Lisa Parker on Buying in Melbourne's South East Corridor

We can buy a perfect, pretty home that's going to fit their budget and it's going to be aesthetically beautiful and it's going to be a home that they're going to be proud to show their friends. But it doesn't necessarily mean that that home is going to grow in value.

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. It's something... 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 broker 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 the Street Secrets. I'm Chris Bates in the studio today with Lisa Parker from Lisa Parker Buyers Advocates in Melbourne. How are you doing?

G'day, Chris. It's so great to see you. It's been a while since we caught up.

No, it has been a while since we've done the whole video catch up, but we have what we do over the years. And today we're going to delve into a pretty fast growing podcast. part of Australia, the southeastern corridor of Melbourne. It's a great place to live, to be honest.

I think I was even born in that corridor, so I should know it better than I do. But it's a crazy spot, right? And I think we're going to unpack that today. But before we go into understanding the intricacies of buying in that market, let's learn a bit more about yourself and

You know, how long you've been a BA, you know, what got you into the industry and just a little bit of insight into your journey to date.

Yeah. Well, I've been a buyer's advocate for, I think I'm at 25 years this year. So it has been a really long journey. I started when I was quite young in the industry or quite young.

I started buyer advocacy the minute I found out it existed because I was working firstly in real estate as a sales cadet. And then I was working for a financial planning company and I specialised in their property division. And that's a whole other kind of world.

And it led me to where I am today because I was conflicted, morally conflicted in that position because we were in a position where we were there to sell stock.

so we were essentially selling we weren't actually advising although we appeared as though we were advisors and that we should have been trusted advisors and as i grew in my own knowledge and could see the flaws in what we were executing for clients it wasn't sitting right with me and i remember saying to a colleague of mine you know in my heart of hearts what i'd really love to do

is have somebody pay me to sit down, listen to their needs and look at their finances and then give them truly independent advice which they paid me for and me selling something to them wasn't the difference between me eating or not eating that week.

So essentially I just wanted to be paid for independence and to give people the right advice. And my colleagues laughed at me and said, no one's going to pay you for that when you can get it for free, when they can get it for free, which was through that financial planning model.

And I soon found out just a few weeks later that it actually existed and it was called Buyer Advocacy. And at the time it was very underground. Not many people had heard of it.

the minute I heard what it was and what they did I knew that was my dream job and I sought out a few people that were in the industry there was probably only about 10 buyer advocates in Melbourne at the time and I reached out to a few met with them I said I've got clients I can bring my own clients but I don't know how to do this so I need I need mentoring

I'm happy to bring my own clients. You don't need to supply me with any. I will pay you 60% of whatever I bring in the door in return for you teaching me how to do this thing called buyer advocacy. And so that's how I got my start in the industry.

I mentored underneath an established advocate until I hit a point where My knowledge exceeded theirs purely because I already had quite a strong background, particularly in the investment space and a very, very strong interest, particularly in the strategy around property.

I also held a financial planning qualification as well as a mortgage broking qualification. I worked as a mortgage broker for about a year and I hated it. But I understood it. And it was, as you know, Chris, it's the foundation for anybody who's wanting to grow a portfolio of property.

The finance underpins everything. Without the finance, you can't grow. And so I worked as a mortgage broker for a year in and around the property stuff. And so that was my story of how I got started.

I like hearing the war story. I didn't know that. And I think some of the best advisors have got those scars, right? Have been on that environment where it's been a sales culture.

They've seen the client outcomes and it's almost like it's just this real weight on you and you just feel so out of your values and you have to sort of break free.

And it just gives you this sort of desire to sort of look after people because you know that people are sort of unfortunately falling for these things. You know, that's 25 years ago. I would say that, you know, this is still happening today.

You know, everything from new property to development to buyers agents who just don't know what they're doing, who are commission driven in organizations to new buyers agents just starting like without great mentoring. and going the long road, which you did and you paid for it, which is amazing.

But yeah, I do think it gives you this sort of fire, this true client, independent, sort of trusted advisor value set. And I think that leads you and it makes your job so much more fulfilling, right? Because you're just so in tune. I'm giving whatever the best advice is, what best practice is.

And I'm going to look after my clients and You know, like you say, you've been in business for 25 years now and that's because clients trust you. So yeah, it's a very good story.

So if you think about though, like, you know, 20, 2002, 10 buyers agents in Melbourne, Melbourne's probably one of the buyer's agent capitals of Australia.

