy now.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: We also talk about with investing, there's risk.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: With every investment, there's risk.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um we like resie property because in a lot of ways you can mitigate the risks that come with um with the investment.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've got a brand new property, there's tenant appeal.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if there's tenant appeal, you get a good rent.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a new property, there's low maintenance, so you can control your costs.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: But from what I'm hearing and reading, Boz, it must be the riskiest time imaginable right now to go into property.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um in your view, is it riskier today than it ever has been?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Quite the opposite.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Quite the opposite.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Very much the opposite.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we we love talking about the fundamentals.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I will say about risk, and it's it's tied into our headline theme here, uh, banks are not in the business of lending money, they're in the business of mitigating risk.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when they look at where their exposure is and how many properties they've lent, you know, for in in different particular suburbs or anything like that, um, they're basically doing a risk assessment on where their exposure is.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's no surprise that you get these negative headlines or these you know forecast price drops from the banks.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Again, great for clicks because they're big companies and everyone pays attention.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but when we look at the underlying fundamentals of where the market is at, that's why I say I don't think there's been a been a better time.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the key fundamentals that we look at supply, demand, affordability, and sentiment.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So a quick one-line on each of those.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: From a supply perspective, uh we are undersupplied in Australia right now to the tune of about 250,000 houses for the population that we have.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's not improving anytime soon because we're just not bringing developers, they are not active, you know, when the sentiment's not there, uh, they're not uh they're not active, they're holding off.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's making the supply problem worse.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: From a demand perspective, uh the government have got a revenue problem.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, we're seeing this from the budget announcements.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're not saying why, but what they are doing is committing to this long-term immigration program.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it'll always be, you know, people out there, oh, I saw a headline that they're going to cut immigration.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great headline.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Solves the problem of the of the perception of people, but the reality is they need the revenue and look underneath the budget announcements, and what they're saying is we've got a revenue problem.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the immigration, whatever you hear in the headlines, is here to stay.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to be.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those people need to live somewhere, we're undersupplied, that's uh that that's a problem.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh linked to that is that we don't have the answer might be simple.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we'll just create some more supply.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Impossible because we're a hundred thousand um uh trade short to be able to build the houses that we require to meet the population growth.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're resource constrained in every every way, uh, shape and form.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: The supply and demand imbalance is here to stay.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at affordability.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's what presents the opportunities right now.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Using your analogy where you know you go to auction in a hot market, you're tempted to pay more because of FOMO.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be buying in a hot market, you want to be buying in the market that's going to be hot in 12 months' time.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where the affordable end of the markets uh within the market perform best, and it's why the affordable markets around the country always perform best.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Case in point, the two most affordable capital cities at the start of COVID, Brisbane and Perth, both have shot the lights out.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, really, it just comes down to sentiment, and sentiment is is dictated by the headlines, and as all of these fundamentals slowly start to take over and they start reporting the rent growth that we're seeing because of this supply and demand imbalance and those positive messages start to take over, then the sentiment comes back, the FOMO kicks in, but the people that paid yesterday's prices are uh are laughing.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I ask whether it was riskier today is obviously everyone's sitting on their hands, but um and it comes back to what I said earlier, maybe about if you can afford it, but your risks with the uh residential investment property, can you get a tenant?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's an absolute shortage of housing, rental vacancy rates, all-time lows around the country.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, interest rates are higher uh at the moment, and if you can weather that storm, you should be comfortable.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: The government legislation changes.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you buy the right type of property being a new property, not impacted at all.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So despite all this negativity, I agree with you.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's any riskier now.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's less risky, probably, than it has been historically for some of those reasons.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: What we're talking about headlines Al, they're not all doom and gloom.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are some positive ones out there, and uh if you dig deep enough, you can find them uh as an investor.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know the one I'm talking about.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you were putting yourself in the shoes of a first-time investor and you've decided to invest in property and take the plunge, what is the biggest risk that you see?