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- 0:56Mortgage holders are being punished for Australia's sky-high inflation. A growing number of Aussie households are being trapped in a mortgage prison.
- 1:05All the ones who are mortgage prisoners now with since borrowing capacity, it's the ones who lie leveraged up with Pepper and Liberty. They become mortgage prisoners at banks that will charge them too much in interest rates. And that's the problem, right? These people that are taking on arguably too much debt and they can't hold it, have to sell it, they've essentially walked away sometimes with nothing. People don't understand the risk of investing. So if you push your income to the nth degree, there's a storm potentially coming.
- 1:28Capital City investors have been bailing because they've got mortgages they want to pay. So the ones who thought about lending really carefully, made sure they didn't over-leverage, structured the loan the right way. They've been able to ride the wave. I think once people really grasp that, it's game of lending.
- 1:45You're listening to the Folio Property Podcast. I'm Rhys Petal and I'm here each week with my co-host Lachlan Delahanty. Lachlan, you've been telling me to get rid of this intro for months now. I've still got it. You're still just ripping away with it. Put in the comments if everyone's over this intro, please let us know. But today is a very special day. We want to get big guests in 2026, Lachlan. We're back in Sydney for another big guest.
- 2:09This particular guest is one of the top mortgage brokers in Australia, hosts four podcasts, which knowing how hard it is for us to do one. That blows me away more than anything. Give the time to do that. It's impressive. A thought leader in the mortgage industry, previously in the financial planning space, founder and director of Alcove. Welcome to the podcast, Chris Bates.
- 2:30Looking forward to this. It's going to be fun. Hey guys, quick thing to share. If you're serious about investing in Australian property right now, you need to see what we put together. It's called the National Investment Report and it's our brand new monthly deep dive into exactly where the market is moving, what the data is saying and what the smart investors are looking at right now. You can get the first access completely free. Just scan the QR code on the screen right now or click in the link below to fill out the form.
- 2:57I just went through all these accolades of yourself, but what motivates you to keep going and moving in all these different directions? None of that stuff, to be honest. It comes from my planning days. And when you get through the experience where you sort of sit down with a client, often it's not sitting down face-to-face nowadays, but back in the day it was, and they were really stressed. You could just see it, maybe there's relationship pressures, there's relationships.
- 3:22finance pressures, they're really confused, they're not sure what to do, they've got so much noise out there. And then you just start asking them questions and you just know that they haven't really thought about that. And then you start to, you know, dig a bit deeper, then you ask them questions, then you can just start to feel the pressure come out of their balloon as a couple or a family. And then
- 3:42you start to ask them more questions and then they start getting a bit of an idea of where they're heading and which they have basically parked and sort of been drifting, you know, it's just busy, right? Life. And particularly younger people, like I did a lot of first four or five years with, you know, 50, 60, 70 year olds. And that was quite hard work because, you know, just the way that where they were in life, but when you pivot to sort of a 20 year old, 30 year old, 40 year old, they need to have these conversations and property is just such a huge, intrinsic part of people's lives. And so,
- 4:10What keeps me going is that, right? It's like I met them. They were thinking about doing this. We stopped them maybe heading down that direction. We challenged their thinking on this. They then agreed as a couple, this is where they're going to live and they're going to commit to. They then got pre-approved. Then they made it happen.
- 4:26And that I think builds clients for life. And so, you know, initially it's when you first meet them and then what keeps you going is like five, six, seven, eight years later, you're still talking to them and then they're onto the next thing because they're, you know, moving on with their life, but they just always come back to you for that trusted sort of sounding board. And so...
- 4:44Yeah, that's business been going since 2014. It's 2026 now. It was just about me for the first four years, like just because it was just me, you know, and I was trying to figure it all out and I was doing advice. And then since 2018, it's sort of been slowly growing our team now. Yeah. Definitely client impact, but now it's so much more than that. It's like, you know, all our team members are often around sort of 35 to sort of early 40s. You know, they're all probably partnered up. Most of them, you know, got young kids. And so now it's way more than that.
- 5:14helping them all succeed and, you know, as they're going through, you know, their lives as well. And so, yeah, that also keeps me going because you can sort of see, you know, the impact, you know, the business is also helping them, you know, achieve what they want to.
