Jason Baron On How The Sunshine Coast Splits Into Five Markets

The region, Noosa and the Sunshine Coast, we've got two LGAs here. They really promote the whole idea of, you know, building the tech companies, make it really attractive for tech companies to come here. You know, we've got a digital hub down here.

We've got a fancy internet cable coming into the new Maroochee or CBD to try and bring more businesses here that are tech-based businesses. And they always try and have that flexibility of work to attract the talent. Our motto is buy without regrets and so...

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Welcome to Street Secrets. I'm Chris Bates in the studio today with Jason Baron from The Property Baron up in the sunny coast of Queensland. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Chris.

Jason, obviously we know each other, but for people who don't know you, what was your sort of story coming into sort of being a buyer's advocate and when did you start? What were you doing prior?

Yeah, look, we started the buyer's agent as a business about seven years ago. We'd thought about it for a hell of a long time before we actually kicked it off. Being up on the Sunshine Coast at Noosa, there wasn't many people doing it back then.

So seven years might not sound like a massive amount of time for people in other industries. But for us, when we started, we really were sort of paving the way up here. We even had to sort of educate some of the agents that didn't know what a buyer's agent was.

Sometimes they'd get a bit strange on the phone because they thought we were conjuncting with them. They didn't realize that we were paid by the buyer. So that was sort of happening up here about seven years ago when we started. Before that, look, we'd been in property for about 20 years.

We started investing and buying and renovating and holding and selling. And I'd been really interested in property from a young age and always saw myself getting into that eventually. When we were doing our projects, we were quite busy with our investing.

We're doing it full time as a property investor for probably four or five years before we started the buyer's agency. Coming into it, we had a lot of experience with buying, particularly on the Sunshine Coast. We transacted in something like 30 properties before we kicked it off.

I've started my career in the fitness industry back in the day over 20, 25 years ago in Sydney actually, I was managing a gym, quite a big gym, got into the business management side of things.

And from there, my career was always about earning an income so that I could funnel money back into our property endeavors and building a portfolio and eventually doing some developments, which we've done fairly recently as well.

Yeah, there's a number of you there in the sort of sunny coast team now.

How big's your team? There's four of us up here at the moment. We've got a team in Brizzy and a team down near Sydney as well, but predominantly this is where I am. I basically lead all the buying up on the Sunshine Coast and through Noosa for the team up here.

Now, rewinding back to when you started, I mean, what a time, right? Like, you know, COVID and sunny coast.

What sort of some of the changes you've seen, you know, obviously you've been up there for a long time as well, but I think you've been living up there for what, 15 years or something like that, so 12 years or something.

So like, how have you seen that sort of change and the buyer pool and the demographic shift over that last sort of 10 years?

Yeah, it's changed massively. And in more recent years has probably seen the biggest change. When we first moved up here, it was about 12 years ago, we moved up from Sydney and the business that I was working for was based in Sydney.

It was an online tech company and it allowed us to get up here and start investing in property and doing some developments ourselves and working from home. And at the time there wasn't many people doing that up here. People had come to Noosa and they'd fall in love with the lifestyle.

They'd have a go at moving up here and trying to find work. And the difficult thing was finding work in a fairly small town. Noosa's still only got about 50,000 residents in it these days. So it wasn't really a thing.

People would move up here, they couldn't find work, they'd move back to Sydney or Melbourne, wherever they come from. Or the property market back then was largely fueled by holiday makers, they'd buy holiday houses up there.

And it was fairly volatile before that point, the property market, because in the downturn, whether it was a GFC or whatever it was, if you have a look at Noosa, the property market takes a pretty big dip.

It's what people sell their holiday homes before they sell their principal place of residence in a downturn. But things have changed massively from then, you know, fast forward 10, 12 years. And we've seen through that COVID boom of people moving up here, they can work from home.

It's a really normal thing for people to work from home for their business based elsewhere, or they've got a business themselves. They're an owner and their business is based in Sydney or Melbourne, wherever it is. and they're living the lifestyle up here with the kids.