If you think about the, let's say in five or 10 year tranches, like how much better have you got and, and, and where are you, you know, do you, have you seen some of the biggest improvements over the years in terms of your skillset on how to, you know, not just select properties or negotiate or,

know just all the skills involved to be you know good at what you do yeah it's actually just reflecting on this recently with another industry person who's been around for quite a long long time and they asked me if if i was looking to retire and i'm like i'm having too much fun i'm loving life i'm loving my work and there's just no way and we were it led to us discussing the fact that

At this point in our career, we find our job really easy. And it's not because it's an easy job because it's really not. But it's all of those years of experience. You get to a point where every single thing you do becomes second nature. You don't have to think about it.

You don't have to agonize it because you've lived it so many times. You've done it so many times. Even simple tasks like filling out a contract of sale, the amount of stress that I would carry around filling out a contractor sale because I was so scared of making a mistake.

I never wanted to put my clients in a situation where I had done the wrong thing by them and so I would agonize over the contract. It would take me an hour and a half just to go through everything.

I had checklists to make sure I never missed anything until that became second nature. And now I can fill out a contract in 10 minutes and, you know, and I'm like, oh, that was just so easy. Whereas it once wasn't as easy as that.

And it was just because of the amount of care and the sense of responsibility that I felt for my clients that it would weigh that heavily on me. But now... I just find it easy. I've got great relationships with agents which are really long-standing and quite deep.

And so often we're in situations where we might be up against other advocates and in the situation where a selling agent is not familiar with that advocate, they will usually always lean towards an advocate that they've had a long-standing relationship with because they trust them.

They know that they're not going to flip the script. They know that they're not going to start playing games. They know that they're not going to try to start renegotiating over a silly thing in a building and pest.

All these types of things that are happening out there in the industry at the moment with some people that have come in and they're trying to outsmart and outplay. And the thing is with Victoria... And I'm sure Sydney is quite the same, but Melbourne real estate selling agents are savvy. They're so sophisticated.

They're so well trained and they've been around the block and the good agents, they won't tolerate bad behavior by anybody, but especially a buyer's advocate.

And so I'm very, very fortunate that through my longevity, I have those deep relationships that when it comes to the crunch, an agent will swing it our way just because we have that deep, longstanding relationship. And I feel really fortunate my clients benefit from that.

I mean, you made some great points there. I mean, the mental load, right? There's only so much capacity we have, not just to do work, but to do life.

But at work, you know, if you are got so many things you're a bit uncertain about, you know, the contract, the building and passion, who do I work with? Or, you know, worried about the asset itself or the agent and how to negotiate, right?

Like there's so many things and you start to miss things, right? But as stuff becomes more second nature, you can then start to tune into

And if you do, for example, get a bad smell about a property or you know that potentially there's negotiation benefit here or another property's potentially, you can go a bit more digging and find something. So focus more on the client brief and just sort of the logistics of getting sales through.

And it sounds like that's... something that's been able to happen over the years and absolutely with agents.

I mean, you know, while agents are absolutely acting for their vendors, what you're sort of highlighting is there's a risk involved with getting it from offers to, you know, sign contract and, you know, agents are also trying to protect their vendors and making sure they don't follow the wrong rabbit. Right.

And they want to make sure they get a deal done. And so.

And keep it done. They don't want it to fall over, you know, during the process.

Absolutely. And I think also you would have tried tactics. I'm sure there was things early days where you've tried to negotiate this and it's burnt at ageing. I'm never going to do that again. And so you've got those learnings, maybe even decades ago.

And unfortunately, sometimes I find the newer buyers agents, their clients say they're guinea pigs. They're trying tactics with agents. They don't work. But who loses there? Or it's the client who hasn't been able to secure that property because it didn't work. So let's go through the Southeast.

On that note, sorry, Chris, what we've found is that that's actually started benefiting us and it's benefiting us in two ways. The agents are leaning more into us and giving us even more favouritism than they have in the past. and helping us more because they have been burnt by other advocates.

And so they've got, they're quite choosy, you know, they've got their top two, three or five advocates that they reliably go to and want to work with. And so that's ended up really benefiting us even more than our longstanding relationships in the past has actually strengthened our relationships.

And the other thing that it's done is that we're experiencing a lot of clients who have used other advocates around the country before, and they're purposely seeking us out because of our longstanding reputation and because of our reviews online and what people are saying about us online.