- 5:26With that, just jumping because it's so important because I think most people think mortgage broker, they go there just to get debt, right? Yeah. Mortgage broker is going to go to the bank, they're going to get me the best rates, they're going to find me the best, I suppose, access to debt, be that lending requirements for their fit for purpose, whether it's an individual or company, etc.
- 5:44But it's more than that, right? You talk a lot about all I've heard thus far is strategy, seeing things that they may have overmissed or consideration for actually what direction they're trying to go. What do you sort of see your role in that and what sort of, I guess, challenges, mistakes you see clients often make if you get in them so early in the journey?
- 6:01Yeah, I think it's not, it's still, so it's 26 now. I'm just getting, getting old. I feel like winding back to these years. I didn't know. I just picked this business in Melbourne, right? Cause I had a few offers. I was living in Melbourne and I didn't know that it was actually a really strategic mortgage business. Like I could have joined any business. And when I go back in time, like he was kind of like, you know, everyone's saying the OGs and I don't even know what it stands for to be honest, but you know, he's kind of that right. Dave Johnson. And, and, you know, he was one who was thinking about things a lot more deeper.
- 6:31than just setting up mortgages and getting rates. He was very strategic in how do you optimize this for tax? How do you build buffers? What's the mortgage strategy? How do you do an upgrade? How do you release equity? And he would focus all our attention on that. He's how do you guide someone to what he think he was calling a property plan? And so that opens your eyes. And that's very much like a financial planner. That's why they had financial planning in-house as well to do the rest of the decisions.
- 7:00I mean, there's heaps of mistakes. I mean, first-time buyers, there's just so much. I mean, as time changes, their options change, right? Often, we saw obviously a lot of the off-the-plan stuff 10 years ago. We saw a lot of the rent vesting stuff where they just didn't have the confidence to sort of just save a little bit more cash, waiting too long for saving a deposit and not paying LMI.
- 7:24you know, maybe buying something that suits them now, but won't suit them in a year or two when they, you know, the partner they've been with for five years and they were planning to get married and have a kid. So they buy what suits them today and they quickly outgrow it. Just rushing the decision. I mean, for first-time buyers, like it's really emotional, you know,
- 7:40They give up, you know, they get agents take them on a bit of a roller coaster and then they give up and they come back four or five years later. So the opportunity cost there. But I do think they sometimes focus and this is a lot of the parents and society's influences is just buy any property. Doesn't matter what you buy, all property goes up. You're never going to regret it. Like, and then they also just want to tick the box. So they're ticking their box in life and then they just want to say they own. They want to get that signed contract as quick as they can.
- 8:07and they kind of think, oh, it doesn't really matter. So they don't do enough DD. They don't slow down. They don't understand that they're going to have, it's never going to be their forever home and that they're going to probably likely have to sell it. So they haven't even thought about that because they think that maybe they'll just keep it and they'll build this portfolio. And then when you slow them down and you really question them on all that, then you try to avoid all those mistakes and then make sure they get a good asset. Like it's their one opportunity opportunity.
- 8:31to actually set the first property up right. And if it goes well, then it leverages into the next option, right? And gives them more options to maybe upgrade or, you know, et cetera. But if that doesn't go well, you know, they really burn a lot of time and it's really hard to sort of save your way to sort of wealth, right?
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- 9:47End capital, right? Borrowing, I say race all the time. I think the property game is as much a debt game as it is a property game, right? And if you've used up your capacity on the wrong asset or bad debt, it really limits your opportunity and costs you five years, 10 years. And for me, it cost me almost a decade for making the wrong decision at the start.
- 10:05Yeah, absolutely. One of my properties too. You know, I've got a house in Melbourne. Yeah, it's in 10 years and had 30, 40% growth, which is not great. Yeah, I mean, it is a lending game. I think that's what, as you're years on, you realize that there's always good properties. There's 11 million dwellings, right? They can always find something, like,
- 10:22But you can't always get cash, right? And so you've got to be really careful how you use that capacity because it's – that's like your gunpowder, right? Like, and if you've only – and it's – you know, when I started, it was 10, 12, 14 times your income in 2013, 14. Is that right? It was 14 times your income. Not like if you just went to one bank. No, but you could get that. But there were so many holes. Like –
- 10:42Because I was coming from an advice world and I was like, hang on a sec, so if I lodge with NAB, I can do this. But if I lodge it with this bank, they don't even look at that debt or if I fix it or I make an interest only. And it was just so many holes. So many levers and all those people. Yeah. And you could literally build a... And rates were...