We also see a lot of people, probably a lot of the upper level management CEOs, that kind of level workers that work in Brizzy, living here with their family and traveling down to Brisbane for work from the Sunshine Coast, because it's really not that far away.

Yeah, let's talk about that a bit. I mean, absolutely. You made a really interesting point around people selling their holiday homes and trying to keep their homes.

I think even the sort of post COVID interest rate increases, I think people underestimated just how much people would do to stay in their homes and making sure they didn't sell. And there's always that people that

know they'll do everything whether selling investments or shares or ask parents for money or whatever it might be but you're right it's moved from a holiday home to principal place a residence place you know it's driven by people moving there because they want to live there and they can keep work so obviously there's a bit of a return to office brisbane's always you know had a bit stronger sort of didn't go completely work from home up there but how's that sort of you know in 2026 that sort of work from home hybrid work

know people migrating there that have got complete flexibility is that still pretty strong or has it sort of changed over the last year or two it's very strong you know that's the region noosa and the sunshine coast we've got two lgas here they really promote the whole idea of you know building the tech companies make it really attractive for tech companies to come here you know we've got a digital hub down here we've got a fancy uh internet cable coming into the new maruchi or cbd to try and bring more businesses here that are tech-based businesses and they always try and have that

flexibility, work to attract the talent, everything else. If you're working online or for a tech company and you're based in Sydney or Melbourne and you think, well, you know what, I'm working from home anyway, why don't I go and live somewhere else?

It's a bit more of a better lifestyle for my family and myself. Noose from the Sunshine Coast is possibly going to be on the top of the list somewhere. It's a good lifestyle up here for sure.

You know, obviously there's upgrades to freeways and everything like that.

I guess people moving there, are they seeing that as another reason why it's possible if they do have to go to either, you know, different states, you know, fortnightly or whatever it is, it's possible and even possible to get to Brisbane quite easily a couple of days a week?

Oh, it's really easy. I mean, depending on when you leave, it can take anywhere from about an hour and a half to two hours to get to Brisbane CBD. If there's an accident, it might be a little bit longer.

But if you're thinking about someone moving from, say, Sydney, where you're stuck in traffic coming from the western suburbs into the city for work, an hour and a half is really not that far to drive. The airport, they've had a pretty big expansion of the airport recently, and that's going to continue.

They just opened up some flights to Bali next year from the Sunshine Coast. It's a pretty big milestone. So there's a lot happening there.

If you're working here and you're traveling to Sydney or Melbourne, which I do sometimes, you can get up in the morning, you can get the plane from the Sunshine Coast, go to Sydney, it's 10 minutes into the CBD.

from the airport in Sydney, and then you're back at the airport and back home to bed at a reasonable hour. It's just really easy to get to and from even those bigger cities down south.

So you think that the major pivot, obviously it's gone from maybe the medium and sort of lower incomes that we're often buying and selling up there, the people who are living there, struggling to

you know, get the higher paying jobs because you had to be close to the city and that shift of, you know, changing the whole demographic that's driving the market, together with the, you know, I guess the southeast Queensland has always been the home of the flight of the retirees that, you know, want to be a bit warmer in their later years, like,

you've still got that real strong exodus of cash from the southern states. Do you find that's really what's driving the market now? Is those two markets are sort of the buyers that are really driving it?

Absolutely. A lot of the locals up here think the property prices are expensive and they are. The median price in Noosa is about two and a half mil, but it's not like that through the whole coast. There's other suburbs in the coast, the middle ring of one and a half mil.

But when you look at people moving up here, they're generally moving from being successful somewhere else and probably selling a property down in Melbourne or Sydney in a more affluent suburb, four or five mil or a lot more in a lot of cases.

And they're moving here and as cheap as chips and they're putting some money in the bank account at the same time. It's really interesting to see the property markets through through some of the higher value suburbs up here, moving along so far.

But it sort of sometimes comes to a point where I know these buyers have got a hell of a lot more money because I know a lot of them, right? Whether they're using us or not, or we've got friends in common, it's a pretty small town sometimes.

And you know that they've got a hell of a lot more money to spend, but they don't want to spend the $10 or $15 million. They want to cap themselves at four or five, which is still a big price for the Sunshine Coast and even Noosa.

