Amy Lunardi On Why Melbourne's Inner North Is Not One Market

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Welcome to Street Secrets, I'm Chris Bakes. In this studio with a long time friend, a fellow podcast host from the Australian Property Podcast, Amy Lunardi. How are you doing? I'm good, Chris. Very good.

Look, Amy, we do know each other very well and for a long time as well, prior to even starting the Australian Property Podcast together, which is obviously a completely different show that we do together, together with Pete.

But for those of you who don't know you and haven't heard about you, we've sort of got to delve back to And before you became a buyer's agent, when you started your journey, both within other organizations, but also running your own show for quite a long time now. And how's it going?

What's the story? And when did it all begin?

Sure. So from a real estate perspective, I've had my own business since 2020. So in the sixth year now. And then before that was a buyer's agent working for other businesses since 2012. So I'm in my 13th, 14th year now. Gosh. Yeah.

Prior to that, I studied economics commerce at university, had no idea what I wanted to do, started working for the government in sustainability and economics and very quickly realized that was not for me. The pace of government and just had no passion in it.

And I think it's really hard for anyone to find what they are passionate about.

in and I just I was always jealous of friends that I had who were working in the property industry but I didn't have much exposure to it but at some point I just decided I took a pay cut from I think I was on like 100 grand at 25 years old whatever it was down to 40 grand

Just to get my foot in the door in the property industry, started off in leasing and then just was extremely lucky to get an entry-level job in buyer's advocacy because it is quite hard to break into the buyer advocacy world.

Sometimes people hiring will want at least some experience, like maybe being a real estate agent beforehand. But I got another entry-level job there and I guess, yeah, the rest is history, Chris.

Yeah, I do think that background coming into buyers agency is really important.

I think everyone's and I've said this on probably every podcast to be honest on here, but it does give you a little bit of a unique skill set and knowing you personally as well, not just through professional sort of work as well.

You do have a very analytical brain and you do sort of have that sort of economic sort of background and educational background and thinking about things a bit deeper absolutely comes through. Is that sort of where you say it's really helped you as a BA?

Obviously there's soft skills, but there's also technical skills. What are some of the big benefits of your sort of prior history coming into becoming a BA?

I think that's always been a real strength of mine. I would say also sometimes to my detriment in that I go too far with due diligence and I'm extremely risk averse.

I've also learned over the years through seeing other people make mistakes, things that I've learned during the course of the business to say, okay, well, next time I will look at that differently. Even sometimes now I'll come across situations like, wow, that's a new situation in property that I haven't experienced before.

And always I'm wanting to learn and improve because of my risk aversion, because I care so much about the client outcome. You know, we are making these massive financial decisions alongside our clients. A lot of the time they are completely being guided by us. So for me, that's a lot of internal pressure.

And my combination of having like high attention to detail, trying to think outside the box, think about all of the various scenarios is good from a technical perspective, I think. But also then, like you said, you need a lot of soft skills in this job. We are managing with so many emotions, egos.

and we're not just dealing with our clients, we're dealing with the agents, we're dealing with our clients' families, the vendor, the vendor's families. You've got to really be in the middle to deal with so many different personalities.

I think our job is a lot of counselor, relationship advisor, rather than just providing that technical information. Maybe that's why AI is in no danger of, in my opinion, taking over our job anytime soon, Chris, maybe in the future though.

know you're very well up the tree uh then where they're going to be out of target because you're right there's so many emotions in it i'm a bit further down the tree from a breaking point of view but even we have to we're part of the process probably not as integral if i'm honest around the the emotions of buying and selling and you know that it moves way more into the property decision which is absolutely where you're at i mean was that some of the

The harder part is not only just the technical element of BABA, and that's something you've got a lot better over the years in sort of really delving deeper with clients and helping and giving them a much better journey than probably the early days.

And that's one of the challenges for a lot of BAs.

Oh, 100%. So every time you have an experience with anyone, whether it's your own clients or vendors or agents, I always think about it at the end. I'm like, okay, well, could I have done that differently? Learn from, you know, the way that certain people respond, certain personalities respond better.

People who are more analytical will do better if you provide them with more data. Other times people are more emotional and you have to really then understand, well, where is certain biases or previous experiences

influencing this so having also life experience I think you know I'm instead of being in my 20s I'm now nearly 42 and I've gone through my own renovations buying and selling you know I've

met thousands of agents and people over that time period so my own life experience now I think helps a lot when I'm managing people and I also I'm sure you know maybe you have this in your own business as well Chris I don't say yes to everyone who needs help because I need to be confident that I can help them as well and get them an outcome I don't want to charge people money if I don't feel like I can deliver them the results.