- 10:58Now they were higher, but they're sort of similar to where they are now. And so you could leverage up, you know, and you could buy a lot more investment properties than you could homes, right? So maybe you could get eight times your home if you buy a house, but maybe 14 times if you're buying investments. You get 15-year interest-only terms, which is an amazing buffer. Yeah, and so every year it's got tighter.
- 11:16And now we're down at what, five times income. So like that capacity or that opportunity is just so much tighter now. And so then you can't afford to waste it. Particularly also using a lot of that because you're putting it towards a home. Yeah. Which is homes have changed a lot in the last, you know, 10 years. And so...
- 11:33Yeah, Stuart Williams in Melbourne, he's got a company called Pro Solutions. He's an advisor, accountant, broker. Investor, legal? Yeah. Big fan of his. Yeah, well, that's one of his sayings. I always give credit where it's due. And he says that it's a game of lending. And I think once people really grasp that, they're like, ah,
- 11:51okay, I need to know the property market, but I need to, that's, you know, you might do it for an interest point of view, but you're not gonna buy heaps of property, right? Really what you wanna do is really protect your borrowing capacity and understand how to, just how important it is, particularly if you're investing because
- 12:06you know, sometimes things go well and sometimes things don't go well, i.e. the last four years with interest rates running on you. And so the ones who thought about lending really carefully and made sure they didn't over leverage or maybe they structured the loan the right way and they had buffers and they offset accounts and they reactivated equity when they could and they've been able to ride the wave. But the ones who maybe just, you know, didn't think it through and didn't have enough buffers, they had to bail and they weren't able to hold those assets, which has kind of defeated the purpose. And so, yeah, it absolutely is a game of lending.
- 12:35And you mentioned there how loose it probably was back in 2017. That was 13, 14, yeah. 2013, 14. And we've probably seen in the market in the last three to six months starting to tighten up, especially more on the investor lending activity. APRA's come out and kept the LTI and we've seen the trust lending, a lot of the majors pull out of that. Do you think we're going to see any more tightening in that space, I guess, moving for the rest of 2026?
- 13:03It was every year it was getting tighter and tighter, like capacity and also like banks' ability to sort of bend the rules and exceptions on file. And the banks' credit teams are always changing as well. And so you've sometimes got to... Private banks were able to do a little bit different. You had someone who's very experienced credit assessor who knows how to get it through. But there was probably a time, maybe two, three years ago, where the non-banks just started coming out more and more.
- 13:29You know, the trusts were there, the self-money super fund lending. And I was like, wow, it's kind of going back the other way. And, you know, even leveraging super, I was, you know, going on my team just all over that. And I was like, are you sure we can do this? Like I was just blown away at some of the multiples.
- 13:45We haven't gone anywhere near that. Like we haven't got anywhere near the, you saw it all on all the YouTube about six, 12 months ago, you know, unlimited borrowing capacity, every broker in the world, just wanted to jump on that train. But like, if you've been around for a while, you know, that there's a point in time where something may be attractive, but if it's too attractive, it's going to get shut down. Right. And.
- 14:04And often those were getting through with, you know, some help of accountants, you know, was the client fully educated on the risk? I don't know. And it's the same as like non-bank lending. We've always been very nervous of that because it's very clear when credit gets tied, who gets hit.
- 14:20And you don't want to put all your clients in leveraging way beyond what they can borrow at the major banks. Then there's a credit tightening and then they get stuck. They become mortgage prisoners at banks that will charge them too much in interest rates. And so there's a lot of brokers that got burnt there because they leverage their clients up and their clients got stuck on high rates and they haven't been able to refinance those clients down to low rates. All the other banks had a mortgage war, but you got stuck at a non-bank. And that could be the difference between you holding the property or selling it.
- 14:49They'll argue that I wouldn't have been able to buy it if I didn't be able to get the debt. Well, that is okay if you're able to hold it. And I don't think a lot of people have been able to hold those super big portfolios, you know, unless they had huge equity or buffers or something. But that's not likely if you're leveraging that far.