But to the person who's buying it, a lot of the time it's not that big a deal.

know, it's quite a big area, right? When you go, I mean, probably from Noosa all the way down to Curramundi sort of past, is that sort of what you see as the sunny coast where you focus on?

Yeah, I guess in the south, we go down to Pelican Waters in the south, really. We don't touch too much of the new development stuff out the back of Caloundra. There's tens of thousands of new houses going out the back there.

You know, with the planning, it's small blocks, new houses whacked up pretty quickly. we tend to stay more to the owner occupy markets from Noosa right through. So it'll be places like all the Noosa suburbs, the Hinterland, Doonan, Umundi. It'll be through to Pridgin Beach where we're based.

Coolum's a really good area for a lot of people. A lot of people Before they engage us, they've got a really good idea of what areas of the Sunshine Coast they like and what areas they don't. If someone likes Coolum, they don't necessarily like Noosa and vice versa.

But we spend a lot of time going down to Maroochydore, Mooloolaba, Budrum's a big one. Budrum's probably the biggest suburb on the Sunshine Coast in relation to the population. It's a really good one for someone to engage a buyer's agent in for that suburb because it's so big, it's so complex, there's little

You could live in Budrum for 10 or 15 years or more, and you could not have any clue about three quarters of it. You probably know the quarter that you live in pretty well. So anyway, that's Budrum and we go down through the beaches, Badinath down to Karamundi. Moffat Beach is quite nice.

You've got a nice little cafe bar strip there with ocean views onto the little bay there. And we go down to Caloundra a little bit, but more into Pelican Waters and Golden Beach and those kinds of areas.

Yeah, you mentioned there around new estates up on the sunny coast. I mean, that's when you look at it. I mean, you've obviously got a great suburbs that are hugging the coastline and you start getting a bit further back. There's quite a lot of land in the sunny coast.

When you're driving on that freeway thing, hang on a sec, there's a lot of land here, but it's a different type of land, right? To stuff that hugs the coastline. Is that sort of the way that you sort of try to steer a client?

So the sunny coast is going to grow through a lot of new housing estates, but we're not going to try to avoid buying any of that.

Yeah, I guess we do. There's tens of thousands of houses going to be built out there on those lands. And I think the developers these days do a pretty good job at creating a good living environment for the people that are moving there and living there. But the way they're setting it out.

People generally move up here for the coast and the beach, a little bit far away from the beach. It's got good access to Brisbane and the motorway, which is good. But long-term, property at the end of the day for me is always supply and demand.

It's about making sure we get them into a good quality property, even if it's an owner-occupier, let's have a look at a decent sized block in the more desirable areas.

If we go into those new areas that have been opening up, when the demand increases for those areas, they increase more supply and it can cap house price growth. Ultimately, whether it's a principal place of residence or an investment property, you want your asset to be growing over time.

And if you make a small little tweak to the area, that can make a massive difference long-term. And they're not building enough houses out there at the moment. There's nowhere near enough houses to cater for population growth. So I'd say they will be opening up more.

There's a lot of those pine farms out the back there. There's a lot happening out there for them to be building more houses.

Yeah. I think it's just the more demand, more supply, but it doesn't mean they're not going to probably go up, to be honest. Building prices have gone up, land prices are going up, but it's not as scarce land as you are on the coastline.

But is there any parts of that coastline where clients will come to you though, where you're like, I know that looks great, it's close to the beach, but there's some real issues or access or issues in that pocket that a lot of buyers sometimes don't understand because they haven't lived there before?

Yeah, there is for sure.

When people come on as a client, it's about understanding them, listening to them and going to the areas that they think they want to live in and having a good chat about the pros and cons about an area and potentially floating an idea of a different area to them.

The infrastructure hasn't really kept up with growth in the south end of the Sunshine Coast and it's not going to keep up with growth as it pushes on. So you've got that road from Calandra out to the motorway in peak hour, it's pretty slow.

There's probably some better lifestyle opportunities in different parts of the coast, but it's about not saying, hey, have a look at this too early, but it's about getting them to understand that we're on their team and we're here to help them get the best outcome.

