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Are Buyers Agents The New Property Spruikers? · The Follio Property Podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome to I Call Bullshit Property Podcast, where we separate real estate fact from fiction. I'm Rhys Bertle, and in every episode, we uncover the truth behind the property market's biggest claims and trends. Joining me is our resident expert, Lachlan De La Hunty. He's seen it all and isn't afraid to call out the bullshit when he sees it.
• 0:22
  We've done over 10 episodes now, and while our mums are still our biggest fans, we'd love your support too. If you're enjoying the show, tap like, hit subscribe, and make sure you never miss an episode. We've got a couple of trolls now too, don't we? Does that mean we've made it? We do, and we will start replying to our trolls because we value their listenership as well, which is good. Keep it coming. And look, I assure you, in the coming episodes, I'll start to remember that intro. I'm still relying on the computer to look at that intro.
• 0:47
  Um, today let's jump into something pretty relevant in our lives. Uh, topic today is our buyers agents, the new spruikers. It's very topical. Very. This is sort of leads to probably our industry, right? Correct. We're nearly almost self sabotaging what we do. So the trolls might enjoy this. When I say trolls, there's no trolls out there. We enjoy the feedback.
• 1:07
  and we're not perfect, we're just trying to portray our opinions and our expertise, but this is very close to home, this one, right? Beautiful. Okay, so first thing is, what's a buyer's agent? And how do they differ from a selling agent?
• 1:22
  Yeah, that's a good point. I guess a buyer's agent at the moment, there's so many different varieties, which we'll talk about in a moment. But if you look in different markets around the world, buyer's agents, it's super common, right? So I think everywhere in the world, it's recognised what a selling agent is. If you're going to sell a property, you typically list through a selling agent and they take you through that process. Their job is to get the best price for the seller.
• 1:44
  What has been really uncommon in Australia until sort of the last decade has been buyer's agency. Someone actually represents the buyer in that equation. And the objective is typically to get the best price for the buyer. Interesting in America, every transaction has both a selling agent and a buyer's agent. They call them brokers, a real estate broker, so a broker to represent the buyer.
• 2:08
  on every transaction. So it's really, really, it's common practice. It's equally as common to have a buyer's agent as a selling agent. That's certainly not the case in Australia, but over the last decade, you look at the Sydney markets now, buyer's agency represents over 30% or 40% of every transaction, particularly in the sort of more premium suburbs. And then you look in the investor markets, there's a whole new world of investment advisors or whatever you want to call them that are popping up.
• 2:35
  Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. What types of buyers agents are there? I think someone who is relatively new to the industry over the last sort of 12, 18 months, my opinion of buyers agent was probably more from a foreign perspective, like maybe people either outside the state or the country looking to buy a property and needing that assistance. It wasn't until I sort of got involved with the industry that I understood, you know, everyday people are using them. But what types of buyers agents are there?
• 3:00
  Yeah, there's probably a little bit of confusion out there because there's a lot on social media, right? So to really peg it back, you know, in my view, there's two types of buyer's agents. There's one that typically or should specialise in home buying and there's one that specialises in investment. And then you can break that down into a million different things, right? There's the investment space, you've got commercial, you've got established residential, you've got off-the-plan residential, you've got house and land packages, right?
• 3:26
  And in that world, in the investment world, there's different labels for it, right? Some people call themselves buyers agent, investment consultants, property experts, property specialists, buyers advocates, you name it, whatever you're feeding on Instagram, YouTube or Facebook is getting flooding with in terms of how to get rich quick falls under that investment space. But typical buyers agency is, as you say, someone representing the buyer in a
• 3:52
  property transaction is more in that home buying space. And so that's where it gets really confused and a lot of firms, especially sort of one man, two man bands, which is typically common what you see in the buyer's agency space, do try to do everything and if you want investment property, they can help with that. If they want home buying, they can help with that. Certainly our experience with our businesses, we separate the two.