- 15:05And that's the problem, right? Because we know the entry costs, if you're paying sometimes a buyer's agent or someone on the right way through, there's obviously stamp duty and holding costs as well as your exit costs. If you're not holding that property for at least a few years, a lot of the potential upside is being washed away with fees, right? So in that scenario there, these people that are taking on arguably too much debt,
- 15:25and they can't hold it, have to sell it, they've essentially walked away sometimes with nothing. I think it sounds like you're very responsible. You say never push clients to their nth degree or anything like that. There's risk with debt, right? That's the other side of the equation. Yes, property is a debt game, but it comes with risk.
- 15:41Yeah, absolutely. I think you've got to be, you know, and it's not to say we haven't, you know, done that, you know, but it's just we're doing it with making sure we're really educated on the buffers. And secondly, what are the assets? You don't want to take too much debt, a lot of risk with debt and then take a lot of risk with property asset as well.
- 15:58And so if you're really pushing it and you're going, look, I'm trying to take a momentum play, I'm going to the next hotspot, which may or may not work. I'm going to try to time it and then sell it. And, you know, if it doesn't work out and you've leveraged up, like, is that going to be catastrophic to everything else? You know, do you have to then sell your home or do you have to sell? And so you've got to be careful. Are you risking it with debt? And then how also people's situations are changing.
- 16:21you know, super confident, I'm one year away from, you know, an associate to a, you know, a senior associate or a partner, and I know my salary is going to jump dramatically or my, they're going through study and I know when I get that. So someone's income growth or confidence could be dramatically, you know, know that in 12 months' time. So they're leveraging up today knowing that tomorrow in 12 months' time, they're going to be okay. But then some people are running businesses, right, and businesses are changing. So you've got to be also careful there going, okay,
- 16:47Has it just been a good year or how sustainable it is? And we ask those questions because, yeah, we just don't want a client to be forced to sell because like you say, the turnover costs are just so huge. And also we have leveraged a lot of people around upgrading because a lot of people, they're trying to lock in assets that they'll hold in for 15 years. And so even if they're under a bit of pressure today,
- 17:13I guess they're not worrying about the market running on them. And so, yeah, it's tight. Yeah, we're just paying our mortgages. Yeah, we're not getting ahead of it, but the market's not running on us. We're not going to have to pay, you know, 10, 15% more in a few years time. And we can lock in that house that will suit us for the next 15 years. And so we've definitely encouraged a lot of people to do that through the home ownership. Yeah. And we've seen that numerous times through our business. And I think it was even a podcast listener that reached out where,
- 17:42They were looking to access their self-managed super fund, went to a buyer's agent that's probably well-known in Australia and they recommended two really speculative regional play assets. And luckily they'd heard this guy's voice so much on the podcast where we're really talking about education in terms of the right assets to be buying, especially for something like a self-managed super fund where it is a particular asset you need.
- 18:08But they were getting recommended rather than coming in with a, I think their budget was like $1.1 million. They're getting recommended two $500K regional asset players. And luckily, they heard the podcast. They reached out and went down more the blue chip route. But it is something we're seeing quite a lot here, I guess, in the property space. Yeah, exactly. And so you've got lending, like pushing your lending. And then secondly, you're pushing it within a self-managed super fund. And then you don't get a second chance with your super. Yeah.
- 18:35that's meant to be your backstop, right? That's meant to be like, if I don't ever build enough wealth here, when I retire, this money's just compounded for me for the next 30 years. And,
- 18:44You know, super has got such a bad name, but really it's an investment portfolio of shares pretty much, and it'll perform quite well over the next 30, 40 years. If you just don't touch it and you keep it in a low cost fund and you just let it compound, let's do its thing, right? Like it's not, you know, yeah, it might have a bad year here and there, but overall, when you come back two or three years down the line, you're like, oh, actually it's still performing quite well. And so I think people are motivated just to, you know, take, they're already overexposed with property and then they go and put their super on a property as well, but unfortunately.
- 19:13that take the wrong asset in the wrong structure. That's the way you should be the least taking risks. You should just be buying something that you know in 30, 40 years time, it's gonna be super scarce. It's gonna be highly desirable. It's gonna suit a huge, big, broad pool of buyers that either got wealth or earning good money.