And they start trusting us so we can start floating some different ideas and explain why we think they're better places to buy potentially.

Yeah, you mentioned like Bundurum, obviously the Hinterland, a lot of people are familiar that around the Byron pocket, right? Or even Gold Coast. And it's a big part of the sunny coast market, right? Where people want that sort of lifestyle. Is he often dealing with those briefs as well?

Yeah, we buy a lot through the Noosa Hinterland and the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. It's an interesting one because You know, people might want to, you know, buy a house in Noosa.

And a lot of the time they do when they buy a nice house and they start to think, well, you know what, because of the size of the blocks here, I can't have, you know, my three or four cars or the toys, whatever it is.

And if they say, well, maybe we need to go rural and go into the hinterland. So they might move into Doonan or somewhere like that.

And then what happens is they get out there and they think, well, hang on a second, I'm missing all the conveniences, you know, and every day I've got to drive the kids to school or whatever it might be.

And they, a lot of the time end up moving back, back into town to get the conveniences again. So it's a bit of a, I guess, an internal migration, you might want to call it, from the coast to the hinterland and back again, quite often.

Yeah. And I guess when you've been doing it a few years, it's really sense checking that, right? And obviously people can fall in love with the property and the land, but it's the lifestyle you've got to live, particularly when you've got kids and schools. Is there any issues with that schooling?

Because obviously you've got the retiree market, they don't care about the schools too much. They just want to where the cafes are and the beaches and an easy way of life. But young families, schooling is a big part of their sort of story to move up there.

It's affordable, but can we put our kids through schools that we want to? How does it all work up there?

There's definitely some good schools up here. Traditionally, back in the day, Noosa, particularly Noosaville was an older demographic and it still is an older demographic to a certain point. And even Sunshine Beach up into some of the more high value stuff.

It's more the older people that have got the budgets for these places sometimes. But there has been a big shift in younger people moving here and people coming here with their families in recent times.

What we've noticed over the last 10 years or so is the demand for the private schools up here has increased significantly.

So there is some good schools up here, but you can't just kind of move up here and expect to be able to put your kids straight into what you think is the best school in an area. It could be a three, four year waiting list for those kids to go to school.

Back in the day, I know in the cities, sometimes you have to put your kids on the waiting list when they're babies or even before they're born. For some of those schools, it's probably not that bad yet, but 10 years ago, you wouldn't even have to think about it.

Now it is a consideration. So if I'm talking to someone about moving here and they've got kids that they need to go into school, that's definitely a really important part of the conversation is, hey, is it public? Is it private? Where do you want to live? What are the school options?

Have you spoken to the school yet? And what's the situation there? If you're in the middle of the coast, down the Sunshine Coast, there's probably, or there is a few more schools to choose from. Probably got a little bit more chance of getting the kids in there later.

But if you're up in Noosa, it's a bit of a waiting list. It's not that easy.

As mentioned earlier on, like investors just love buying Southeast Queensland. It's always been the hotspot. I guess, apartments, Spruikers of the Gold Coast and Brisbane loved it back in the day, right? Selling off the planned apartments to Sydney and Melbourne side is looking to buy an investment property.

I think they're a bit switched more on now, a bit savvy, the investors now, and they're saying, well, actually, we want to get into the housing market and sunny coast is obviously a big investor hotspot.

What are some of the mistakes you often see the out of area BAs or even just the investors are making in the sunny coast that you often see?

The Sunshine Coast, it's quite big geographically, right? And the suburbs are so different from one to the other, and even little pockets of suburbs. Coolum, for example, you've probably got about five or six different distinct sections of Coolum as one suburb.

And you really want to be getting in those areas that the locals love to live in, the more desirable areas, as opposed to the not so desirable ones. It's going to make a massive outcome to your long term. We still get a lot of people spruiking the new stuff up here.

You talk about Brisbane, I know there's a massive oversupply in Brisbane of apartments back in the day. That's no longer the case. It's all dried up and people have been fairly successful with apartments there. On the Sunshine Coast, there's still such a lack of stock.

coming to market.