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh your biggest risk is no rent.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, covering your own mortgage is very hard.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh covering two is extremely hard.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um fortunately, with an investment property, there's someone stepping in and paying it for you.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So no rent is the key.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the headline you're talking about is the one that's in all the national newspapers that rents will grow by 30 percent because of recent changes by the government.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So again, if you're looking for negative headlines, you get them.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you want the right positive one to change your mindset, there's some out there.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: But absolutely your biggest risk, and we're talking about controlling risks with investment, is not having a tenant.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the beauty of Resi property over commercial, obviously, is there's a giant pool of candidates.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: One moves out, one can move in.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you've got a commercial business, could sit vacant for a year, could sit for two till the right person comes along.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: With Resi property with rents going up, your biggest risk is probably mitigated fairly strongly.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um probably closely followed by, and you talk about a lot, I'll let you jump in and explain it, but your second would be maintenance, and that's why we like new property, because people um what do you say, life is for living?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a term you use.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: I probably stole your words.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: But absolutely that that's one that comes in closely second, not not knowing where your cash flow is going.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I I just I I I bring myself back to 2008, uh, when I was kind of just starting to help people with this uh investment caper, and uh and a guy named George decided that he was going to buy around the corner from where he lived in Bentley, uh middle ring uh, you know, above average suburb in Melbourne.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um bought a property that he loved 680,000 at the time.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh within six months of buying that, uh, he had to get it restumped.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: The Melbourne market hadn't moved at that point.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: His stumps had his he his stumps had moved.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: He because the price, the property hadn't grown, he didn't have the buffer there, or he didn't have the growth that he could tap into to be able to pay for it, uh, couldn't afford to hold it, had to sell it at a loss.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, and it's always just rung true for me that maintenance uh can be a really big black hole for your cash flow.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um we know over the long term property will work well.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it's a game of how do we make sure that stuff doesn't go wrong and how do we mitigate that as best we can.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um buying residential where you can easily get another tenant, as you said, buying brand new, so at least we're confident of you know five to ten years worth of growth before you've got to even worry about any kind of um significant maintenance.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: You've just touched on something else being we call it a bottom-up market, and I read in the paper today um first home buyers are the most accurate they've been in years because they can you know suddenly see some light at the end of the tunnel to get themselves in the market, uh, particularly using the government's um five percent um deposit scheme.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: But what does a bottom-up market mean for a property investor's boss?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So a uh a bottom-up market is when the fundamentals are driving the growth.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: So supply-demand, affordability, etc.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and the uh the drive is happening at the affordable end of the market.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, if you've got competition uh below the median, um the headline will say the prices are dropping, but the fundamentals are there's activity there.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: That then starts to push the entry price higher, and that's why we say that the entry price never gets cheaper.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Once the entry price starts to increase, then all of a sudden people start paying more and they go, oh.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hang on, uh, you know, I could buy in this area, and the um uh the the the what was deemed less affordable property now becomes more attractive.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: That then starts to be consumed and then it works its way up the uh up the price spectrum to the point where you start to get the FOMO because the headlines are positive, um, and then you get you know the more expensive properties dragging the affordable properties up.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So part of the reason we love buying affordable property is in a downturn market like this, you've always got demand from people based on affordability, and when you have a really positive sentiment market, you get the price growth anyway off the sentiment pulling all of the properties up.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know the actual answer here, but in a bottom-up market, is it typically new housing that's coming through?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what's driving it?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, typically.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, we consider that that's the best type of investment as well, which the government has said we're supporting it with tax benefits.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess the other the other benefit there of people getting into the market at this point in time is despite the fact that you know Turak is dropping in value, the outer suburbs where there's new house happening isn't necessarily dropping, but you also tend to get a better rental yield.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we're ticking off the risk category again.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: But if your rent yields are better, um then it helps you hold the property.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was I was uh I was chatting to a uh to a developer uh who we both know very well on uh on Sunday, uh, and he was saying that one of the uh the new housing developments that they uh they look after in the west of Melbourne uh actually took care of a third of their settlements last financial year.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you can uh you can you can bring an emotional lens to it or you can bring a rational lens to it, and the rational lens is saying at that affordable end there's a lot of uh a lot of demand, and that's absorbing the supply, which is going to continue to drive the prices up, bottom up.