• 4:13
  and because it's a unique skill set right so if you are going to buy a home and you're going through that home buying journey it's very emotional it should be specialized to a specific area ideally you know a handful of suburbs and you can't be an expert across every every suburb of every state of every australia right so that is a very specialized service um and it's more in line with what a sale agent does you look at
• 4:36
  You know, sales agents across the country, they typically operate a patch and that might be somewhere between two to four suburbs that they specialise in. And that's what I see a true buyer's agent, the true form of buyer's agency. That's how they should be identified as sort of area specialisation versus that whole world of investments, a completely different beast. And it's interesting because the way I always say when I'm speaking to customers is,
• 4:58
  A home buyer's buyer's agent, the customer is leading the buyer's agent, whereas an investment buyer's agent or investment advisory, they lead the customer. So they're running on data. They should do is probably the key point there.
• 5:13
  Absolutely. So if you come to me and you're trying to buy a home, Rhys, I can't tell you where you should live. That's your opinion. So you're directing that conversation versus you come to me and you want to invest in property as a way to build a portfolio or expand your wealth position. Then me as the expert, I should be able to give you that information backed on data, how to do that in a strategic way, like you would in a financial planning sense, but for property. And what are some... I know Spruikers has kind of been...
• 5:43
  The key headline that we've got at the moment in terms of the episode, that is. But what's some things people should be looking out for to spot a spruiker and what sort of qualifications, if any, should someone be looking for for either a home buyer's buyer's agent? Home buyer's buyer's agent? Yep, you can call it that. Or an investment buyer's agent. You can say an occupier specialist versus investment specialist. That's probably...
• 6:10
  Sounds a bit better. So yeah, I guess, yeah, what are some signs to look out for from a spruikers perspective? I know we've touched on spruikers in a few episodes back, but there's probably some new listeners since then. So maybe just quickly touch on that. And then also, is there qualifications people should be looking out for? Yeah, it's a good question. So in the own Occupy space, there's a huge wave of people who've come through the handler. I think it's called the Buyer's Agent Institute where he pumps out sort of 100 graduates every month of people that...
• 6:39
  are really trained how to use social media really well and they try to tackle that own occupier space but again they're flooding with social media going through home opens and doing trying to market updates on areas they probably either don't live or don't have a specialization in so when you're looking for own occupier briefs it really comes down to area specialization and i've been big on this for the last five years
• 7:01
  And to be honest, in my personal world and in our business, we haven't done it well always. I remember when I started off in this space, I was exactly what I'm telling people to look out for. The person was trying to be everything to everyone. And that's, I can buy you an investment in one market of Australia, but also I can help you with your own occupier in another market. I can also help you with your lifestyle asset if you wanna buy it down south on the Morning Peninsula. So you're trying to be everything to everyone.
• 7:27
  As a result, you're being nothing to no one. And I soon realised pretty quickly where the value was and realised that I wasn't really great in that home buying space. Because it is a completely different journey. You need to be quite compassionate, empathetic, things that I'm not. It's really, I'm data driven. I'm a numbers man, so I'm probably more aligned with that investment side. But people in our team are super capable and really understanding and can see what people want when they're looking for a home.
• 7:54
  It comes down to really area specialisation. We've been able to nail that within Perth and other markets where questions you should be asking is, you know, show us your transactions within that suburb that I'm looking for. You can only really be a true expert, I believe, in, you know, five to seven suburbs because you've got to know the streets, you've got to know areas where the better pockets, worse pockets, what the square metre rates are, and you want to be in that market for...
• 8:20
  not just a couple of days, not a couple of weeks, we're talking years and often more than that, decades. So first question I'll be asking someone in that space is recent transactions, where do you live is a really important one, right? If you're living in the area that you're servicing, you're going to have a great understanding of school catchment zones, you're going to have a great understanding of, you know, what drives people to want to move to that suburb, what are things to look out for, what's the local shopping centre like, what's the coffee shop like, what's the school, what's the sports community like. They're the questions you should be asking an own occupier.
• 8:48
  Yeah. And it is interesting. I think when you look at my perception on a buyer's agent was like a real estate agent, I suppose probably stereotypical, like salesy, very, not pushy, but you know, you know, the types of characters that you see. Once I started working with some of the investment buyer's agents.