Yeah, absolutely. You've got to be able to give advice because someone has to be willing to listen and sort of take that on board. Otherwise, it gets a bit of tension early on. And as brokers, yeah, absolutely.

Clients could potentially just say, look, I want to go down a different strategy or whatever it is. At least we've given you advice. As buyers agents, it's a very close relationship. I say it.

you're picking a buyer's agent is yeah absolutely you might be able to find a few that are really technical experience but you've got to have a connection with them personally because i feel like it's a you know you've got to have that trusting relationship to be able to be open both ways right the ba and also the client needs to be open so i'm not feeling this or i'm worried about this and having that difficult conversation um you know used to not feel so difficult

And I think on that, I was thinking the other day, if I wasn't a buyer's agent, would I be a selling agent? And they're quite different roles, a selling agent, selling a product essentially, and we're more advisory. But I also was thinking about it and people will hire me because they trust me.

Whereas a lot of the time someone engages a real estate agent because they're They feel they have to. I mean, you can sell your own house if you really wanted to. But they're kind of then already not starting on a relationship built on trust.

So for me, that's always something that I never take for granted. And, you know, if a client doesn't get the right vibe with me for whatever reason at the start, we just won't work together. But I always then need to, like, I never take that trust for granted. It's a lot of responsibility.

Yeah, absolutely. As a true trusted advisor, though, you've got to, you know, not take any shortcuts and be there for them, you know, through it all and answer the questions, even if they feel like they're silly to the client. They're not silly at all, right?

They're just someone's, where they're at in their journey and their knowledge. They just need some gaps and dots joined and it's your job to sort of help them with that. I mean, today we're going to talk about the inner north of Melbourne, but I think you've You grew up in Melbourne.

I think you grew up in the southeast. You mentioned around the life and the personal experience. I do think I've become a better advisor as I get older. It's just, you know, you just don't know what you don't know.

And kids come, the challenges with that, you know, and so you're also in that same camp with a couple of young ones. But also the history within Melbourne, do you think that really helps you as well? Just, you know, not, for example, like a new person moving to Melbourne.

How is that helping you as a beer bearer?

Oh, definitely. So having grown up in Melbourne and I've lived in various locations, grew up in the southeast, worked in the west for seven years, lived in the west briefly. Now I'm based in the north.

But then I also do the inner eastern suburbs of Boroondara because I've just become very familiar with them over the years, having clients there.

And I think an extra little skill that I seem to have is I've just got a really good memory and I've really, I don't know what it's called, like a map spatial awareness. Like once I learn about an area and a street and location, it becomes ingrained in me.

And I think that's really worked to my advantage, but I've certainly become specialists in pockets. And if I've ever got clients who don't come to me and say, I'm looking in this particular area. I'll say, look, I'm not familiar with that location. I don't think I'm the best person to you.

Here's someone else who I could recommend. Because having that intrinsic knowledge and having those relationships with agents too, I know that there are some advocates that might say, oh, I've got all these relationships, but they've never actually transacted with those agents or established a reputation in that area.

So I think that you need to have feet on the ground. I couldn't I couldn't even contemplate doing interstate, let alone a suburb that I'm completely unfamiliar with, with confidence.

Yeah, I think absolutely. I think you, as you get more experience, you realize, oh, I thought I knew that area, but then I didn't know it. I didn't know it was a rat on there or it was locals in that area absolutely hated that pocket for X, Y, Z reason.

And yeah, hang on a second. You really need to know somewhere to actually help clients make good decisions. Now, even looking at data and past sales just isn't enough, right? So we talk about the inner north. It's a very attractive pocket, right? Like, you know, for first-time buyers, for investors, you know,

you know, for upgraders, you know, even downsizers. So how do you think about it in terms of breaking it down in your mind, the different pockets and how you sort of help clients, you know, think about those different pockets?

I would say most of the time before someone comes to us, they've got a pretty firm idea of where they want to end up in terms of North, East, South and West. Occasionally we'll have some crossover with North and West because you've got somewhat comparable price points, not completely.

