Claire Corby on Buying Well in Canberra

There was a big learning curve for sales agents who thought that I was there for their commission. It was difficult in those early days. And I often thought it would be, you know, the young agents, but actually it was really established older sales agents that didn't like this new way of doing business.

And it was really winning them over and educating them and getting them on board to say, hey, I can help in this process. I can make it easier for you. Our motto is buy without regrets. And so...

If you can buy a property that will serve you for 10 years as opposed to three years, that will serve you well. Buying a great property today, that's not just what it's about.

It's also getting something that could be ripe for improvement when the time is right for that investor or for the next buyer. You think about, right, lifestyle, what's important to you? How do you get to work? What do you need for your family? What amenities like parks and shops?

Then you look at the budget.

Welcome to Street Secrets. I'm Chris Bates, and my mortgage broadcast is 2013.

And in this podcast, we're going to be interviewing Australia's leading buyer's agents, ones with decades of experience, have the local insider knowledge on the street, and can really help you with your buying process, no matter whether you're a first home buyer, upgrade, or investor.

In this podcast, you'll get access to Australia's leading buyer's agents' minds every week on a Thursday. What's the word on the street?

Welcome to Street Secrets. I'm Chris Bates. I'm super excited today to be heading to the ACT to talk to Claire Corby. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

Claire, look, we've known each other for some time and we've had clients that have worked with you over the years and obviously we know you, but our listeners might not.

So I always like to unpack at the start a little bit about your history and how you got into buyer's agency when you started and what you did before. I always find it interesting to know what someone did.

Yeah, the pathways aren't often a linear one, but sometimes you look back and as they say, the dots just make perfect sense when you connect them. My journey did not start out in property per se. I always loved property though.

And I remember when I was a young girl, we'd drive around town and I would like look over in my booster seat of the backseat of the car and watch suburbs pop up as they did in the 80s. And Canberra kind of grew a little bit and emerged.

So property was always my thing. As a teenager, I would grab the Saturday paper, lift out when it was old, you know, old school. And my dad would grab motoring, brother grabbed sport, all the rest of it. My mom would get the obituaries.

And I'd grab property section and just, yeah, just dive into it. In school, my forte was numbers. So I really fell quite easily into the world of accountancy and finance and followed that through. I very quickly found out that I was actually a square peg in a round hole.

Sadly, but it was lucky for me that I landed with a really lovely big firm and got into tax advisory work. So for me, I loved tax advisory, but then quickly realized that maybe tax wasn't the subject matter that I really would bleep out of bed for.

So when I had my kids, I had my mat leave, I started to dabble a little bit more in my own property investing world and got to the point where I could actually, I left the world of accountancy and government work by then as well.

But again, really helpful to have that really solid foundation and that base behind you. So, yeah, just dabbled a little bit, spent about five years as just a full-time property investor slash small-scale development side of things and cut my teeth there.

But I found that really lonely, just being self-employed and having young kids. By that time, my second had come along. So I started up a monthly meetup for like-minded property investors. I had no idea that, you know, buyer's agency was even a thing. But just once a month, we organized a guest speaker

So someone could come along on each different topic and just dive a little bit into it. Or if the speaker pulled out or if something happened, I would just get up and present what deal I was working on and how I came about it. And here's my Excel feasibility study. Great.

Let's get stuck into this. And through that, people started asking for a little bit of help and advice and everything. And I knew from my background where that line was on what I could say and what I couldn't. And it was actually a really, really timely meeting and call it a meeting.

It was a dinner with my husband and we were talking about the future and what I would do if I'm not going back to accounting and I wasn't really loving just full-time development side of things. What could I do? And he said, well, why don't you just be like this property advisor thing?

That seems to be going really well. That floats your boat. I was like, oh, this is not, you can't charge for that. This is not a paid gig. But lo and behold, it was. So I launched the agency back in 2014 and have a look back.