• 9:10
  They're very data-driven. And actually, there was a period there when I was in the business that I wasn't even sure. I didn't think that they were the actual buyers' agents. I was like, they're very data-driven, very analytical. Yes, they've got strong relationships with the local agents, but actually their forte was looking at the data and the numbers to make the decisions as well. And then on that investment side of things as well, you're constantly, you know, if you're on the home-buying side of things,
• 9:33
  you know, you could be with that customer for 18 months until you find a property. You might, you know, the customer might give you a brief and you might find 20 properties that meet that brief, but actually when it comes down to the crux, they're like, oh, I don't like the kitchen being closed. I don't like the floor plan. Exactly. So it's a very- It pains me. You can bring the best deal, right? You know, perfect example. I had one for a client that we could have picked up for two and a half. It was worth $3 million every step of the way.
• 9:54
  But they didn't like the floor plan, didn't quite work for them. And for me, like inside that investment side, I'm like, this is a cracking deal. Like, why aren't you buying it? But again, you're buying a home. And that home is typically to live in for the next 5, 10, 20 years. It's not always about the numbers in that space.
• 10:09
  So that sort of lends itself to the other side. And, you know, that's the more investment side, sort of my expertise, I think, and probably something I'm more passionate about. But now this whole investment world, it's almost a new wave. And we've discussed this off air multiple times. That's where this, I think, the new era of property spruiker is starting to come in this investment space. And to mitigate the risk on that.
• 10:34
  I guess on a spruiker, what's some of the key questions that you should be asking a buyer's agent, both from a principal place owner or an investment?
• 10:43
  Yeah, so I think on Oxbase, it's not as important to dial in on the qualifications. It's more around their area expertise, how long they've been in the role for is a really big one. So there's a lot of people just popping up overnight and you're going to see hundreds, thousands of buyers, agent pop up over the next 12 months, next two years. So years of experience is really important. Transaction history in your area that you're looking for.
• 11:05
  They're really the key fundamentals. Whether they've got a degree in property or not is quite irrelevant because it's about time in that market, specific market, because that's the IP. Investment space, it is qualification driven. Well, it should be. And this is the property problem at the moment. To become a financial planner with everything that happened, what was it, five or six years ago with the Royal Commission,
• 11:26
  The entry level financial planners are now very difficult. You need to have a degree, you need to go through lots of different assessments, assignments and get a full qualification to be able to give financial advice in a financial planning framework. Property advice, arguably is important in terms of the financial commitment for a client. Arguably, property is the biggest financial commitment for most people.
• 11:48
  is their prime place of residence, then an investment portfolio. The qualifications or the entry point is very low. And this is a huge concern. I think there will be a shakeup in the industry over the next, definitely in the next decade, because there's a lot of people popping up as property experts.
• 12:03
  that could have been selling used cars literally 12 months ago, could have been a bloody structure six weeks ago and just done a real estate course and all of a sudden they're a property expert in telling you where you should be investing in your portfolio, your life savings. And that concerns me a lot. So what to be asking for is qualifications, 100%.
• 12:22
  Ideally, they've had a degree in property. You look at everyone in our world, in our team of advisory, they've come from financial planning backgrounds, accounting backgrounds, property backgrounds, valuation backgrounds. But at a bare minimum, they've got a university degree backed up with a PIPA qualification. That's probably the most important thing to make sure they've got that credential. So that's a Property Investment of Australia certificate. Essentially, it's quite a strenuous course that people have to undertake to actually get approved to give
• 12:52
  you know solicited property advice so i would be making sure that anyone that's giving you property advice for investment carry that qualification it's a bare minimum for for our advisors but certainly not within the industry and you know if they're not going to give you that information again it's asking sort of their backgrounds almost you know asking for their resume in terms of the experience they've got
• 13:15
  An easy point is asking their portfolio and their journey of where they've got to because if they've only been in the industry for six months, they can't talk about previous cycles. Anyone that's bought property in the last three years across Australia have done pretty well. But have they been there for a decade? Have they been there for 15 years? And markets don't always go up. So definitely qualification needs to lead the conversation followed by their experience, followed by their portfolio. Three key questions you need to be asking your advisor.