But other times in the strategy sessions at the start, and we don't charge anything for what I call the homework phase, pardon the pun, with clients to get a really good sense of where they're looking. But I often encourage people if they're looking at, say, a tiny townhouse close

closer in in the southeast versus a big house in the middle ring north say to them like the price might be the same but that lifestyle and that strategy is completely different so i would really encourage you to have a think about that before you then go on your purchase journey because you're comparing real apples and oranges here

Yeah, so when you go the inner north, obviously you've got a few different train lines, right? You've got the Alpha, you've got the Northcote, you've got the Preston and you've got the Brunswick and you've got even Kensington. It's quite congested in there as well.

What are some of the challenges that you find? even though it's so close to the city, there's a lot to sort of understand, you know, like you said, geographically around, you know, where to avoid and where to look and it's just a lot going on.

Yeah, and there are certain pockets in the north which are, you know, much more high density social housing pockets, which we just always need to be mindful of because that is something that impacts value, livability, et cetera.

And I would say one of the bigger challenges from a livability perspective in the north is There isn't as much decent options for private schooling if that's something which is important to people, same as the western suburbs in Melbourne.

So then we do have quite a few families in the inner north commuting to Boroondara, Kew, Hawthorne, et cetera, to get to those private schools. It's not ideal, but that's just, yeah, there's limited options there.

And is there a good like public alternatives? Cause I mean, primary people are pretty relaxed with, but you know, high school, they get a bit more nervous.

Yeah, there are a few, but yeah, certainly not of the same, I guess, decision-making, you know, if you're comparing it to private schools.

yeah it's it's just different but you can make the commute but also you just get so much more bang for your buck in the north in comparison to say burundara and therefore people weigh up that decision of well maybe it's going to take me

you know, an extra 20-minute drive, half an hour drive each way, but I get to live in a much bigger house and on the weekends I've got a bigger yard and, you know, maybe they prefer the community of the north and the east. For whatever reason, they make that judgment call.

But, yeah, that's just one of the limitations we come up with with north buyers.

Yeah, you mentioned high density in the north. Yeah, potentially, you know, social housing, there's nothing wrong with that. But, you know, like there's some challenges with, you know, areas that are changing a lot and plus not... What are some of the other challenges in that pocket?

I mean, you know, when I think about it, I've got trains, you've got trams, you've got roads, you've got rat runs, you've got... you know, some pockets that are backing onto commercial.

What's some of the other things that you're really trying to help clients when they're thinking about the inner north is, you know, really be a bit nervous around these type of properties, try to drive them to certain pockets, you know, access to green space. What are some of the other things?

Well, I think we just overlay the same as what we do in a lot of other areas in that just because a suburb... And this is where data can be really challenging, Chris, as you would know, because the data is generally broken down by a suburb basis. So the...

median values or you know the properties that are going to perform best in one part of that suburb could be completely wildly different to another part of that suburb so before you're starting to purchase especially if you're not super familiar with that area it's just getting intimate and really understanding what are the more desirable pockets what are the less desirable pockets but still nice areas so that might be less desirable just because there's not as much amenity but it's still lovely and family friendly

You might say, okay, well, my drive is longer to the shops or school or station, but that's fine, versus the pockets that are undesirable for reasons which are unchangeable and will impact your livability.

For example, like you said, factories being more near the high-density social housing pockets, just completely cut off by a freeway, for example. Always at the start, I'm helping to educate clients if they aren't as familiar, whereas some of my clients, they know every single street in the suburb.

I don't need to tell them what's going on. But then we say, okay, well, if you are only looking in one suburb and one pocket of a suburb, well, then either we're waiting a long time for the right property or we need to consider where else is going to give you similar options.

Have you noticed over the last sort of five years or whatever it might be that you've had to sort of explore a little before, whether it's budgets, whether it's clients' appetite to spend less, whether it's they're wanting more, their buyer preferences have shifted, they're willing to go a bit further from the city because they get a bit more land and work from home.

You know, and that's explored into a place like Glenroy or, you know, Reservoir or, you know, you find that the buyers are also shifting. And, you know, I'm more open to the stereotypical, I want to be, you know, Fitzroy or Brunswick or, you know, Northcote.

You know, a lot of the northern buyers are a little bit more flexible on where they end up.

I have both because we've got those people who are, I guess, earlier in their stage of life who do prefer a bit more space. And they are the ones that I think I've got to buy right now. Living in Collingwood, they're moving out to Greensboro.