So were there any other ones in Canberra then? Like, was there any other buyer's agency? It feels now strange, right? Cause you know, like it's quite common and the market is more mature right around the country.

People know what it was and maybe it was Melbourne and Sydney that predominantly had a lot of buyer's agents back then. But what was it like in 2014? Were you the first? Was there many others?

Yeah, there was a big education learning curve for sales agents who thought that I was there for their commission. They thought that I was there to cut them out of the deal.

So it took a long time to build that trust with sales agents and to get them to know, hey, I'm actually, I'm here. I'm not just on the other side of the transaction, but let's work together. So I felt like it was difficult in those early days.

And I often thought it would be the young agents who were not so keen on working with me and they're there to hustle and grind and all those other buzzwords.

But actually it was a lot of the really established older sales agents that didn't like this new way of doing business and who do you think you are and I want to meet your buyer.

And it was really winning them over and educating them and getting them on board to say, hey, I can help in this process. I can make it easier for you.

When do you think it started to shift? Was it like 2020, 2019? Like when did it, like they started to hear your name around, a few other buyer's agents maybe have popped up. Is it still a little bit like a country town in that way?

Is it still you're fighting that a little bit?

Yes, definitely. Canberra is very small. We are just a big country town. Everyone knows everyone, especially like me. I'm a third generation Canberran. I can't turn left without someone knowing about it or, you know, your reputation preceding you.

So knowing who's who in the zoo, there have been a few over the years, people, moonlight, you know, sometimes I'm a buyer's agent, sometimes I'm wearing this other hat as well. I'm a part-time or at the other end, I'm a sales agent and I don't really want to hang up my hat.

I kind of like what I'm doing, so there's been a few over the years. But in terms of like a full-time dedicated 100% buyer's agency, there's very few.

I like what you say there, obviously you're growing up, you're third generation in Canberra. I do think that really helps you as a buyer's aide when you've got that real knowledge, right?

When you've grown up and you've seen the city evolve or, you know, so if you break down the sort of the Canberra market and obviously it's had a bit of a run in recent years and it's had a bit of a tougher time in the last couple of years.

And so like, you know, how is it sort of evolving as a city? And if you had to break it down into different parts, how would you think about it?

Yeah, good question. I always see and tend to describe Canberra as a bit of a teenager. So we had that when I was younger. There wasn't so much of a nightlife or in terms of things to do. People would often say, oh, Canberra's boring.

I find in recent years, people are often saying, wow, Canberra's changed. It's different. And I feel like it is maturing. We started to get more of The hipster scene in our inner north and our inner south and all of the treescapes, everything's quite leafy and established.

We ticked over for the Canberra having our 100-year centenary back in, I think, 2013. So that in itself just, I guess, it's coming of age a little bit. And there is more to do. There is certainly really strong restaurant scene and art scene and all that quality of life.

Canberra's top of the ranks from that. There was a recent study, where is the best place to raise a family in Australia? Well, South Canberra came up on top for the entire country. So it's a bit of a, I often describe it, yeah, it's a teenager, it's emerging, it's growing.

We've got a bit more development happening here. There's a few more high rises with that cumbersome risk as well, naturally. But it's also, it can offer a really great quality of life.

And so when people are, I guess, coming to Canberra, I mean, is it still very much concentrated around the government sector or is that sort of also evolving? Are you starting to see, how's it shifting around that?

Yeah, it certainly is shifting. When we look, you know, I guess tend to look mostly at census data, but also it's about if they're not in government work, are they perhaps in supporting government work? You know, the consultancies or everyone that feeds into the running of government.

That is slowly shifting over the years. And I think they are as well, you know, the Canberra government's always trying to encourage small business here. Now that we've had the airport group really invest out in the Canberra airport to make it much more of an international base. Thank you COVID for interrupting that.

But I can tell you clearing customs at Canberra airport is so much easier. It takes all of five minutes than going through, you know, Sydney or Melbourne. But it's, yeah, it's certainly something that over the years it's grown and evolved.