If you're buying an apartment and you say buying it close to the big massive new Sunshine Coast University Hospital and you're catering for the young professionals that are working there, you can get into some good apartments that are going to have some pretty high demand and interest over the long term.

When it comes to investing on the Sunshine Coast, we like to stay to a house. The demographic that's really pushing the prices up on the Sunshine Coast is someone moving here from outside the area. generally they're moving here with their family. So it's a family friendly area.

It's somewhere that's fairly close to schools and transport, as close to the beach as their budget can afford them. And it's a particular type of property that we look because we want to obviously outperform the median price growth.

We don't want to get a unit still maybe seen to be underperforming the median price growth because you don't have those families pushing the demand. You've got the young professionals, but if your budget only allows a unit,

on the Sunshine Coast, it could be a way to get some exposure in the market, which a really competitive market that's got a lot of competition, whether it's a unit or a house.

Yeah, I'm sure there's great little apartment blocks all up the coast, particularly tugging the coastline and older blocks with great blocks of land. And if you know a small number of apartments in them and massively suit downsizes and even families, you just want to start a place into the area.

Have you noticed like a real bit of a whole migration of families? You know, when you get a shift of one part of a family moving to an area that's got great lifestyle and everyone starts missing them or even friends, I've seen this where whole groups of friends have moved to different locations.

You know, sunny coast, have you seen that as well, where one's coming and all of a sudden, you know, there's a whole crew of people that's followed them from, you know, Sydney, Melbourne, for example.

Absolutely, yeah. It happens a lot. We'll take a client on and they'll say, oh, I've got friends in this place or that place. Sometimes I want to be really close to them.

Sometimes I want to be close enough to visit, but not too close that we're going to be on top of each other. It comes into the conversation quite a bit, actually. all over the coast.

I can remember situations down the south end of the coast near Caloundra where we've had that, and it happens in Noosa a fair bit.

People see their friends move up here and all of a sudden their friends start putting videos on social media of them at Noosa main beach at the weekend, kids surfing, and they get the real FOMO and they think, you know what, I'm going to go and join you because it looks pretty cool.

You know, obviously people biggest fear when they're moving is that there's not going to be people like them or people that they're going to be able to make new friends or they're going to miss their family. But I'm finding it's usually a family decision.

Now I can think of one client that's actually moving up your way and yeah, it It's three, it's two sisters and the parents and they're all moving and they're all not going to happen all immediately.

I think parents are going first and then the kids are going to follow once they figure out work.

But I think when you've got a fast growing place that's in a great location and suits different demographics or different parts of ages, particularly younger ones and older ones, I think that's going to be good for its growth.

When you think about the agents up there, how's the sort of BA sort of conversation going?

You know, how is that sort of helping you get a bit of an advantage in the market versus sort of BAs that don't even work up there that often or buying, you know, side on scene or, you know, people moving there that just don't understand the market?

Look, the relationships with the agents is super important. I guess because we're in such a high value market in certain parts up here, it really attracts a high caliber of agent. So, you know, a lot of the agents up here, particularly in Noosa, are really, really good. They know their stuff.

They know that we've been around for a long time. So we're not just someone who's come in recently. So we can have some really open conversations with the agents about the property and prices. And they know that we've been doing developments and investing in the area for a long time.

So they can't just pull the wool over our eyes and say, and try and steer us away from something that's quite obvious to us. So they understand that. It's a bit of mutual respect, which certainly helps with, I guess, the negotiation process and bringing a deal together.

A lot of the times I feel they'll probably prefer to work with us because we know our staff, we're preparing the buyer. If there's any issues that are going to be presented with the property, we've probably already gone through them.

And we can point that out to the agent to say, look, we've already seen this, this, this, and we're okay with that, and we're going to push ahead.

And us coming in as an offer or a buyer can be a lot more attractive and a lot less of a hassle to deal with than some of the other buyers that they don't know. So that's definitely one of the big strengths that we have, I guess, and an advantage in the market.