And she keeps saying, I can't believe I'm moving to Greensboro. But she's got two kids now and she just loves the idea of having that yard and local little community. Whereas I've got some other clients who perhaps they're downsizing and they're wanting to get back into the vibe.

You know, they've been living in the outer suburbs for a while and they want to live close to Gertrude Street or, you know, in a great apartment in Stonington. So downsizers are also clients that we help. And yeah, they want to be living the vibe. Yeah, exactly.

So I've got a mix of both.

And I think that's when you're looking at a property, right? Can it suit those multifaceted sort of demand, right? So the downsides is coming. What a young family like that. What a couple want.

Because you are still going to see those people at the first time buyers that are pre-kids stage just going, well, yeah, I'm happy to. I'm not having kids or I'm a single. And so the sort of Greensboro pocket is an interesting one as well, right? That sort of L firm sort of Fairfield

sort of train line like what sort of drives people down there a little bit more because that's kind of also I feel you know personally a little bit undiscovered compared to the stereotypical sort of Northcote train line yeah so getting more towards the Banyule location so I've got buyers who will sometimes for example be looking at both Preston and Rosanna so from a like a longitude perspective if you look on the map like yes Rosanna is a little bit further northeast but they're sort of similar like

not too far away from each other basically but if we go along that train line it's very beautiful leafy and green there's a lot of vegetation overlays and landscape overlays which really protects the greenery of those areas really peaceful a lot quieter like the villages themselves are a bit more like they're not as trendy as if we're going along high street for example through north at thornbury preston

But you take Greensboro as an example, and it's such a huge suburb too. We've got pockets which are a bit more, you know, smaller blocks and quite flat versus going north of the freeway, very hilly, bigger blocks. Just, you know, within each suburb, there's often little micro pockets that you need to be...

aware of.

But I think somewhere like Watsonia, Greensboro, that's just a nice blend for buyers who are wanting to get a little bit further out, more space, without going all the way to somewhere like Eltham, where you do really feel like you're in the suburbs and the houses are further apart, massive blocks, which is beautiful and suits the people who live out there.

But yeah, some areas are for certain buyers undiscovered and unexplored, and always say, go do that before we start working together if you're unsure. Let's get the locations down, Pat, because otherwise, just say we were saying, okay, well, maybe we'd consider Rosanna, And I find you the dream property within two weeks.

And you say, oh, I really love this house, but I'm just not sure about the area. Let's figure out that area first. Because then we don't want to miss out on the dream home because we're not sure if we want to live in that location. You've got to spend time in the area.

You've got to drive around, practice the commute to work, go and hang out in the village for a few weeks in a row. Look at the people walking around.

Because I can tell someone, hey, I love this suburb just because I love it doesn't mean they're going to love it as much as I do.

Yeah, I think sometimes people are worried about doing the work because they're going, hang on a sec, I might love it. And I was so pigeonholed on this idea and I can't deal with another idea.

And then they get there and I'm sure you've shown them properties and they're like, what, we can get this for our money in this location? And oh, wow, that's actually a really cute high street. And actually, we could see this happen.

And I think that's what a great, someone with a lot of knowledge can do, you know, it's And also the ability to sort of challenge someone thinking and know intrinsically like other ideas. Oh, yeah, this could be work. And part of your role is actually that hunting phase, right?

It's sort of sniffing out the opportunities that sometimes you've got to be creative with them. And how does it sort of your agent relationships evolved over the years to allow you also to get better results, not just speed, but actually getting access and all the other things?

So I like to think that we've got a really good, when I say we, myself and my business, we've got a great reputation in the real estate industry. I know, and this is just from agents talking to me, there are some buyers agents out there that they are not calling.

They don't want to call because either they've burnt them in some way, they're hard work, like they don't trust them for whatever reason. I've always been very careful to... There's plenty of agents out there who I really don't like them as people, you know, we've butted heads now and again.

But I have to be Switzerland in my job because I might need something from them in the future. I'm never going to completely speak my full mind about, you know, someone because I have to preserve that relationship. But I think what I'm also very proud of is...

i put in the hard work in terms of my main maintaining communication i don't just send an email out every week i don't just rely on you know junior staff member to make these calls like i am making calls every day every week to real estate agents and i don't think that all buyers i know that all buyers agents don't do that and i'm very proud of that because it's it's more work but

But it helps to, first of all, get me access to things that I never would have known about. It makes me be front of mind for those agents as well. Just improves my reputation on their end too.