And so what I'm finding is that I don't get 100 calls a week from clients and some businesses do because they do a lot of paid advertising. I don't do any paid advertising. All of my work is word of mouth and referral business.

I don't think I've ever paid for advertising in my entire career, to be honest with you. And I'm happy with that because we're a boutique advocacy and I don't have an ambition to scale so that I'm helping 40 clients a month. It's not who I am.

And I think when we start scaling to those levels, the service quality is compromised, but also the client outcomes are always compromised. And we see that play out in the field today with the larger organisations.

But where it's benefiting us is that when clients have gone through that process with either bulk, large scale agents or agents that are newer in their career and then they come to us, what we're hearing from them is that it was a vastly different experience and they're so grateful and they're referring a lot of business to us because they've seen the contrast.

And that's been a really interesting change that has happened just probably in the last two years.

Yeah, I will throw a double down on that as well before we get to the Southeast.

Because I mean, even this week, yesterday, a client who has gone to two other buyers agents, we're not coming to us to buy agents, they came for us to finance, but they've come to us because they're like, I don't know what to do now. We've gone and got these three trusts.

We've gone and worked with, we purchased one with one of the biggest, arguably the biggest bulk buying buyers agent a few years ago. It's gone up, but it's a bit of a dud property to be fair. You know, it's just not even a good property within the suburb, let alone the city.

Then you got another one who's gone and used another, but a very new buyer's agent. And then one they bought themselves. The one they bought themselves, they said, we learned way more. The first one they said, we went through some, you know, get rich quick sort of experience.

They just felt like they were a number and they just realized it was not much value added. And then the new industry one, they just felt like it was that they were just sort of, you know, learning with that buyer's agent.

I mean, they were just, they happy with it, but they weren't like blown away. And you know, and I think that's what we also see from Broke. I mean, the Broke industry is 80% now of the market share. When they come to us, they're like, oh, I wasn't expecting that document.

Oh, I wasn't expecting you to sort of focus on the strategy element as much. I thought you would just not even ask me those questions.

And I think that's, you know, one of the benefits of, you know, after people have experienced something, they can see what great looks like versus, you know, what wasn't great. But hopefully they go and seek out another buyer's agent.

And that would be my concern with this is they go, well, all buyer's agents are like this, or all brokers are like this because they haven't known what good is. And I think that's, you know, one of the issues.

The southeast corridor of Melbourne, I mean, maybe describe it to us in terms of the patch that you you work within and sort of your history within it and why you know it so well.

So the southeast corridor of Melbourne is very well sought after and traditionally it's always been, so Bayside and southeast has traditionally always been the more affluent areas in Melbourne.

Typically in the inner Bayside and the inner eastern suburbs we have a really high proportion of very, very high income earning professionals. So if I think back to

clients that I've worked with who are surgeons, doctors in the C-suite of major banks and major organisations like BHB Billiton and things like that, they're all living either in a Bayside or in eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

And that's where lawyers, partners in law firms

and so there's a lot of very very good quality private schools in those areas and it's very close to the CBD it's got good road access as well as public transport access the other thing about the eastern suburbs is that it's quite leafy it has a very different feel to the rest of Melbourne so we go down Bayside obviously the attraction is being as close to the beach as possible and we've got we don't have beaches in the same way that in

the closest part to Melbourne, we don't have beaches in the same way that New South Wales or Queensland does. We have a bay and it doesn't have waves. It's just a bay. But they're absolutely pristine and beautiful.

And some of the beaches in particular on the day where you can walk down to the beach under perfect conditions,

You sit there and you think that you are on a deserted island somewhere, tropical island, you've flown to the Maldives or something like that because the water's crystal clear, it's aqua, it's so calm and smooth and it's just the most stunning atmosphere.

And people who live in a bayside love that access and people that are in the eastern corridor love the trees and the greenery. It has its own little climate. I don't know exactly the science behind it, but it does tend to get a lot more rainfall than other parts of Melbourne.

And it's very leafy. And so we find that we've either got people who want to be close to the beach or we've got people who want to be in that tree lined environment.

And if we go further out in the eastern suburbs, we've got our real nature lovers that want to get close to the Dandenong Ranges, but also have the ease of transportation into the inner city.

But then we've also got the people who want to live in the inner eastern suburbs so that they're close to amenity and they can send their children to the top schools.