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Bozo, uh you forgot to mention um you gave an example before about Polara um off-air.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think it'd be a good one that people would like to hear.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was I was talking to a um uh a client of ours uh yesterday, and uh as part of their portfolio, they brought a property in in Polara, which is a suburb in Brisbane when we first started going in there around 2018.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now they paid 575 for that property, it's now worth 1.2 today.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: You look at that on face value and you go, wow, like you're lucky.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: What a great result.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: What uh to my genius in hindsight theme, what uh a lot of people don't realise is in the first two years, if you were that buyer, in the first two years, you would have had uh negative headlines smashing you about how investor lending's on the way down, because the uh the banks are changing the rules.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you would have had um uh a situation where uh three estates brought on about 150 blocks of land all at the same time.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: So for a very short window until that supply was absorbed, rent was$30 less than what it was a month before.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you're thinking, what have I done?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting less rent, this is a lemon, etc.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh into COVID, pretty big one, no further explanation required, right?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and all the uh all the the headlines about prices dropping shortly after that, uh the proposal that they wanted to increase land tax by about$2,000 per property in Queensland.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very easy in 2026 to look back and go, wow, over the last eight years I've made 600 grand or more.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but if that had been your first two years of that journey, um, a lot harder to write out.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the Polaro example is uh is is the best one that we can find on why you know mitigate your uh your risks, have your buffers in place, hold property for the long term, you do pretty well.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and there's a lot of tears and your weaties over that first two years, isn't there?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: But um and you say it a lot, like if you've got a vision and a plan, you understand it, and you shut your eyes and block your ears, don't read the newspaper, you're pretty comfortable.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it it's if you let those things get you down during that first two-year period without the view to the big picture.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: So really relevant uh scenario, absolutely.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's not easy to do, you know.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're not pretending it is.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: You you hear the hear the bombardment of media 24-7.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, build that thick skin, understand the fundamentals behind it, and be prepared to do something a little bit differently to everyone else because the benefits are pretty great.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, Boz, that Pilar example is excellent.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it probably we talk a little bit about time in the market.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can explain what time in the market means, but it's a really great um probably segueing to what's happening in the market right now.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you you you said before that the um the biggest risk if you're investing in property is not having a tenant.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's once you've made the decision to invest.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the biggest risk is is not buying at all.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: And what drives that behavior typically is one of two things either fear of buying at the wrong time or uh trying to time the market perfectly.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the the the there's no there's no way that you can time the market perfectly, as Cam says, you know, they don't ring a bell when the market's at the bottom.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um how many times have we said that over the last 20 years?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Plenty.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, and and property's done pretty well.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the um yeah, that there's there's a lot of comfort in certainty in anything in life.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the reality is certainty is an illusion.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't ever have certainty until something's happened.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you all there's always a leap of faith that you kind of need to take.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and because that certainty doesn't exist, you want to trust the bigger picture, and hence we talk about time in the market.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you hold for the long term, you'll do pretty well.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to perfectly time when you get in and get that perfect, uh generally you're waiting for someone to tell you that now's the right time to do it.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: If that someone is the media or someone that's seeing something, then the movement has already started to happen if they're seeing it to tell you about it, and you've already missed the boat.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you're uh you're better off being able to again understand these fundamentals, take confidence from where they sit, play the long game as opposed to trying to be certain about uh you know when's the perfect time to buy.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Boz, this has been great.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: My big takeaways uh there's lots of headlines, there's negative ones, positive ones.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you read the ones and delve into what they mean, but read the ones that can point you in the right direction, control your risks, and invest at the right time.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Spot on.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everyone's a genius in hindsight, you know, when you when you get five years down the track.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you're five years down the track and you paint the scenario of starting today, very, very few people would have actually done that.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: So back to fundamentals.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully that's been helpful, and uh yeah, hopefully everyone's a bit more informed about what price is dropping and the headlines really mean.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd like a topic covered, hello at opencorp.com.au, thanks for tuning in.