So I think that that's unbeatable with agent relationships is just not relying on them contacting you and also not relying on just emailing them as well.

Yeah, I mean, I've seen you do that with mutual clients is, you know, there's nothing really and all of a sudden you've got this pre-market option on the table, you know, you're getting access to it and you've sort of, you've hustled to make that opportunity, you know, from what I can see, right, that it wasn't even the agent came to you, it's because you called and you created it and there's, oh, actually, you know what, I'm thinking about this one coming up in the future and that could be a good fit for what you're talking about and all of a sudden you've

I weasel my way in, Chris, if I get a sniff of anything. And also, I have plenty of agents who will tell me, hey, Amy, I missed this listing. It's going with another agent, but it could suit your client.

They get nothing out of that for them, but they're doing it as a favor to me. So that to me, I was like, okay, this is really great. Like they respect me enough to give me, you know, a hot tip here.

But it's just what I call polite nagging, like constantly nagging the real estate agents. And last year, my long-term average is buying a third of our clients' properties off market. Last year, it was 75%. In winter, it was 90%, 9-0 last year. That was just through the sheer hustle.

And I had an inquiry come through and it's like, oh, you know, prove it. I'm like, I'm happy to prove all of this. I've got all the data and got all statistics. I'm sure there's plenty of businesses advocates out there who say, well, you buy almost everything off market.

But I think as a buyer, you have the right to confirm that because I know we do a lot because we put in the hard yards to get those properties.

is one of those touchy topics, right? You know, it gets misused. Generally buying off-market such pre-market is, you know, is potentially an opportunity the market hasn't seen and it was maybe, you know, a really good deal and it was a really motivated vendor and you ended up getting a great result.

Sometimes it's not the case with off-markets, right? And so what do you...

Sometimes they're a waste of time. Although sometimes, Chris, they might be.

off market perfect home for the client not a bargain sometimes even a very slight premium but the client's like i don't care i need to have this property i don't want to take the risks of it going online as long as i can give them that information and explain to them well i think there's a x percent chance that it's going to go over or under if it goes online that's at least a decision that they can then make but the whole point with off markets is to have more choice and sometimes a bargain which is which is a bonus

Yeah, I mean, it's always a needle in the haystack, right? The search process, you feel like you've got better and better. Yeah, finding the going, you know, because it's not just your, the client's money, it's their client's time, right? And time could equal money.

It might not because the market might not be going anywhere. But, you know, sometimes really getting the client to push the, you know, to press the go button when the right property comes on. Do you find that every year you're getting better at that, you know, in terms of,

you know, really, you know, if you feel like something's a little bit off with the brief or it's not achievable or, you know, they're wanting something that is just not going to happen, you're getting better. And then I guess, you know, making that process much more enjoyable because you're dealing with it upfront.

I've always just found that honesty is just the best form of client communication. And I've had one client at the moment for over six months. And I've just said to her, like, you've looked at more properties than all of my other clients almost combined. You've only had one green light.

You know, that to me suggests we need to have a shift in expectations or, you know, talk about what we change from here. More often, I give clients their own tools and I say, okay, this property, especially if we've only been looking for a few weeks, you really like this one.

You're not sure if something better is going to come up. Here's a way to help figure that out. You do a benchmarking exercise. Let's talk about it. And then they'll say, oh, actually, it's a really good one based on that exercise you gave me. Let's go for it.

And so it's instead of me telling them that, I help them realize it themselves. That's so much more powerful. Yeah.

And potentially sometimes they're focusing on a sale or a property that they never saw. They never knew what actually happened on the sale. Correct. There's no photos. And they're like, well, if that's all for that, I want to pay this. And it's like, actually, there's a lot going on here you don't know.

And sometimes they're basically stuck in a process. In terms of the inner north, and the different briefs, I mean, how are you sort of finding those different markets? You've got the starter ones, you've got, say, maybe the mid range, and then also you've got this sort of the top end.

And how do you sort of help clients get confidence to sort of spend a bit more money in those markets when they potentially would often have thought, well, if I'm spending two million, I want to go to the east or I want to go Bayside. But that seems a lot in the north.

How do you sort of counteract that and encourage them to say, well, no, you get a lot more for your money, I guess?