And I guess so how's the overall city sort of evolving in terms of its like wealth and like when you're sort of factoring it in to help buyers, what's some of the sort of ways that you're sort of helping them, I guess, pick the right location?

Yes, very important to get the location right because there was an old saying in Canberra, everything's 20 minutes to everything else. Those days are gone. And now as we're getting more and more urban sprawl and more land release, there is a bit more of congestion in and around.

So people will often say, I'm coming from Sydney, like a 45 minute commute is fine. Well, you acclimatise fairly quickly. And there's a lot of people move here and then go, oh, no, I need to move closer in. I'm not happy with this when I could be there in 10 or 15 minutes.

So it really depends largely on budget. But there are some wonderful really lifestyle centres where people can have the best of a different area. They don't need to be super hyper central.

And I think part of that comes down to Canberra being such a planned city that we do have those town centres that are dotted around the town. So you can easily live your life without having to come into the city necessarily.

Not that's an arduous task, but it just means that you have much more within your little world out there. So there's much more to offer from that side of things too.

So let's say it's that Sydney couple sort of moving to Canberra. They're not from there, got a family there, because I think that would obviously be a big part of the Canberra economy, right? People growing up there, maybe they go to the city and they come back for their family stage.

I reckon that the brain drain, maybe they don't leave now, maybe they can stay in Canberra. You know, it's not so exciting moving to the capital, you know, the capital cities around the country. But I mean, how does that sort of Sydney interstate buyer

moving to Canberra, making this lifestyle shift, where do they go wrong where they buy not what the locals want and they sort of have their rose-coloured glasses on?

Yeah, they can make some really common mistakes sometimes coming in and treating it like, oh, everything here, it's almost compared to say the Sydney and Melbourne markets, perhaps especially Sydney, everything looks so comparatively cheap.

So sometimes they can fall into the trap of, look, this looks fine on paper and they just bid perhaps at auction because we have such an auction-centric culture here on the basis of social proof.

rather than really knowing the nuances and breaking down in terms of knowing your pricing and knowing where the locals pull up. And, you know, maybe that's even then it's a little bit lofty and having some strategies in place.

So I think, you know, sometimes when you're coming in from another town, especially from the biggest city, which we often find people do, you know, they're coming down, perhaps they've moved away in their twenties and lived life a little bit, you know, have a bit of fun, perhaps gone overseas on a stint.

Or potentially we often get Canberra is a revolving door for the military and the diplomatic families. And that is a large part of what we do and who we service as well.

So getting them to perhaps buy before they come back to Canberra and can land safely by sight unseen, there's some big risks in doing that without great support behind you.

If you've got the sales agent just giving you a quick walkthrough on their phone, well, you can be sure they're not perhaps going to show you all the bad parts of the home that might turn you off as closely as a buyer's agent with your best interests at heart would do.

If money wasn't really a challenge, what's the dream sort of lifestyle that people are all trying to replicate? Whether they can afford it in X suburb or whether they have to maybe go a little bit further away, they're still trying to appeal to that same type of lifestyle.

What's the sort of aspiration sort of side that the families want in Canberra?

Yeah, Canberra aspirationally can really tick a lot of boxes. So families can have a big backyard, you know, room to kick a ball, run around, ride bikes down the street safely, walk to and from school safely. They don't necessarily need to worry about that.

The commute can be 20 minutes is very doable, 30 minutes perhaps, depending where you are. And that's just about quality of life too. And just not feeling like you've got traffic or you've got crime around you as much. It's just having a very relaxed state of being.

Some people come to us and say, I grew up in the 80s, I'm a kid of the 80s or the 70s or the 90s or somewhere around there, right? And I really want my children to have that same experience, to just be relaxed and I don't have to worry as much.

And we're not spending our lives trapped in the car and trapped by the commute and saying, oh, you know, your friend at school, well, we can't be friends with them because they live two hours away.