- 19:29and you just can sleep at night. No, I haven't punted my super as well. And, you know, because that should be money. It just gives you confidence every year that, you know, if things don't go well, I'm going to be okay because I've got this super. Talking through education, so you're very passionate about your journey and why you got into it and even the types of clients that you've been helping along the way. How important do you think that sort of free education is out there at the moment where people can upskill themselves in this new social media day and age,
- 19:59I mentioned at the start you've got four podcasts, so there's a lot of good content there. Not saying advice, by the way, because purely from an educational standpoint, how important do you think that is at the moment?
- 20:09Well, some people would consider it advice. There's been an attack with ASIC, with influencers, and a little shutdown for some people who, you know, are definitely stepping way down the wrong route. I'd say in the property market, you've got to be extremely careful. Like, you know, we're not pushing it. We have zero partnerships with buyers, agents where we get paid. So, you know, we just stay independent of all that. We just sort of guide clients. And yeah, we get paid from mortgages. Yeah, we get paid from, you know, clients for life who refer to us. Absolutely. But we're not trying to push an individual strategy down clients and
- 20:39And unfortunately the property space
- 20:42is completely unregulated. And so if you're not stepping into financial advice, you're stepping into property advice, well, you know, you're sort of in this little bubble. I do think it will get shut down because I think the proliferation of marketing experts that are calling themselves buyers agents, you haven't really got, you know, it's a job that takes a long time to get good at. Like, let's be real. Like you're not just coming in day one and then know the market. Like I've been talking about this since 2012, I still don't feel like I know
- 21:12so much and i'm learning more about zoning and developing and that's kind of my baby at the moment i'm trying to focus and learn a lot about because i feel like it's changing particularly in sydney and i've got to be across it but as a buyer's agent firstly you've got to know that you've got to learn the local market you know all the agents you've got to know all the negotiation tactics and then you've got to really understand how to value the property and you know all the dd that you miss and dd is you know years of learnings right so
- 21:35I guess with these buyers agents, they haven't been doing it very long. They haven't got many clients because they're high price service. And so, yeah, they've been doing it for three years, but how many clients have actually got through and have actually bought? They might've seen a lot of properties, but the skills in negotiation and valuing take years. And often they're doing it across lots of different markets, which makes it even harder because you don't get that local experience, you're not getting any of that deep knowledge.
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- 22:21Often they're not even doing it on the ground either. Like we're hearing a lot of buyer's agent activity where they're working internationally or, you know, on the other side of the country.
- 22:30Yeah, they just believe it by the market. And they'll get a certain bank vow six months later and send it to the clients that, hey, your property's gone up. Yeah, well, that bank's incentivized to give you very high valuations. Go do that at two or three more banks and you'll probably find that it's not that result. Secondly, why is six months a good test on an investment term? Yeah.
- 22:52You know, minus off stand duty, minus off selling costs, minus off capital gains tax, minus off buyer's agency fee. Are you in the red yet? You know? No. So, yeah, I think that's my frustration with it is it's all short term. It's all about just buying into the market. There's a lot of...
- 23:08games they play with you know if you don't buy now give it to someone else's scarcity they're just you know and and there's so much competition of briefs like that was one of the first things i learned it's like okay so if i'm gauging you as a buyers agent and say i want to buy a house at 1.5 in your pocket are you going to take on another brief at 1.5 then good buyers agent say no because you know you've got that brief in that marketplace how can i buy two of them
- 23:32You know, when they go off the books, I can take you on. So that's what good buyers agents would do is they would say it's competing briefs. I can take on someone at 1.8 to 2. I can take someone at 1.2. But if you're around the same price point, looking at the same suburbs, like I just can't take you on. But, you know, these investment buyers agents can have 30 briefs trying to buy in the same market. Like who gets a good one?
- 23:52And when you're trying to buy that amount of scale, like you say, not even on the ground, you know, using property managers who don't understand capital growth, it's huge dangers. And unfortunately, I think what's going to happen is that you're seeing a restructuring of the rental market, right?