• 13:41
  And I think, look, we're going to sound biased because we obviously are associated with the home buying side and the investment side, but is there situations where you don't need a buyer's agent? So for instance, it makes sense to utilize a buyer's agent in a hot market where maybe you've missed out on six, seven opportunities like Perth the last couple of years. If you're buying interstate from an investment standpoint, obviously you're not going to be able to go over there.
• 14:06
  facilitate the transaction. What about in a somewhat normal market, which feels crazy to talk about because the markets have been so crazy sort of post-COVID? Is there situations where a buyer's agent wouldn't be relevant or can they still add value in a market where there is enough supply there and you are locally based to where you want to buy? Yep. So, you know,
• 14:28
  different spaces and that's why we keep to and throw between investment and own occupiers, they are two very different dynamics. But why use a buyer's agent for the own occupier space? You know, it's that local specialization is what you're paying for. So, say my personal
• 14:44
  I used a buyer's agent outside of our business to get in the location that I wanted to get into because I had to use a local specialist that didn't work for us, right? We end up hiring that person. But it was a market that I was upgrading to. So...
• 14:59
  wasn't as familiar with the area, albeit in the industry thinking I can do it myself. I know the power of relationships if you have an agent in that area that understands the agents, is transacted with the agents, knows locals and with that power is able to get a property that they bought off the seller direct. You're not going to do that with someone that's out of the area. So really, yes, you can do it yourself and a lot of people...
• 15:22
  still a large portion of the population buy their home on their own accord but it's really that value of time is a really big point how much do you value your time versus you know giving it to an expert um you know for busy professionals it's often they value time over over anything else right so it becomes a space but it's also accessibility if you if you've got the time and you've got the i guess the um
• 15:48
  the nows and you know so you're in realestate.com every single day you've got all the agents in that particular area that you're catching up with on a weekly basis you sort of live and breathe real estate then there's maybe an argument that there is the potential to do it yourself but unless you're sort of dedicated at least 50% of your time you know that's working time
• 16:08
  to the cause, then I don't think you'll get a better return on investment doing it yourself over using a buyer's agent. So you really have to be committed to it. And that's, if you are, if there isn't a local area specialist, which there's many markets that actually don't have a dedicated buyer's agent that specialise in that area, then absolutely it is a case that you could potentially do as good a job yourself.
• 16:28
  But again, you want to be in that market every single day and be really confident and transacted on multiple properties previously, seen enough negotiations to know how to navigate that deal. In the investment framework, look, unless you've been a sophisticated, avid investor for many years and you've learnt a lot of lessons along the way, then you probably definitely always get advice and you can self-educate. There's so much information out there that you can do it yourself.
• 16:57
  But you should be paying an advisor to benefit from their years of experience and client experiences. Some of our advisors have been involved now over $2 billion worth of transactions. You're not paying them for one experience, two experience. You're paying for that historical experience.
• 17:19
  you know, transaction base. It makes the deco experience essentially, you know, you're shortcutting that to learn from their mistakes, but also, you know, their upside in terms of how cycles work over the long term. So, I mean, through that conversation, through multiple bits, I guess, through the conversation, you've mentioned local knowledge, having a patch of two, three suburbs, that's where you're going to get the good value.
• 17:41
  I'm assuming you can't have those relationships if you're not locally based, like you're not going to build a strong relationship with local agents, two, three suburbs if you're based in a different location. Am I right in thinking that a red flag initially, if you're dealing with a buyer's agent for an investment purchase, if they're not locally based, that's a red flag?
• 18:01
  Yeah, look, if they don't have legs on the ground, 100%. So that's, you know, you come back to the questions you should be asking your buyer's agent is, you know, are you going to be walking through the property that you're going to be presenting to me? If they can't 100% answer yes with confidence, even if there's a slight stutter, oh, we have property managements that do it for us. Oh, no, we've got someone on the ground. I'd ask, are you going to be inspecting the property for me? If that's not a yes, I'd have concerns. Because it is, that's what you're paying for at the core of it.
• 18:30
  local specialization, because we all know, whether you're living in a rental property or in an own occupier, in your area of knowledge, which is typically a little neighborhood, there's better streets, there's better houses, there's better ends of the street that you wanna be on. You probably know where the problematic tenants are. One side of the street you've had problems with because of those type of tenants. So that's the local knowledge that you wanna be paying for. And unless you're in that market every single day, you're just not going to know.