Even though we're in the same city, that's not really going to work for us, so we can't be friends. We get a lot of families coming down, but also downsizers. who perhaps might have spent their family, you know, raised a family interstate, but the city has changed where they are.

And they don't like that pace anymore. They just want something very relaxed. You know, Canberra, you can still park at the door in most places. So it's very, very relaxed, laid back, like we said, a big country town, but yet you've still got all the city conveniences at your doorstep too.

And is there any real preference to be in the South Canberra or the North or like, is there any sort of lifestyle benefits that people really want to sort of gravitate closer toward?

The North side versus South side argument is very, very deep. It runs deep through people's blood. I have changed sides of the lake. So look, I can be a little bit detached and objective about this. Being a long-term Canberran, I think I've got friends and or family in every single suburb of Canberra.

People feel very passionately about that. I think the benefit of Canberra, though, is that you can choose where you live and your lifestyle around that. It doesn't need to be north or south of the lake or any particular pocket.

Some people really love the leafy tree-lined aspect you get in the more central suburbs, perhaps. But in saying that, some of our suburbs right up the very north are now 20, 30 years old.

And those streets, beautifully tree-lined as well, are becoming more mature and the trees are touching, you know, as you go along. And that gives a lovely feeling to it without having to go to a home that's 100 years old.

Is it really just that north is a little bit newer and the south is a little bit more old established and the trees are... Is there anything other major why people get so emotional over the argument?

Sometimes also you get mid-century buffs. So you get people coming and loving the mid-century architecture that's here in Canberra. They really love that style, whether it's more of your 50s style or it's more tending to more towards your 60s or 70s. There's a lot of different representations and how different architects treated that.

So we get a lot of mid-century buffs and it can be really difficult with pricing those because they are so unique.

And especially if someone has gone in and done a horrible renovation at some point, or if someone has done a really thoughtful sympathetic renovation to mid-century design, it really impacts on price and how much people are willing to pay.

And so is there any sort of danger zones? I mean, if you're putting those to one side, is there some parts where people need to be conscious of within the Canberra market where they just need to be a bit careful investing?

Obviously you've got house and land packages on the fringes and that's a dangerous area just no matter where in the country you're investing.

I think on the whole, Canberra has a lot of unapproved structures. People from interstate come and they're so surprised by the number of unapproved structures they might find when they're looking at the contract for sale or if they're just giving it to their solicitor.

And please make sure using a Canberra familiar solicitor, don't use interstate one because there's so many nuances. So that's another little tip there. Do not use an interstate solicitor. There's just so much that they can miss and not know.

But with unapproved structures, yes, there's a lot of external structures and sometimes we see internal things too. So it's about knowing, are things approvable? What is the process? What's the likelihood for that? Can you take it on?

We're often negotiating with sales agents about putting it as a special condition to put the onus back on the vendor, rather than the buyer taking on that risk. So it depends a lot on what you're finding, but it's very, very common, especially in some of the older suburbs, to find unapproved structures.

The other thing that I think needs to be addressed, and it's quite a common question, is around the crown lease titling in the ACT. So obviously there's 99 year leases in place and people often ask the question, oh my gosh, you know, it's not freehold land. I don't even own the land.

Look, for all intents and purposes, of course, always get legal advice on this. But from a lending perspective, sometimes banks don't like things where there might be less than 30 or 25 years left to run on the lease. So that's something just to be mindful of as well.

I mean, there's lots of changes with the ACT government and the land tax and how are those things affecting things as well?

Absolutely. Yes, yes. So there was a 20-year land tax reform program in place. They were trying to increase rates and land tax and get more of a steady recurring income rather than relying on income from stamp duty. So the idea was to taper off stamp duty.

In the end, the idea was for it to go down to nil and then have higher rates and land tax and all well and good. But how has that worked out in practice? I don't really see that happening in place.