Yeah, so you've got like, that's a bit closer to the city, right? The, you know, the Camberwells, the Hawthorns, the Brightons, and, you know, and then I think it's due to budget, right? Like a lot of people will say, it's a nice way you're breaking it down.

They go, well, I want the schools and the leafiness, but I can't afford there. So I'll go more towards the far east suburbs, the Blackburns, or maybe into the, where my Nana lived till just a few years ago in places like Wonturna and Boronia and Dandenongs, or

they go down the other way right and they go down you know which is kind of past hampton and sandringham and you know now they're exploring even further down sort of towards frankston way i mean is that sort of a way to think about it as well is that you know depending on the budget and because people have been pushed out of certain markets they still want those two lifestyle they either want the schools and the greenery or they want the the bay

And I'll absolutely agree, you know, on a nice, and Melbourne does get a lot of great summer days. It's too hot for me to be honest, but you get that Mediterranean, you know, sort of feel all the way down the coast. And so is that sort of the way you think about it?

And is that how you sort of guide clients? Is you sort of understanding their values of what they want as a family and what sort of lifestyle they want to live long-term and then helping them to also understand like different opportunities within those pockets?

Yeah, a large part of our job is spending some time upfront to really get to understand a client's needs and that there's a few layers to that. Obviously it's what they need to have close proximity to. So children that are in schools, grandparents, sporting activities, anything like that is one component.

The other component is the type of atmosphere that they want to live in because different suburbs have a different personality. They feel different. And we're all unique and we all resonate with suburbs differently.

And so some people want to be in a really affluent feeling suburb where they go down the street and there's very affluent large homes. And then other people want a more organic, rustic, nature-filled environment where It's more relaxed and it's more nature based. And so everybody has a different feel.

And a part of my job is to really understand my client and what makes them tick and who they are at their core. We've got quite a robust clientele.

profiling session that we do for me to understand those things and then obviously the last component is understanding their budget because we can obviously get the most perfect location and the most perfect home but we really need the budget to support that and when it doesn't we need to make adjustments and refinements.

And so depending on what I find out about my clients will depend on what locations I recommend to them. They might come to me with some ideas in their mind.

And after hearing their story and understanding who they are, I can see that that area is not going to be a fit for them. And so I'll make some other recommendations. And so we go through that process until we find somewhere that feels like home.

And that's really important for people to be able to walk out their door feel like they're a part of the community and feel like they belong to that community and that's where the resonance and the synergy comes from of matching people with the right areas.

Yeah, so even if you're thinking like investing in Melbourne, right, like what drives the market is understanding, you know, who's living there, who's moving there, who wants to stay there, what are they earning, what wealth have they got, you know, and so understanding how it's gentrifying, right?

And so intrinsically knowing the owner-occupier drivers of those suburbs is really key to helping you buy a good investment as well. And so I think when you're looking at that, you know, understanding that what's actually good for the clients also then overlaying that investment element into it, right?

In the budget and saying, well, I know you want that, but your budget isn't going to get you a quality asset. So where do people often go wrong? You know, because a lot of the buyers just haven't lived in these locations. Like they might've grown up there, but often not.

They've moved to Melbourne from all over the world, even Australia. They've lived in the city life and they get to this sort of family stage like, no, no, no, we need space. We need to go and explore new areas. And they just haven't got that knowledge yet.

So where do people often go wrong when they're sort of, you know, buying their home and, you know, a few years later they go, ah, we just haven't got, or we have to sell it or we have to, you know, we haven't got the returns that we probably should have.

Yeah well I'll pick up what you've just laid down because it's one of the things that is high on my list of priorities when I'm working with clients and it's something that my clients really love and appreciate and that's my investment background.

With the first 15 years of my career I only helped investors and my core focus was on helping people grow a portfolio of property. And I've also renovated 24 homes in the last 20 years myself.

And so I have an understanding of what that process looks like, the costs involved, the materials, the sequence of events, what needs to happen first.

And my clients like the fact that I'm bringing that investment focus and also the renovation twist to the table because I point out to them that it's important when they're buying a home. So we can do one of two things.

we can buy a perfect pretty home that's going to fit their budget and it's going to be aesthetically beautiful and it's going to be a home that they're going to be proud to show their friends but it doesn't necessarily mean that that home is going to grow in value and so that's a conversation we have at the beginning we can definitely go that route and if that's the route that my client chooses then we're here to facilitate what our client wants our job is just to

inform them and give them the options and then give them the empowerment to choose which way feels best for them. Most of my clients want an asset that is also going to perform.