• 18:57
  and you're relying on a bit more of a broad brush approach, which can often be okay, but to get those 1% to 2% is what you want to be dialing in on. So definitely a good question to be asking your BA. And what about remuneration and fees? What is the industry standard? What should raise an eyebrow if you're engaging with a buyer's agent and they save a fee?
• 19:20
  Yeah, so look, again, own Occupy space, it's pretty standard. It's much like a selling agent. They will charge a fee for service anywhere from probably as little as 1% up to as large as 3%, really. And that fee will be typically paid.
• 19:37
  in accordance to their speciality, right? So if they aren't that good at their job and they're trying to take on large volumes, I'll probably charge a less fee because the service offering will be less. But if they're very specialised in value their offering, they'll charge more. In the investment space, there's such a broad range. Like I said, there's everything, and this is trying to understand this whole world as...
• 19:56
  There's people that are buying investment properties that are established. There's people that are selling, some won't say selling, but they're representing their client to buy off the plan apartments, house and land packages. They're buying regional, around Australia, regional markets. They're buying in established areas, units. So there's a lot of different frameworks in that investment world.
• 20:18
  And some will charge like the standard buyer's agent model where they'll charge a BA fee, 2%, 2.5%, an acquisition fee. Some won't charge any fees. Look, it's obligation free. There's nothing up front. But they'll be taking a fee from the builder. So definitely asking that question is how you're remunerated and getting some authenticity around that. Because if they're not charging, no one's doing work for free. 100%. Well, there's red flags either way. There's a red flag charging too much. And then there's a red flag if you're...
• 20:47
  hearing something too little because you gotta, if you're doing the right due diligence in the background, you're going out there, it's gonna be free for everything. You need to have. You go to a specialist doctor, they're not gonna do it just cause they like you for free, right, so you'd be concerned if they weren't charging. Same in the buyer's agent space. So it's really just understanding, and it can, for an average punter,
• 21:07
  that's clicked on a research report online to get some information about a market, right? And typically this is how you'll get drawn in to using one of these services. We do it as well. You know, we give a lot of content. We're in the world of the content age. You want to give a lot, head of sense, we're doing this podcast, right? We're not doing it for free. We hope we can add enough value and then in turn, you know, clients will trust our opinion and judgment. That's the world we're in. So there's a lot of content out there trying to grab your attention. You'll click on something just late at night because you might be interested in a report
• 21:37
  It might be a quick grab to say, build out a passive income, $150,000 income in the next three years and it'll grab your attention, you're clicking it, you've just accidentally left your details and you get pounded with calls. Next week you got me calling you 20 times a day. Yeah, you got Rhys calling you saying, let's hook him for a meeting.
• 21:52
  Harry sending 20 emails a week. So then all of a sudden you find yourself in a meeting, which is great because you can learn. But you've just got to understand the angle that that buyer's agent's coming from because they will be trying to get you somewhere. So they're going to have an end goal in mind for you, whatever that product is. And that's how a lot of these buyer's agents see property now as a product.
• 22:14
  So try to get to that as quickly as you can with them in terms of their intention. Is it going to be a house and land package in regional Victoria? Is it going to be an off-the-plan apartment in Gold Coast? Massive flavour for that at the moment. Regional Queensland. Everyone should be investing in regional Queensland. How many times have I heard that? Darwin's now a new hotspot for certain buyers agencies. Get in there before the market. Just try to work out what their intention is because they're trying to get you from A to B to make a decision and how they do that, it's going to be very different from company to company, but it's going to be the same area.
• 22:41
  And not all have bad intentions. Majority have really, really good intentions. But some have been doing it a lot longer than others. And some have seen different cycles and markets. So that's where you want to get to the crux of it. And if they've been doing it for less than a decade, you've got concerns. They've only seen really a post-COVID cycle. If they've only been in the game since COVID,
• 23:01
  you know everyone's a sophisticated investor everyone's made money because since covid it's been it's been a bull run right so you know just be just be cautious ask the right questions i'm sure a lot of people have natural common sense when they know they've been sold to so you know experience in the game is a really really important one for me
• 23:18
  And you touched on it in that conversation where buyers agents with regional Queensland, Darwin, off the plan. Do buyers agents inflate prices? Like you're looking at somewhere like a regional Queensland or I think Darwin's had the most growth according to CoreLogic this year in terms of property prices.