A lot of people are very unhappy with the extent that rates and land tax have gone up. And of course, we don't have a land tax threshold in the ACT. So if you're liable for land tax, it's a pretty hefty fee.

And coupled with the other drawbacks and people are saying, well, what do I do with this 99-year lease? I don't even own it. It can be just yet another objection to owning land in the ACT or something that's a little bit unfamiliar to people.

Without the right advice and without the right guidance around them, it can just throw up another roadblock.

I mean, working with agents in Canberra, you said it's very auction heavy. Has it always been like that? Has it really become that more in the last few years?

And how's, I guess, the Canberra agent, you meant it's still a bit of an education process to sort of make sure that they understand you're not trying to take their commission, but you know, how is that sort of also the way that different agents work there?

And obviously a lot of the established players are hesitant to change as well. And how do you have to, I guess, morph as a buyer's agent to get the outcome?

Canberra is very auction centric and people are often surprised when they come here about how many homes go to auction. We also don't have any under-quoting legislation here.

So people are often surprised when they come in and they're quoted a price perhaps, maybe there might be a lack of comparables, perhaps less so, if you know where I'm going with that. But then they go to auction and they feel that they're getting burned by it. So it's a learning process.

And we often find buyers come to us when they have missed out on a number of properties in a row and they're just frustrated with the process. And they say, well, this is different to how it is where I am.

Or potentially, you know, down in Victoria, they might be used to more of the boardroom style of auctions. We don't really do those here in Canberra.

You do have to, as a buyer's agent, morph and change and have a variety of tools in your toolkit to whip out the appropriate tool at the right moment. And also understanding the MO of each different auctioneer. Are they likely to place a vendor bid?

Is it in your best interest to try and flush that out or are you just wasting everyone's time? A lot of rookie buyer's agents we're seeing come in or cowboys from interstate and things like that.

It's a dumb move to come into an auction and just lowball it and be arrogant and disrupting the process. All they're doing is inserting their ego into the deal.

Their client loses, vendors side get frustrated, the sales agent, the auctioneer, everyone's just agitated by this and they just don't want that rookie buyer's agent in the process. So I think a lot of it is understanding where the value can be added.

and where the friction is and actually removing some of that friction and educating the buyer rather than just arriving up to an auction, jumping up and down like a little, you know, toddler having a tantrum. It doesn't add any value.

So the Canberra market has had a bit of a, probably more challenging times over recent compared to other places, but had a huge boom, right? I mean, we like to keep this podcast quite evergreen, right? So let's not have you on the ground today, but

mean how has it sort of evolved like as a market because you have been doing this for some time you've been in the canberra market and so what's some of the different stages and i guess where are you at sort of in 2025 yeah i guess the time of recording it's a little bit different too canberra as we went through covert had the steepest price increases we hadn't seen much price growth so i feel like at the time of going into covert we were right for that and with a lot of people coming back from overseas

It wasn't uncommon for people to get off a plane, you know, Saturday morning, straight into an auction, stick their hand in the air and watch the prices just take off.

But from there, yes, we tend not to have the big peaks and troughs that the other capital cities sometimes do when you have your stomach is in your mouth sort of moments when you have these massive rides and corrections. Canberra doesn't tend to have those big price corrections.

But at the moment we have come through that 2024, there seemed to be a big price correction moment is, you know, it came off that heat of 2022. And we had seen in some inner suburbs, we were getting price discounts off, you know, prices they were hoping for significant, half a million dollars.

Whereas, you know, Canberra doesn't really have a very big top end either. Once we tip over a few million dollars, again, trying to keep it evergreen here, but We don't, our top end isn't as peak, it isn't as multimillion dollar substantial big price tags that you would find in other capital cities.

It's a lot more of a moderate steady ride as well. So not just our median per house price, which is, you know, above average, but the ride and the top and the bottom of the market, it's a lot more sedate.

Is that just due to the way they plan the city and it's not around say a waterway or a harbor and you know, and the block sizes is you haven't got these sort of just crazy, you know, very, very scarce properties. Yes.