So what I said earlier before, they are usually pretty set on where they want to be before they come to me.

The main difference is if I've got clients that are not familiar with Melbourne and then we're going on a bit more of an education process around, okay, well, this is the type of properties we can get in these locations. This is the different... pros and cons of all of these areas.

Do you want the beach? Do you want the bush? Like we have to go on a much more exploratory phase if they're either from interstate or especially if they're expat, they haven't been here for a long time. So in which case it's a lot more reliant on me guiding them.

But I would say more commonly, if someone's already living in Melbourne, they've got a pretty good sense of where they want to be, northeast, south or west. And, you know, that's often because of friends, family, schoolwork, a lot of things.

I find that sometimes people are willing to sort of maybe spend a bit more. In Melbourne market in particular, I would say there's just a bit of conservatism around, you know, not potentially, you know, spending more money. I would find that's why it's not at the top of the market.

Maybe you might not be finding that on the ground, but you do get a lot more value for money, I would say, at the moment than you have done in the previous.

So when you think about the North, obviously there was sort of these natural sort of lines that people didn't want to go. Maybe it was Bell Street or...

You know, but there's new infrastructure happening with East West and, you know, is there any sort of pockets that you're still finding are really hard for clients to sort of get their heads around and they're not willing to sort of go on this side of the freeway or they don't want to go into this part of suburbs because it's really hard with public transport or whatever it might be?

Yeah, I would say the Ring Road, for example, like I rarely have clients that will look in both Reservoir and Thomastown Laylaw, for example, because it does just change quite a lot in terms of street sets, demographics, types of properties, amenity, once you go over the freeway.

The Bell Street thing is definitely a thing for some people. But I think that a lot of people have now realised that, you know, the stuff along High Street, the amenity is moving further north. We've got You know, the Preston market redevelopment plans, et cetera.

And you just do get more land and more options a little bit more north. And it's a five minute drive to High Street, for example.

But there are still pockets, you know, in, for example, around Hadfield and those areas where I, again, don't have as many people wanting to be in those areas because the amenity is just quite low. It's a bit the public transport, the shops, all of that. It's not uncommon.

You have that wherever you go and then those clients might say, well, instead of going deeper that way, let's just go into a completely different suburb to add into the mix rather than a neighboring suburb.

I've talked to people over the years, especially investors who have said, this suburb has to perform because it's next to that suburb because previously there's been that spillover effect sometimes where people get pushed out. But sometimes people don't want to just go to the next suburb.

They'd rather go to a different suburb because they need the train line. They need the shops. So it doesn't always work that way. And we've got little holes in Melbourne, certain areas where the values are much lower for those reasons. And then they're surrounded by more expensive locations.

Yeah, I think the last boom, it was like the pressure cooker to be close enough as you possibly can to the city because everyone's going in five days and time is money.

And, you know, we don't want to be, and as parents, you don't want to be too, you know, limit the commute time as much as possible. So high on people's by preferences.

And I think that's one of the things is you would just naturally people would go to the next suburb because they're like, I don't want to be going too far because it's already feels a lot.

I think maybe Melbourne shifted a lot, right, with the changes for work from home and people wanting space and, you know, wanting to spend more time in their local community rather than, you know, in the city. Awesome. So I think obviously with the inner north, you've got lots of buyers.

What would be the X if you get those sort of cross briefs? You mentioned sort of the southeast. If you do find someone from an investment point of view, is there any other pockets you sort of also explore for clients?

Well, for investors, we always start off with, you know, the bigger parts of the brief, which is the budget, the yield requirements, the preferences around dwelling types. Some clients are like, I have to have a house with land. I don't care what you say, Amy, I have to have that.

And then we're more limited in where we can look. Or other clients, like I really want low maintenance or I really want a high yield or for whatever reason. That then determines where we go.

So I always start with that brief and that brief will then say to me, well, we've got these options. For example, a client who doesn't need a house on a full block, they're still on an area which is quite well established and higher incomes, we might do something like,

a villa unit on its own piece of land it might be two or three in a block but a good size one so say 1.2 million dollars you're spending that will then appeal we can get into a blue tip location it'll be low maintenance decent yield and then we're dealing sorry we're appealing to first home buyers but also downsizes and this aging population of people who are selling this

you know, multimillion dollar houses, but still want to stay in that area. And then we say, okay, well, let's, we need to make sure we have a garage. We need to make sure it's single level, all these things that then appeal to the baby boomers.