We get people, a lot of the clients that we take on, I joke about it sometimes, but it's not a joke. A lot of the clients are really smart people. They've had a successful career or they're having a successful career and they understand outsourcing to a professional.

We take an approach that we're offering professional services and we charge a fee for our service. The value they get from our service is huge in comparison to the fee. Sure, the fee is quite high, but the value they get well and truly outweighs that.

And I think it's important to know and make the difference between us and the selling agents. The selling agents are really, really good salespeople and a lot of them are really, really good with understanding the markets and properties and everything else.

But they're a salesperson and they're out there to earn a commission for a sale, working for their seller. We're out there offering our services, our business services, and we're charging a fee for a service as opposed to a commission for a sale.

I think maybe that's where a lot of the younger, newer buyers agents coming into the space, they probably keep thinking about and talking about commissions. I think if you go down that path, you're not probably offering the best and highest level of service you can to the clients.

Yeah, I think that it's the power of a fee for service, right? Even the financial advice industries, you had to make that pivot, but it's definitely a much cleaner, more independent, and you can value your service and compare it to your fee. I mean, when we talk about that,

A lot of people say, oh, it's because you found me that property and you negotiated. But when you look at your sort of reviews and chatting to clients after, what are some of the things they often say to you that they weren't expecting, like those intangible sort of things up front?

And at the end, they're like, oh, that was really valuable for me.

Look, I think most of the time people, they don't know what they don't know, right? They might have bought one or two or three properties in the past. Most people are like that. Sometimes they've bought a hell of a lot of properties and they might be super experienced with their own investing, developing.

We've taken on developers for site acquisition that are very experienced. They understand their value. We also, I can think of recently someone who's quite a high level in Aussie. He was a looking after a managed fund. They did a lot of property acquisitions.

And he might be really good at his property acquisitions where he is. I think it was in Sydney. But the thing is, he understands the local knowledge and the experience locally to give him the advantage in the market.

So it's the relationship with the agents, it's knowing the pockets, where to buy, where not to buy, pulling them back from buying the wrong thing. But I think coming back to the point, people don't know what they don't know.

When they start working with us, we start to open their eyes to certain things that we look at that they might not have considered. We often pull them back from buying something that we think is not going to work for them, push them onto something else.

They soon very quickly start to think through the process, well, hang on a second, I really do know why I've engaged these guys because they do know a hell of a lot more than I do.

And I'm only just kind of realizing it now that we're going through the process and we're actually seeing it for ourselves.

Yeah, there's always that moment, right, where they're like, oh, I've got this, I've got this. Actually, no, oh, I need help.

And that's hard when you're buying property because if you don't have someone on call or you've sort of tried to do it yourself and you're sort of crossing your fingers and hoping that it comes off and that might be okay if it comes off, but if it doesn't and it's the one property that you did want to buy or the best one you've seen and you just let it slip through your fingers, I think that's absolutely one of the huge value adds is actually just

admitting straight up that I'm going to need help at some point and I might be okay at this part of the process. Do you help clients just really at that front end? Because it is a lot of people moving there and maybe they're moving there and they haven't moved there yet, right?

That's actually another challenge is you sort of got a good working relationship where they fly up, they get to know the area, but sometimes you're going to have to buy it with just a video.

It does happen fairly often, actually, where people make the decisions without being here to see it. Sometimes we'll show a client through after settlement. And luckily, everyone up until this point has been happy with it. We try and, I guess, undersell and overdeliver. So we try and undershoot everything.

We talk about all the bad parts about a property and everything that can go wrong so that hopefully when they finally see it, they're quite pleasantly surprised with it being a lot better than what they thought it was going to be.

I've seen clients use BAs that they've already agreed to use them or they've told me experiences before, they're pre-engaging us as brokers. But yeah, in the videos, sometimes even BAs have been buying them from agents.

The agent is not really going to show all the best parts and the worst parts of the property, right? And their neighbours and privacy problems and the issues with the building. I mean, on that building issues on the sunny coast, is there any major and even just land issues around flooding or

Is there anything that often you sort of have to really think about very early on, or you just avoid certain pockets just because you know that's going to be an issue at some point?