• 23:37
  A lot of that, we keep our ear on the ground to competitors and other buyers agencies, especially from the investment side. And we know a lot of them are entering that market from an affordability standpoint. But do you see buyers agents flooding those markets and inflating the prices? Naturally inflate it. And we've taken advantage of that. A brilliant market was what we did locally in Rockingham and Mandurah. We got in there 12 months and then we released our research reports
• 24:06
  you know, to the market and then influx of, you know, 20 to 30 different buyers agencies entered the market after we were exiting, right? So you can be really strategic with it. My concern is people that get sucked into these regional areas late in the cycle, and we're seeing that now, you know, these regional markets that have essentially doubled in the last, you know, two, three years.
• 24:26
  And now you see vampires, they're just entering the market that late in the piece. Someone's going to be left holding, essentially a hot potato. Someone's going to be left holding that. And if you don't exit these regionals at the right time, you know, a lot of the stock that we've sold, we've sold back to buyers agencies that are entering these markets late in the cycle. You just feel sorry for the person's going to be left with that hot potato. And we've seen it.
• 24:48
  They'll typically go for the lowest market value areas that they can enter that they can support a story around, and that's typically population. So, you know, Gladstone's a great example, very small population centre. You can make an argument that the greater area's got 100,000 people, but deep down it's a 30,000 to 35,000 population centre.
• 25:10
  very fickle. 30% of the industry is made up of mining. If you look at the rise and fall, it's pretty significant. But if you got into that market four years ago, then you've doubled. If you got in there in the last 12 months, you're buying 80, 90% up from its original Boddering price. So I just have concerns about those areas. And there's a wave of these, you call them institutes, that go into these regional markets and drive values up.
• 25:40
  to the point where the local market won't be able to afford it. And once the local market can't afford a price, that's when you get the mass volatility in the market of significant upside followed by a potential significant downside. So I certainly wouldn't want our clients or any listeners out there to be holding that hot potato when the market's full.
• 26:00
  Hot potato, I like. We had Trent Fleskins in here a couple of weeks ago talking about cooked chickens and broccoli. Now we're talking about hot potatoes. Now we're moving on to hot potatoes, so thanks to that, Trent. And I guess in terms of the buyer's agencies, where do you see that going over the next three to five years as an industry? You mentioned America, every silver transaction has a buyer's agent representing them.
• 26:22
  Australia is- 6%, by the way. So in America, it's 3% commission fee paid by the selling agent and 3% commission paid by the buyer's agent. So every transaction, there's 6% of commission. It's crazy. It's crazy. But yeah, where do I see it going? We'll just look what buyer's agency as an industry has been the fastest growing profession in Australia over the last three years because the entry is quite limited, right? It's typically a real estate degree and that's been a little bit problematic because you get a lot of people that-
• 26:51
  like I said, may have been selling quals 12 months ago that are now a property expert. They may have been in nutrition or they could have been completely different industries altogether and they come in and overnight label themselves as a property expert.
• 27:06
  So where do I see it going? Until there's a Royal Commission or there's some higher entry requirements, which I hope there is, and we're part of the PIPICOL, we're trying to push for that just to, like the financial planning, it sort of got rid of a lot of the spruikers. And not everyone, like I said, I'm not here to say that everyone's terrible and we're amazing. It's not the case at all. Typically, I'd say most people have great intentions, but they just may not be super experienced in the industry, and that's a problem.
• 27:36
  but qualifications, high quality qualification entry points to get into the industry would be a great place to start. So I do see something coming and it may be a downturn in the market. Picture another GFC hitting the next three years. That would put a lot of these spruikers that have been buying in potentially volatile areas under question, which may cause a Royal Commission into the buyer's agent industry.
• 28:01
  Something to that effect I think will come in in the next five years, which will be great for the industry because it means that people have been around for a long time and do things ethically in the right way will stay and it may sort of remove some of those that have come in with the wrong intentions just to clip fees and probably push products, so to speak.