And so I find that probably over 95% of my clients will opt to go for something a little less aesthetic and go for a home that has fundamentals that's going to underpin capital growth. And the reason for that is because we speak about what their next steps are.

A lot of clients that come to me are first home buyers and I'm now getting those first home buyers come back to me for their second home purchase.

And we speak about that when we first start working together, when they're first home buyers, because there's going to come a time in their life, and this is the benefit for being around as long as I have, is that I know the different life cycles and stages that we go through as we couple up, get engaged, have a child.

When I'm looking at a house, I know how long that house is going to last them. depending on their lifestyle and their timeframes.

And so sometimes I'm talking to them about the fact that, hey, you're going to only get a year or two out of this home before you're going to outgrow it for these reasons. So that's one thing, one mistake that people make. And then the second mistake is just on the aesthetic things.

They go aesthetic instead of thinking about the leapfrog impact of getting an asset that's going to perform. My goal for my clients who value that capital growth factor,

is to get them into a property that's going to grow substantially in value so that when they go to upgrade their property, they can do so without adding a massive amount to their mortgage. If I get them into an asset that's not going to grow, that leapfrog effect

is going to be a massive jump and they're going to have to increase their mortgage a lot more than if I can get them into something that's going to be a good growth asset. And I find 95% of my clients think that's a great idea.

And so we go more for growth than we do the aesthetically beautiful

home that's not going to particularly grow well in value because it might be an apartment in a large apartment complex or it might be a tiny townhouse in a street that's full of townhouses with bad parking and the whole pocket of the area is highly dense with villa units and townhouses.

So these are the types of things that we're considering.

Yeah, I mean, the whole understanding life stages is, I don't know, it's hard also when you're advising clients, but once you start going through it yourself, I mean, I haven't got to the teenage kid stage, so I'm going to learn a lot about the challenges of how you run a household with multiple teenagers, but I've definitely gone through the baby stage and multiple babies and I'm sort of like, oh yeah, I wish I knew some of this stuff and I can help clients now.

It's like giving me that personal experience plus the client experience is helping. And you're right, the renovation experience, I think that's really valuable, right? Because I've done one I completely overcapitalized, I reckon, let alone 24 or so what you've done.

And I think it's often people do make a mistake there, particularly the last few years, buying something they need a lot of work and miscalculating that could have really burnt you. But also having the guts just to challenge clients around the asset.

They're in love with property A because like you say, it's going to look amazing. They're going to love having friends around.

know we know that at some point they're going to have to sell that because it just doesn't suit their longer term plan and you know they're going to have that opportunity cost of if they maybe just took a different route and sort of educating them on that might feel a bit not as nice you might have to live with an unrenovated kitchen but you know when you sell it one day you're going to get better growth and i think that's that's real key because people do get become a bit prisoners in property right if they make a bad move

they kind of get stuck there and that could be quite any, particularly if the better assets move. Melbourne hasn't gone through that as much as other cities, but it can really affect them if they make that wrong move, not just cash they lost, but just getting stuck somewhere.

Yeah, we're finding that a lot of people are moving further and further out from the CBD as well. And that's primarily driven by affordability more than anything. And so you would have heard of Frankston. I think the whole country has heard of a suburb called Frankston down on the bay.

For 20 years, everybody has been waiting for Frankston to pop off because it had all of the right ingredients. It had great arterial access. It was right on the bay. It has three hospitals. It's got a lot of medical supporting clinics and specialists in the catchment area. It's got some good quality schools.

There's some great walking tracks and a lot of greenery around. It's just got all the ingredients. There's a really high number of jobs in the area. And Frankston is finally on the map. We've all been waiting 20 years and it's well and truly on the map.

And it has the most miraculous turnaround because once upon a time, everybody would joke about the demographic of Frankston and making sure you lock your cars as you drive past the station and talking about, you know, drug affected people and, you know, all the rest of it.

Whereas now when you say Frankston, people are like, oh yeah, Frankston's great. And there's a real pride around people now moving to Frankston. And there's just been it's just been such a miraculous turnaround. And when you drive through the suburb now, the suburb feels good.

And one of the benefits, I think, of having done this for as long as I have is that I remember 20 years ago, 15 years ago, driving through suburbs and what they felt like and then what they became.