You definitely got to avoid some pockets. Some of the more recent developments have been developed on what is, you know, swamp or mangrove type land. And once their developments are built and they're, you know, might be five or 10 years after they're built, people forget about that.

So it's really important to remember where they're buying, you know, and there's particular parts on the coast that we try and steer away from, from that point of view. But then again, you know, they've pushed out the flood lines a lot further than where it's ever flooded before now.

And they're making big planning decisions based on the new flood mapping.

So it's sometimes if they're on the edge of the flood mapping, it's about having that honest conversation with them to say, you know what, it may flood here and we've got to consider that at some point in the future, but because it's the hundred year flood line, it may never have flooded there in the past.

And it may be a really good area. And if you're looking to build a house and you do the right thing, you'll be raising it up by a meter or more off the ground so that if it does flood there, it's not going to affect the property.

Just having those really honest conversations with them around that. So some places we steer them away from. Some other areas that are super desirable is big parts of Coolum, which is just down the road from us. in the flood zones, but people just keep buying there time and time again.

And some of the areas you got to watch out for and stay away from, but some of the other areas that they've zoned in the flood map are higher and they possibly never flooded there before at all.

Is there a stereotypical type of style of property that people just go nuts for within the sunny coast? Is it sort of like the Hamptons sort of beach style or is there a certain style that people sort of really will overpay for, I guess, in some sense?

It probably used to be Hamptons probably four or five years ago, but I guess that's probably not at the forefront of everything anymore. It's kind of not as trendy as it used to be.

Anything modern, anything architectural, you've got a lot of really nice modern homes with suspended concrete slabs with big views into the hinterland or the beach. Position is really important, but probably more modern than anything.

We don't have those really nice heritage Queenslander style houses they have in Brisbane or the heritage ones in Melbourne or Sydney that people just climb over each other for. But up here it's more the modern style of house. Anything solid concrete block work. I think people are a bit more savvy these days.

They want to buy something that's fairly solid. They don't necessarily want to buy something that's whacked up cheaply and quickly with a timber frame and a bit of cladding on the outside. So it's probably that.

And how do you think about aspect up there? I mean, you are getting a bit warmer up the coast, but how do you think about that?

I mean, obviously people in Melbourne definitely want the north rear and they need to stay warm in winter, but you know, you can get hot up there in mornings and afternoons. How do you think about sort of guiding clients through that? Because it might be something they not think about.

North aspect still trumps everything else up here for sure. Yes, it does get hot, but you don't want to be in the shade all day either.

If your house is built properly and you've got some shelter on the north side of the house, as the sun goes over at the heat of the day, you're going to be in the shade anyway, and you're still going to see the sun in the morning and the afternoon.

People talk about the westerly sunsets. They do get hot up here. So if something is facing west with a big view, it's about having that conversation with the client. Some people don't care and they just love it.

They can see the sunset going down every afternoon and have a beer when the sun goes down. It's a pretty nice feeling, but a lot of people don't like it as well. Even if it's facing west, if you build it right, you won't get the sun coming in your house until quite late.

But that's probably the less desirable, I'd say, with some people, the most desirable with others. Ocean view is great, but the thing up here is if you've got those big ocean views, you're getting battered by the weather all the time as well.

So you've got to have those conversations to say, hey, yep, sure, if you want the ocean view, let's go and get it. Just so you know, the salt and the weather does come in dead on. So you'll be cleaning the windows all the time.

You'll probably have to replace some of the electronics a bit more regularly than other places.

And a lot of people are happy to do that if they can see the sun come up over the beach and they can have a look at what the surf's doing in the morning and make a decision whether they're going to go out for a surf or not, weigh up the pros and cons.

It's nice, like you say, a beach view, but you're getting battered at seven, eight, nine o'clock in the morning, every morning and vice versa in the evening when you go west.

I do think it's something that sometimes it can be missed because you look at the property in the middle of the day, the agent's smart, he's not going to... Or the opposite, the sunset instead of the morning.

So I think you just got to be a bit careful with that as it gets a bit hotter and you can easily get caught out.