You've got different parts of suburbs and different suburbs that are more desirable than others, but you haven't got this real sort of pocket. There's just a completely different lifestyle to everywhere else.

Yes, I think it does come down, you know, the planning and the way that Canberra was done like that. Will that stay like that forever?

Well, there are some zoning changes in discussions at the moment and seeing how that might actually pan out, that could change the way that some suburbs look and feel. As well, I think some of the older suburbs start to gentrify.

We start to see some of these older homes that might be say, you know, 100 years old

start to be morphed into newer more modern things or sympathetically renovated as the money starts to come in through that change whether those suburbs will begin potentially more scarce and have that especially pre-war era homes that might start to give Canberra a bit of depth into the market yes as it just keeps evolving what some of these planning controls are they suggesting is densifying a little bit more and offering allowing townhouses and different type of properties yeah

The message from the top is all about, let's address our housing problem. And in Canberra, yes, we always have been a fairly expensive market to buy into. But saying that, yes, we do have high average incomes as well. So the relative affordability, it depends who you ask.

Some people say, oh gosh, Canberra is so affordable. And other people say, there's no chance, I've got no chance of buying a home. It's all in the eye of the beholder as well.

But in terms of the changes that might come in, well, we're seeing at the moment, what might be is allowing people dual occupancy. I have to be careful with my language here because in the ACT, we don't do subdivision, that unit titling your block.

And to do that, you have to change the purpose of your crown lease. Remembering it's got the leasehold. I don't want to get too heavy into technicalities here, but you have permission on your crown lease for say one residential property.

In order to change that and make it multiples or even two, you have to lodge plans. And one of those is a lease variation. And it will have a lease variation chart. And the LVC at the moment is astronomically high.

It could be a couple of hundred thousand dollars that you're just paying in taxes really to the government to do that change. And then developer controls as well. So there's a lot of red tape in Canberra. We love our red tape.

Just wrap us around like tinsel on a Christmas tree in red tape. We love it.

I mean, yeah, it's going to be interesting, right? It's the nation challenge and every, Victoria is doing it. New South Wales are absolutely doing it. Brisbane, obviously, and they've been very pro development for a long time. So they're probably the least of the problems, but obviously it's a big conversation.

It sounds like Canberra is also having to deal with that as well. I mean, let's say you've got a bunch of cash in Canberra, but you don't want to be close to the city. Is there sort of a lifestyle sort of pockets just outside?

I'm thinking maybe a lot of people go down towards Batemans Bay. Maybe they go towards Jindabyne. Where do people like, you know, that are looking for a lifestyle sort of weekender, where do people go?

It's funny that you say that and you say some, you know, locations fairly far away from Canberra. You only need to go just outside the border. And we've got some lovely semi-retirement hobby farm size. You'd get some that are only two acres. You'd get some that are 10 acres.

And yet you can still be 20 to 30 minutes to the city. So some people don't even use that as a weekender. They use it as their daily commute. You don't need to be that far away in order to have that rural lifestyle and that aspect.

And, you know, people often want things like alpacas and stuff like that. That's wonderful. So you can have your cake and eat it too.

Yeah, that's interesting.

So people are going, you know, even 30, 40, sort of like the Adelaide Hills a little bit, just, you know, commutable, but can still have the lifestyle buff, which would just not be possible in, you know, a Sydney, Melbourne really just is not able to get that land within a commutable distance often.

There are some pockets sort of defy that. I mean, what's some of the challenges when you look at adding value as a buyer's agent, you know, do much investment work in Canberra or is it predominantly owner occupiers?

It's predominantly hybrid brief. A lot of people know that, you know, there's a saying in the military, all roads lead to Canberra, for instance, or families are posted in and out. I know myself as growing up, we were posted away, rented out our house while we went away and then came back.