And so you've got the benefit of going, oh, this suburb feels exactly like that suburb did 15 years ago. And now look what that suburb is. And so you have all of the benefit of seeing that play out throughout history.

And I think back to the beginning of my career when Once Upon a Time Bentley, for example, was an area that was considered pretty far out from the CBD. The drive felt considerable.

And at the time you could buy a little knockdown or a little house that needed renovated for around about $400,000 to $480,000.

Today, a house in that area, a decent family home in that area is going to set you back like $1.8 to $2.6 million, depending on the quality and the size of the home.

And so we look at Frankston and Frankston's gone from a $400,000 suburb up to about a million dollar suburb right now. Can get a little bit less, you can get a little bit more depending on the pockets.

But the whole suburbs going through transformation, we're seeing so many people move from areas like they're renting in areas like Elwood, Hampton East, Bentley, Parkdale even, and they can't afford to buy in those locations because they need more than two million in most cases to get in.

And so they're moving to Frankston because that's where it's affordable. And so you've got that demographic that's

skipping down the bayside because they want to stay close to the beach and so we're really seeing that transformation take place and we're even seeing some people from the eastern suburbs now go bayside and are starting to look in Frankston as well.

Yeah, I mean, I love how you put a suburb. That's a great little way to sort of segue into this because it does come down to that, right?

And even within Frankston, you'd have pockets that are gentrifying much faster than other pockets, pockets that are still where you probably won't want to send your clients to. But overall, like that gentrification, you know, this suburb or this suburb

is offering a very similar lifestyle to this suburb, but this one's much cheaper for these reasons. And that might not change overnight. It might change over time.

And I think that sort of understanding those sort of bridesmaid suburbs and what was the next option if people can't afford one suburb, where would they go? And, you know, Frankston was a great spot, right? Like Bayside, got a train to the city, easy to get to the Mornington Peninsula.

And it's just, like you say, it has gentrified for those reasons. And I think that's what you, you know, is that often what you're doing with clients is you sort of,

challenging their thinking, they sort of get a little bit pigeonholed on their brief and go, look, I just want to buy a Maudie Alec, but they haven't thought about Edith Vale or Bond Beach or somewhere else down the bay.

And you just sort of take them on a bit of a journey and go, well, you know, you weren't looking here, but should you be considering that for your budget and dragging clients sometimes to things that they weren't even considering prior to talking to you?

Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely a process around that and I think Frankston's a great example when you're talking about the different pockets.

We have a lot of clients that come to us wanting to be really close to the Frankston CBD and the train line and because they don't understand the nuances of Frankston and Frankston's got many different pockets and many different price points and there's different housing styles available in all of the different pockets and so

That process can take a long time to kind of catch up with and understand what you can get for your money, but also understand what you should be paying for a property because, you know, one section of the area is priced differently to the next pocket over.

And I'd say Frankston off the top of my head probably has about eight to 10 different pockets that you need to understand. And there's a bit of an education process there because the area that's closest to Frankston CBD demographically is not the best. It's got the highest proportion of renters.

I think it's sitting at about like 49% or something from memory. I could be wrong on that, but I'm just, it's roughly, you know, it's a high number. This is where we do see a little bit of drug activity is there's a few streets that are known for it. Funny stories.

I've heard from some of the locals going for a morning run.

the stories I've heard is quite hilarious there's quite a few housing rooming houses in some of those streets just back from the CBD and also there's a perception that walking to the beach is quick and easy from that location but in reality it's actually not an easy walk and it's not a pleasant walk and so is an education process around helping people understand the nuances of the area and setting them on the right track

Well, I mean, you're speaking about tracks, right? Train tracks in the middle there, right? Railway crossings. You have to walk up, then around, then down. I know it quite well because my dad was living in Bond Beach for a long time. And yeah, it's crazy, those little pockets, right?

These little in, you know, and what would you be paying on this side of the tracks versus

is this side of the track and being too close in the peon highway or not far you know or far enough away and so but if you think about that's i mean it may be a little bit easier to sort of understand from a bas because it's quite finite the land but the whole east southeast is

pretty crazy, right? You've got a lot of new housing estates in these pockets, a lot of potential future supply over the next coming decades, right?

And then you've got really established communities in there on bigger blocks with really leafy, established schools and a lot of wealth and a lot of families that would never want to leave those suburbs and are benefiting from the infrastructure and the spending within these areas.