• 28:18
  But I do see over the next 12 to 18 months, we're going to see more entrants, significant entrants. Every second day, there's another buyer's age popping up, whether they're trying to buy homes or they're trying to buy investments. They're trying to get their pitch and their position in the market. You're going to see a lot more of it. And again, some of them are good. Some of them have been around for a while. Some have area specialisation.
• 28:38
  So yeah, I think there'll be a huge shakeup in the industry. I think it'd be great for the industry when it happens. But I think you've just got to understand that they're two very different spaces. So it's important as a starting point to identify what you're actually needing. If you need a buyer's agent at all, what you're trying to get is one investment specialisation or does one specialise in a local area? They're two very different things.
• 29:03
  So Lachlan, if there's a punter out there that has a specific location in mind that they want to invest in for an investment property, should they be reaching out to a buyer's agent or should they be reaching out to an investment advisor?
• 29:15
  Really good question because I guess there's a lot of information and you may get a preconditional context of where you want to invest. So then I guess the question is, should I use a local buyers agent in that area to get me the best deal because they've got foot feet on the ground or should I still steer towards that investment advisor that's going to give me sort of more of a broader context that may or may not have legs on the ground? Yeah, that is a really good question.
• 29:38
  They're two completely different skill sets. So I would be still leaning towards speaking to an investment advisory firm with the pre-context that they've got, hopefully national coverage. And to be fair, there's only one or two groups
• 29:53
  they actually do have national coverage. They have an office in all capital cities, not just a landing address. They've got an office there, there's no one. General national presence. There's only a couple that actually do have that presence, but I'd still be leaning towards that because buying an investment property, you still need to understand the fundamentals of what a good investment property is. And a typical buyer's agent that deals in buying homes doesn't always understand the investment fundamentals. And that is a huge distinction between the two.
• 30:21
  So yes, great question because people will have an area that Melbourne might be example. I really want to buy in Melbourne. Should I just use a local Melbourne buyer's agent to file me that investment property? My answer is no. I'd be still steering towards a property advisory firm that have boots on the ground and area expertise in that particular market. Yeah.
• 30:42
  And back to what I was saying earlier, what we love saying and what I love saying is the investment advisor should lead the customer, not the customer leads them. Yeah, a good investment may disagree. And I have a lot of challenging conversations with clients because my job's not to be told where they should be investing. I stand behind the data. And if I don't agree, which is 50%, I'd say, of my meetings –
• 31:04
  are completely against what they've come in with a pre-thought of where they should be investing in what they should be thought in because most people want to invest late in cycles because they've just cottoned on their friends made money in townsville or rockham or rockhampton or they've seen on social media that armadale has done 25 30 growth now i want to go invest in there it's like the sheep mentality where we're the opposite right we want to get in early and then have other buyers agencies come in late so
• 31:30
  Yes, the job of a good or a typical qualified property advisor is to tell the client with confidence and conviction based on their data where they should be investing. Absolutely understanding your situation and your pre-thought and where your research come from to understand where you may be wanting to invest. I'll consider that. But if I disagree, I'm telling you very straight. And if you don't want to choose to take that advice, it's completely up to your discretion.
• 31:53
  But if something goes wrong with that transaction, I didn't have data to bake that up, then I'm on the hook for that. So I'm not going to give you advice just because that's where you feel comfortable, Rhys. I'll give you advice based on what the data is telling us as a business and where I'm investing personally, because then I can stand behind the areas that we're buying for our clients.
• 32:10
  So, Lachlan, what's the verdict? Are buyers, agents, the new spruikers? Fact or fiction? Do you call bullshit? No, it's factual. I do. I think it is. It's a wave of what was once the house and land package salesman that, you know, I think a decade ago, go to a...
• 32:26
  go to an event, put your credit card up in the air if you want to make millions of dollars and then they sifle them in, all these house and land package estates. I think that wave of business is now transacted into regional markets, you know, by established property in regional markets. So I do, to some level, I think the buyer's ageing is the new spruiker in 2025. Make sure to join us next episode. Stay informed, stay curious and keep calling out the bullshit.