- 24:07Capital city investors have been bailing, right? Because they've got mortgages they want to pay. They're all getting older as well. You know, so they get into their 50s, 60s and they look at property and they go, do I really want a million equity in a resi property with higher land tax? I'd rather put that in my super fund. So they're all bailing plus interest rates, plus wanting to give money to their kids. And then you've got this new wave of investors just buying in regions, right? So you're creating a lot more rental accommodation in regions and capital cities are just getting tighter and tighter.
- 24:36um you know a lot of investors are bailing out of high-rise apartments just because of you're pissed off because you bought in 2006 an apartment in melbourne in 2026 it's still worth the same and finally i can make a paper profit which isn't any way right when you add all those other things on and so you're finding that you know we're gonna have a huge rental crisis this is going to get a lot worse over the next five years and um
- 24:56So the people who are losing out of this is the renters. Yep, we've got more rental properties in this regional location. And then whenever there is a bit of a tough market, those are momentum investors. So they'll bail just as quick as they get in. So if they can put that money elsewhere. And so what you're doing is you're creating this short-term boom in rentals and then they'll all bail at one point.
- 25:16because they'll go, the returns aren't here, and particularly if prices start correcting. And then so what you've, you haven't really created much long-term rental supply. And so I think this, and the scale they're buying when you add it up, which I'm doing at the moment, across all these firms, like we're talking thousands of properties a month. And collectively they're moving markets. So a lot of people say you can't push property markets. Absolutely you can. You're buying a scarce number of properties on the market and you're increasing demand in the short time.
- 25:44and you're actually buying the properties in the same suburbs you were buying six months ago, you're pushing the market up. And I think that's firstly the tack on trust lending, but I do think we'll go to these
- 25:52property influence sort of big organizations will be definitely getting watched experience a membership that backs what you're building with american express business platinum enjoy complimentary access to the american express global lounge collection and apply to find out your welcome offer which could be as high as 300 000 membership rewards points american express business platinum there's nothing like it terms apply
- 26:18Welcome offers vary and you may not be eligible for an offer. Learn more at americanexpress.com slash business dash platinum. It's interesting because it's like a new wave and you've been around for a while as a buyer and you've seen that move from more of a house and land package type scenario where there was a lot of people that essentially are builders or builder brokers in the background that were pushing house and land packages. And that was sort of...
- 26:42early sort of 2010 to 15, there's a big wave of that. Yep. And I look at the wave now, it's the same type of company, same type of people, but they're sort of repackaging them and they're not buying house and land because they can get on a podcast and say, look, we don't buy that. We don't promote off the plan.
- 26:59Essentially, going to these regional markets where it's easy to buy, access to property has been available because some of these markets have gone through some pretty horrendous times. We've seen 30%, 40% drops in values in tough times. And then they go up and they artificially inflate the markets themselves and their competitors come in and do the same. And my concern is when you go in a market where there's more investors than own occupiers, at some point, the local market's not going to be able to afford it. The investors will come and go. And what's going to happen to these markets? You're going to see a bloodbath.
- 27:28And I think that also, it kind of keeps first-time buyers really stuck in properties a bit too long because it eats away their equity, et cetera. So I think the government should shift the land tax for first-time buyers, but whatever they give them, it's gonna go into prices. That'd be the reform. I think the 5% deposit scheme is super attractive, which I said before, but I don't think the government's gonna change it. And I do think it's good in some way because it is meaning that
- 27:53The rental market is absolutely horrendous, all right? And it's gonna get worse, which I spoke about vacancy rates at 1%. They're okay if you're a good applicant. Like if you've got a, you're working, your partner's working, you've got a bit of savings, like you've got a good rental history. Yeah, you can still go rent in a 1% vacancy rate, but a lot of people just aren't in that position.
- 28:12That's, you know, causing a lot of issues. And so there are a lot of first-time buyers that, you know, potentially can buy. Like we've helped a lot of single sort of first-time buyers that, you know, like it's really stressful. And, you know, they've got a little place, got maybe a little unit. And, you know, that's something that they're super proud of. And it just gives them a really big runway. So...
- 28:32But yeah, I wouldn't make too much to help first-time buyers. They've already got enough. Good closing there. Chris Bates, thank you for joining the Follier Property Podcast. Enjoyed coming on. Thanks, guys. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify.
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