I guess do you find that that's also sometimes a bit more challenging when you're guiding clients is you've got to be even extra picky on where you go when you're going into the sort of Southeast, just because there is this sort of supply element to it and changing sort of type of properties within those areas.

Yeah, look, definitely it's a consideration. We do have to look at the green fields and where they're located and the land releases that are either in process or are coming up. And so an important part of our job is to pay attention to when large-scale land is sold.

And we know that when it is sold and it's going from a farmland owner to a developer, that area is going to become a new development area. And we don't find that there's a lot of competition for people.

So people either want to establish close houses in established areas or they want brand new house on land packages. They're two completely different separate buyer pools. So we don't tend to kind of have a crossover of those two. But we do have to be mindful.

And one of the things that we are looking at when we're choosing an area is the up and coming supply of property, particularly if we're concerned about capital growth. And what we want to see obviously is a restriction on the amount of stock that's coming to market.

now in some areas we'll see a lot of townhouse development and so when we're looking at building approvals for that location they'll actually be a little bit higher than other surrounding areas and what's important to understand from being on the ground is which why one location's got higher building approvals than the other and quite often it will relate to either an activity zone where there has been some rezoning and the government wants to encourage high density development and then medium density development

Or it will be an area which is really sought after from developers because the numbers stack up for a knockdown and replacing with a duplex or a set of townhouses, maybe three or four on the block. And so they are numbers that we do pay attention to and that does impact lifestyle.

When you go into an area that has a lot of development where they've knocked down one house on a 700 square metre

block and they've put three townhouses or they've put an executive side-by-side duplex on it we've got more traffic coming in so the more of those in a street the more cars you've got parked on the street the more difficult it is to get in and out of the street because you've got cars parked down either side and it does change the feel of a suburb compared to one

that is really well established but doesn't have the development going on for whatever reason. It might be restrictive covenants or it might be that the homes are just already too good in the area and nobody's going to knock them down and build townhouses. They wouldn't make money out of it.

So these are all things that we need to understand and help our clients understand so that they can make informed decisions.

Yeah, I mean, we gotta be building more and we need to, right. We need to be building more housing in all types across all our cities to be fair.

And so it's not anti, but it's just, if you're making a personal decision out of the 11 million plus dwellings out there, you can be a bit selective. You don't have to buy that. So you can say, well, I'm not gonna buy in this part of the suburb because we

it's going to change from a livability point of view a lot over the next you know the time that i own it and you know that's giving me uncertainty when i sell it one day like you say it could be you know a lot of people don't want to live in those streets because that's trades for the next five ten years building these things and you know let alone other uh risks as well and so you can just be these are just sort of some sums of things overlay as part of your brief and go yeah let's just maybe not look at that one or let's bin that opportunity and maybe we'll start following these other ones as well

It's also about the ease of getting around a suburb as well. The more dense it becomes, the more traffic. I used to live in Paran.

I spent, I think, about 12 years living in Paran and I moved out of Paran and further out of the CBD because we got to a point where it was taking us 40 minutes to drive from Paran to Richmond. So the areas just got busier and busier and Paran to Richmond

I don't know how many kilometres it is. Maybe it's like seven kilometres, something like that. It really shouldn't take that long.

And I was recently doing an auction in Bentley and I was going back to my purchaser's house to drop off some champagne because we won the auction and I didn't have champers on me. So I called into the bottle, I dropped it off.

I had four kilometres to travel from the house we bought to the house that they actually currently live in. And it took me 20 minutes. The traffic was horrendous. And so before this was in Bentley, so Bentley used to be really quiet. It felt like it was out of suburbia.

And now Bentley feels like it used to feel when I lived in Paran. And so as these areas become more developed, and Bentley has a lot of townhouses, they have a lot of side-by-side executive townhouses. And And there's also a lot of apartment complexes in key locations in Bentley as well.

And so this is the result. And obviously that happens as we grow as a city, as we have more people move into the city and we need to develop more houses. We're going to see that more and more and that will filter out. I mean, one day Frankston will be that busy.

Yeah, it's the rat runs, it's getting in and out of the suburbs. It's, you know, how often you need to get in your car.

You know, can you just limit having to get in the car a lot, whether you can just walk to the main roads or the train or for easy access to public transport. I mean, Melbourne, it's been one of the agile problems.