Sorry to interrupt you. The other big thing with the aspect here is the south facing aspect in certain areas of the coast, if it's on the backside of a hill, because of the weather up here, it's quite humid. It's subtropical.

When we get a lot of rain, you can get some mold issues in houses on the south side of hills. So sure, it might be away from the sun and the heat during the day. Some days in summer, it might be really nice, but there is some real negative points.

And if someone's looking to buy in particular areas, we really do have to have those honest conversations about what can go wrong. buying in those shady areas when it rains and starts getting wet and humid.

And what about your personal situation? Does that help you in terms of being a BA? Like obviously people have all got their own personal journey. How's your personal stuff outside of work help you sort of really understand the market?

My early career probably helps me the most. It's a very broad skillset that we do, right? Sales is a big part of what we do.

It's about listening and understanding and bringing the client on to start with, but it's also understanding some of the more advanced techniques that the agents use on us to try and close a deal and push us into getting the best outcome for their seller.

So I spent a good 15, 20 years of my early career involved heavily in sales and the fitness industry and the online tech space. Bringing that into what we do, I think is really important.

It's really hard for someone to come in and learn the sales side of what we do by doing a course or whatever of someone without actually having lived it, breathed it, learnt it and actually practising it every day for a long period of time.

So that does bring a lot of value into what we do. I spent 20 years investing myself and having a really deep interest in property investing and analysing markets and studying data and and all that kind of thing.

So I guess my background coming in from learning the sales, learning about property markets and what are the points to impact and influence property markets. Learning town planning, super important to know what's going on. You need to know a lot about building. We've done developments, we've done a whole heap of renovations.

So when you look at a building, is it built right? What are the particular issues that can come up with that kind of material? There's a particular cladding up here that's notorious for leaking. So you've got to have a really good well-rounded knowledge on building, town planning, the sales side of things.

You've really got to understand, listen to clients and what they want and how to get the best result for them.

You've got to have a look at a contract and you've got to ensure you rely on the conveyance to give us that legal professional advice on the contract, but you've still got to keep your wits about you.

You've got to look at the conditions, you've got to look at the special conditions and annexures. We had an annexure there yesterday that I was looking at that basically tried to rewrite the REIQ contract up here in Queensland. And we just had to say, look, it's not acceptable, push it back.

You've got to change it, get rid of it, and then we'll consider it before it even gets to the solicitor. So you've got to have a good well-rounded knowledge of that as well.

With the new seller's disclosure statement that came up here in Queensland last year, I know down south they've had something similar for a while, but sometimes we'll be going through two, three, 400 pages of body corporate information and data and P&Ls and balance sheets for body corporates and all that kind of thing.

And you can't expect someone to be there for you to advise you on every single bit of what we do, right?

We've got to assess things in as much detail as we possibly can to make some assumptions, point out some risks, even before it gets to the proper advice coming from the solicitor or whatever professional we need it from in the end.

Yeah, it's often one of the parts that people forget about, right?

You know, what works the way that you bought a property in Sydney a year, two, five, 10 years ago or wherever in the country, you know, then trying to apply that to different states in terms of legals and it's always changing and the rules are changing and

And what to look out for is sort of a, can really catch you out I find with clients is that they just haven't done enough, familiar with the process. And it can get you real advantage if you do know it, right?

Because you know what the agent wants and the seller wants, and you can use that to sort of get the result. It's funny you made about sales. I do think, it looks like you were back managing Fitness First back in the day.

I was actually, did five months selling memberships in my twenties in between sort of moving to London and moving back to Sydney. And yeah, it's sort of having an amazing sales training there, to be honest. And you do have to, I guess, understand and respect it.

And I think that's when you're dealing with people that are real estate agents who probably have some of the best sales training in the world, even in Australia, because it's just such high ticket sort of commission items that the best ones take years of perfecting their art. And I think

Yeah, having a little bit of an understanding that's the game they're playing can allow you to sort of play it back the other way for your clients. So thanks so much for coming on today, Jason.

Obviously, if you're looking to sort of buy on the sunny coast, you're in safe hands, super knowledgeable, and we've got a good team around you. So appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me, Chris. Pleasure.

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.