So there's a lot that goes into the decision around the investment brief. I never would just say to someone, I will just go north because, you know, the north has performed and will continue to do so. Like it has to suit the brief.

Yeah, I think, you know, typical, a lot of investors would be going, oh, I just want a house. That's what I had in Perth or Brisbane or I know houses go up more than apartments, but you're right. It's exploring.

Is there anything that's offer like living in a house or like living, you know, that could offer you a single lifestyle? And those buildings are very common in Melbourne. And then obviously you've got the new townhouses and the older type townhouses down there as well.

And I think that you've got the apartments with the older apartments and the newer apartments. Melbourne's built a lot, but it doesn't mean that everything's been going up at the same rate. Is there any parts of the north that you worry about though?

Like, yeah, there is a desire to keep building, you know, Preston, if you mentioned before, or even Brunswick and, you know, there is a high density coming. Is there any sort of, you know, how do you sort of factor that into, you know, your decisions when you're guiding clients?

Do you try to stay away from them? And do you sort of aware of where there's potentially more supply coming?

Well, there's mainly when it comes to density, because we are in landlocked areas, it's really a case of either subdividing and that is still happening.

And they've relaxed the laws around subdividing, which I actually think is great because I think we need more townhouses and decent sized properties on land. But when it comes to apartments, I mean, that's always something that I've tried to avoid anyway, especially the newer apartments from an investment perspective.

And there have been talks around much higher density along High Street, for example. But it's also when it comes to planning, and I've learned this over the last decade plus, is just because something is proposed doesn't mean it will happen too.

Just because something is allowed to happen doesn't mean that the developer and buyer appetite will filter through. If you've got a suburban street where you can build four storeys up

you know and have these tri-level of townhouses do people actually want to buy those so we definitely whenever it comes to extra council changes or statewide planning changes we want our clients to be aware of stuff and how that could risk introduce risk in the future but i think for me it more impacts the apartment market because when we're talking about scarcity like these is mostly to do with going up rather than out

And I encourage, I think it's great for these big blocks with old dilapidated houses to potentially put jewel locks and those types of properties on and increase the density in an area of population without going up and utilising that extra land. Sorry, the land that's already there.

Yeah, what's possible, even if something gets lodged in application, there's still a long process till it actually gets built and sold. And, you know, can they actually sell it? Does there a buy demand for it? Can people get finance for it?

You know what though, Chris, just on that with apartments, like there have been some amazing developers doing apartments here in Melbourne, like Nightingale and Milieu. Those are phenomenal apartments. They are livable, they are spacious, they're boutique, they're well-considered. I would love to see more of those.

We've got a lot in, you know, Fitzroy and Brunswick and the areas where people value them and will pay for them. But, you know, I saw one recently. It was a two-bedder. It sold for only $1.5 million in Brunswick. Like, that is beyond the affordability of a lot of apartment buyers.

I don't know how there would be encouragement for more of that to happen because not everyone can afford it. But those kind of apartments definitely buck the norm of what we think of as traditional apartments.

And this is why data can also be really challenging, Chris, is because data lumps units and houses. That's it. There's two categories. But within the unit category, you've got townhouses, villas.

two box apartments big apartments like you can't look at them and make decisions based on that type of data unfortunately

Yeah, and then you've got in the apartments, you've got the ones that were warehouse conversions that have been done amazing in older buildings that are completely unique.

Obviously, sometimes we challenge us in those buildings, but sometimes the scarcity of just the building being part old, part new as well is just so desirable as well. So, yeah, I think there's a lot going on in that pocket. I do feel like you really need to understand that

you know, what makes those suburbs tick, where the people really want to live, the streets they don't want to be on, the risks of development, you know, roads, et cetera. And so sometimes even though it's so confined, there's actually even potentially even more complexity than say, you know, some of the fringes suburbs.

And so thanks so much for coming on today, Amy. Obviously we've worked with clients many times for many years and, you know, if you're looking to engage the team, you're in super safe hands. And so thanks so much for the chat today.

Thanks for the invite, Chris.

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you got lots of value out of it. If you'd like to speak to our guests today, there's links in the show notes on how you can get in contact.

And if you're buying your first home, upgrading, renovating, or need any finance-related queries, obviously we'd love to help. There's links in the show notes to us as a mortgage broker, and we look forward to next week's episode.