And the impact that has on the kids as well, and just having that continuity of home and bedrooms and all the rest, it's something that parents are really mindful of, as well as, you know, the head and the heart.

and making sure that you're buying something that works well on both sides of the fence can be a really tricky line to walk. And you've got to be quite clear with a client to say, look, we're not just going to buy this purely because it's good on paper.

You also need to live in it, right? So we need to talk about school catchment areas. We need to talk about what it's going to be like to live in.

If you don't want to raise your family, four of you, four bedrooms with one bathroom or something, if that's not going to work for four teenage daughters, well,

We need to talk about that now and determine what that balance is, that mix of how much of the focus are we putting on investment and wearing that hat and what the proportion of, what's the end goal here really?

Because I think a lot of buyer's agents can come into it and feel like they're just agreeing with the client and not challenging them on some of these assumptions.

So I think as a buyer's agent, I feel it's really important to not just be a yes person, is to really make sure and test them on these assumptions so that we can establish, we often talk about the left and right of arc.

where does the scope fall where are we testing that so that we know okay that's the minimum we would accept and they're ideal but let's work within that range and make sure we're really testing that and perhaps putting up different areas that they don't necessarily know or not familiar with but might give them the ideal outcome that they're hoping for that lifestyle that they're aspiring to but yet it still works perhaps with a bit less budget perhaps it's a bit less land perhaps it's

you know, tweaking location, whatever it might be, but just to try and get that right fit ultimately for something that will work for them. So I think that's a big part of what we do.

Yeah, it's interesting. So you're saying that a lot of your clients are more investment sort of return focused and then they're less driven by the lifestyle benefit. Is that what you're saying there?

Usually it's within a couple. So you might find potentially, you know, there might be one of the partners that's very focused on the financial aspect of it. And the other partner might be more focused on the lifestyle and keeping the kids happy.

And, you know, let's make sure that we're not just driving half an hour to get to that particular school every day. Let's maybe go there and make life easier. Whereas the other partner might be saying, oh, look, I really needs to stack up on paper.

I don't want to spend any more than X dollars.

Yeah, that's interesting.

A lot of markets say potentially around the country a little bit more heavy towards, I need this lifestyle, I need to be this location, I need to have... And the investment element is probably, yeah, it's important, but there's so much focus on just making sure they get the lifestyle they need with school catchments and things like that.

So maybe people are less concerned, but... You're absolutely right. I think that's what a great advice agent would do with a lot of experience is to challenge their thinking.

And I know you thought about that pocket, but if you considered this, you're probably going to get the lifestyle you want and it's a different price and maybe a little bit more land or whatever it might be.

So when you think about the value you add to your clients, obviously been doing this a long time and finding that opportunity with the agent, negotiating and challenging their thinking around location. What's some of the other things that you think when the clients at the end of the journey, they say,

Clare, thanks so much. You really stopped us doing this or you really helped us make this decision. And it was a lot of value added in that part of the process.

Yeah, I guess having been in the game for a little while now, we're often seeing clients come to us several years down the track.

And for me, when you talk about the end of the line, that might be where now they're talking about potentially thinking about a move or getting family to join them here.

so the end of the line is actually several years down the track and they're finding that they come to us and they're so thankful and they love where they are potentially they don't even need to move they might just be thinking about tacking on a room or a studio at the back or something like that because we always buy with the end in mind and i think that's something really to be aware of is that we're not just buying it because it's cheap or it works for them now it's being able to see the things that they don't potentially see themselves

and put yourself in their shoes, future them. Of course, life happens.

We don't always know what's going to happen down the track, but getting something and starting with the end in mind means that for a lot of our clients now are talking, coming back to us full circle, if they do need to change or move different areas or the family's grown or whatever it might be, separations come together, who knows?

is that they've got a really good solid foundation right now they've bought really well and they've also bought a really great quality property that appeals to a broad range of buyers so when they go to sell it it's really you know it's a good prospect it's good potential and it means that opens up doors for them for their next purchase so it's buying well with the end in mind

Yeah, I love that. I think this is one of the things that when I had a couple of young kids and, you know, you start to know what it's like with kids and what they want and what you want as a couple, as a family.