It's been well-designed, but it's also extremely busy and people love using their cars. And so it does get quite clogged up, the roads I find down there. And I think this is a problem Sydney's going to already had for a long time, but it's going to

you know, it's going to get a lot worse in the next five, 10 years with the developments and where they're building because they're already building on areas where it already is clogged up. And so you're just putting more people often into bad locations. Let's just think about you.

I mean, you mentioned very early, we don't have to go too long about this, but your agent relationships and the benefit of just decades of building trust within them. I mean, is it just that predictable, you know, you're not playing games with them. They know who you are. They recognize

sort of your name and they're going to get a, you know, you're not going to play games with them, I guess.

Is that sort of where you feel like the key of what a great relationship is with these agents and that's why you're so important to maintain them because, you know, it does give you benefits, whether it's preference in offers, whether it's access, like, is it, is just that so important to your role?

I think agents can see when they're dealing with a genuine professional and they respect that. And there is a difference. They pick that difference up very quickly between somebody who knows what they're doing and somebody who doesn't quite know what they're doing just yet. And so that's one element. And I'm the same.

I love dealing with great real estate agents. I respect their craft. If they're tough to deal with, they're representing their vendor extremely well. It's frustrating because I want them to be more lenient towards me and give me my client more favors, but I respect their professionalism.

And I think the same is in reverse. The second thing is ease of transaction.

So sometimes, like I said, in the beginning of my career, things took me a lot longer to do and I agonised over things and I worried about things that I know now we've 20 plus years experience I don't need to worry about.

And when I worry about it, it's already ticked off in a matter of seconds. And so there's that element as well as just the speed at which we work and execute and how seamless it is. I don't have a lot of demands on the agent.

A lot of the agents are commenting that some of the newer advocates that are coming through are ringing with a massive big laundry list of questions. And they said that they feel like they're having to do the job for the advocate instead of the advocate doing their own job.

And there's been occasions where they've actually had to get onto the phone of the advocate and explain of the advocate's client and explain things to the advocate's client because

The advocate couldn't handle that on their own without assistance. And so just the ease of transaction. And it's also the reliability. They've worked with me before. They know I haven't mucked them around. They know that I stay true to my word.

And I think there is a fine line between when you fight hard for your client on the things that matter and letting the little things go. And I think that's something that you learn as you mature in your career.

Lisa, I just want to get a final point. It might not be something you've thought a lot about, but COVID was crazy down there. I wasn't there, but family were there and it had a huge impact.

And that's probably one of the reasons why it hasn't probably boomed like other parts of the country. But a lot of people escaped the city, right? I would have too. And they wanted to go down the Mornington Peninsula.

Some went down the surf coast on the other side, but on your side, often the Mornington Peninsula is probably, and you know, that, that area went through huge booms, the Mount Eliza's, Mount Martha's, et cetera.

And I mean, what's your sort of take though, like is as this sort of return to the office, sort of bit of hybrid work, like it might've felt a little bit too much for a lot of the city people to get back three, four days a week.

Has that really dragged a lot of those buyers maybe back to, you know, that Frankston sort of pocket or the Bayside or a bit closer in the east?

Whereas typically they, you know, people were willing to go further and now they don't want to go too close to the city, but they really attracted to sort of that middle ground where you specialise.

A small proportion, but what I'm finding largely is that when I'm working with my clients, they're all at home working. They only need to go to the office every now and again, or they're in the office once a week.

And so I haven't found that there's been a massive push to returning to the office for work. In fact, I've found that it's far more flexible and most of my clients are working from home when they're in a position where they're able to do that.

Obviously, construction managers on the big build projects and things like that's a different story. Doctors, you know, different story. They can't exactly do their job from home.

Yeah, the city worker, yep.

Yeah, so look, a small proportion did move during COVID, either to a regional area or just further down the coast and decide that city life is more suited to them and they've moved back, but it's a very small proportion.

Yeah. It's going to be interesting to track that. I mean, different cities are probably on different recovery curves. Sydney is definitely more in forcing people back as much as they can.

But maybe it's just something that, you know, as the economy sort of starts to kick, people drive back to, you know, have to come back to the city more. Maybe they don't.

Maybe the, you know, people value their lifestyle just as much and they keep their stake in the ground as long as they can. Thanks so much for being in for the chat.

I mean, we've absolutely worked with quite a few clients over the years and, you know, that self-haze corridor is very popular, not only with first-time buyers, upgraders, investors. It makes a lot of sense. And so you're in safe hands with Lisa and the team. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks, Chris. See you again soon.

Awesome. That's good.

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.