And, you know, you start to learn these things as you go through these yourself.

And I think, you know, particularly when I'm helping clients and maybe they're pre-kids and, you know, I'm just starting to help them think through, like you said, around the things that are coming down the line and things that, you know, maybe not in their head right now. Maybe it's school zones.

Maybe it's just type of property. And I think you're right. Like, I think the most you can... trying to help clients, you know, think about not just now long-term and coming from a place of, you know, seeing lots of clients and preparing them for them.

But fundamentally what you're trying to do is get a quality asset that's going to set them up no matter what happens in the future. And yeah, that's definitely a real value add and challenging them on that thinking and opening, having those difficult conversations.

Yeah or it might even be say potentially we talked before about the partner that's feeling quite emotional and quite lifestyle driven is potentially challenging them on that and thinking well hey actually I know you're saying we want to spend that but let's temper your enthusiasm on these parts because potentially you can achieve that and lean more into that you know that look the numbers are not stacking up so sometimes it's about bringing them back down to earth and getting them more grounded

to make a solid, sensible financial decision. You're staying away from things like that valuation risk. Clients often use the word things like overpaying. It's hard to define overpaying, isn't it?

It's more about, again, exposure to risk and making sure we're mitigating those risks and naming them and numbering them and making sure that we're aware of them at every point and stage in the process.

Absolutely. Now, if you think about when you started out, obviously you did a bit of investing and feasibility. And I think your accounting background, I like you as a numbers person at school and went into accounting and then realized maybe a bit faster than you.

I realized after a year, hang on a sec, I'm going to be doing the same thing in 10 years time. I'm not getting excited by this. But you're right.

Numbers, it definitely helps when you're looking at feasibilities and client and you can just be able to figure those numbers out quite quickly and pattern and recognize numbers. But I mean, if you think about from just from the acting as a buyer's agent, like

How much of a better buyer's agent are you now with 10 years, 12 years experience, whatever it is, than you were say two, three years in? Like how much more developed is your thinking and the way that you go about things?

Yeah, really good question. I think in terms of runs on the board and knowing and getting that, especially that auction experience has been key.

There has been a number of deals, I hate using that word, transactions call them, that you get over the years and it compounds and that growth and exposure to so many different scenarios that can unfold at auction and having the experience to know and stay calm in the moment and make sure your client stays calm in the moment as well and just having a range of toolkits at your disposal.

In the early days, you might not have seen that particular scenario play out and you're learning and you're going to feel sometimes like, oh, gosh, let me go away and think about this for a while. You don't have that luxury of time.

You've got to be able to think on your feet and think of lateral solutions as well, potentially when things go sideways or markets don't go how you think or potentially you get there and the vendors set a really aspirational reserve.

And then you're having to deal with, you know, a sales agent or sales agent didn't turn up. Like sometimes there's some really random stuff go down and you're there, you know, negotiating directly and it's odd. So I think, yeah, just having that depth of experience, especially in auctions in Canberra is really key.

Yeah, every brief, I reckon, would teach you something, right? You actually purchased something at the end of it and there's a reason why that property and that goes into your mental bank. And when you catch up with that client years down, you can sort of track their progress.

But there's also the ones you don't look at, right? Well, you do look at and you don't go ahead with and, oh, we're not going to go with that. And then you start to build that mental knowledge and

I imagine in a place like Canberra, you can start almost map the whole city in your head and start to know and make much quicker decisions. And in different markets, speed does matter more than others. And in hot markets, absolutely, that speed is one of your biggest advantages, right?

Claire, thanks so much for coming on. Obviously, we've worked with you as well with many clients. And if anyone's listening to this, looking for help, obviously, the link's in the show notes. And I really enjoyed the chat today.

Thank you so much for having me.

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.