Matthew Ward on What Regional Buyers Miss in Central NSW

I was dealing with a client recently looking to do property development, and she'd spent probably six months being in Orange and talking to every man and fully across a lot of detail, but she was still missing some of the key fundamentals. Some of those things are not written on the internet.

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Welcome to Street Secrets. I'm Chris Bates in the studio today with Matthew Ward from WPG Advisory.

I guess a buyer's agent in sort of central New South Wales or regional New South Wales, you'd call it, based in Orange, a beautiful part of the world and sort of specialised anywhere from sort of Tamworth all the way down to sort of Albury-Wodonga sort of area.

Obviously helps a lot of first home buyers generally in sort of the Orange region where he lives. So thanks for joining us today, Matt.

That's right, thanks for having us, Chris.

So we actually have a very mutual connection. Shout out to Matty Derham, great broker in Orange. If anyone needs a broker in Orange, you'll have a good time working with Matt.

But you know, today's not really talking about him, it's talking about different Matthew and really sort of unpacked the sort of regional sort of New South Wales story. It's obviously there's a lot going on, not just from, you know,

shifts post COVID and people moving to these areas, not just for lifestyle, but new changes, I guess the way they're working is allowed that to make happen.

I mean, Matt, tell us a little bit about yourself, sort of your history coming into buyer's agency, because it's not a typical market where you'd find a lot of buyer's agents, particularly the capital city sort of phenomenon and how long you've been doing it and how's it going?

I grew up in Orange.

I was lucky enough to have this as a hometown growing up and then finished schooling in Sydney and then went on to uni, did the property economics course out at Hawkesbury at Richmond, which was quite a popular course back in the mid-90s and still is, I think, but they've moved campuses now.

And then followed that, moved into Sydney, started off as a trainee valuer and did that down around Parramatta and Northwest and all those sort of growth areas as some of those suburbs were developing. Did a lot of work around development and just general practice evaluations.

before moving to London in the early 2000s for a number of years to continue on with that process of valuation and general property consultancy. And then when we're looking to come back from there, we were sort of deciding where to go. And we ended up in Orange just through circumstances more than design.

And then we thought we'd give it six months to see how we liked it. And we're still here 20 years later.

So I was valuing at Orange for a number of years, probably eight or nine years, and then I moved over in 2014, I think it was, from the valuation space into the buyer's agency space. We just saw a bit of a gap in the market there.

I didn't really know buyer's agency existed as a role, but we could just see that by the time a valuer gets involved and the deal's already done, the price has already agreed, the money's already been lent, And the valuation that they get is sort of too late in the process.

So we just thought that there was an opportunity if we could get into that conversation and be engaged through that process. So I started sort of asking around some other mates in the valuation industry. And yeah, one Saturday night someone said, oh, you should try Buyers Agency.

Looked at it on the Sunday, went back to work on Monday and we said, right, this is what we need to do. So off the back of that, we started offering a service.

It was slow the first couple of years, just trying to work out who the clients were, explain what you do, try and work out where people needed you and when they would be prepared to pay. It was also part of any business.

Now I've been, this is going to 11th year of being a buyer's agent, 25 years in the industry. And off to the side of that, been doing a lot of my own sort of projects, renovations, small developments, that sort of stuff.

So I think it's important that if you're going to be advising on certain styles of property and stuff, you need to be able to have done it yourself. Talking, it's one thing, but actually doing it gives you a whole much more deeper understanding of the whole process, not just the buying process.

I think that takes time and money to do that, but I think it's a good base, as well as having a formal education around all that. So that's sort of my proposition, where I'm coming from and my background.

Some people come out of sales or whatever or other industries, but there's a few more valuers starting to sort of jump the fence, so to speak, and offer that service around the buyings.

I do like that question. That was my own question. But the question because it does sort of highlight all the different ways people come into buyers agency. And there's not one right or wrong, but the valuation is a pretty good one.

I think particularly in a market like a central real market, I mean, a value property is not as simple as a cookie cutter approach of some high density apartment where there's thousands of them.

Every property is quite unique, I guess, particularly if you start stepping out of the town center of these regional populations and finding comparables is quite hard and challenging. And I think that valuation background would really help you. And I guess when you sort of talk about

the central New South Wales or central West, I'm not sure the right thing to call it, but how do you sort of see that it's pivoted?

I mean, like you said, experience is quite, A, you grew up there, but B, so you've got that sort of long-term history, but I mean, how has that sort of shifted over the sort of last five, 10 years and what really drives the sort of towns and how do you sort of see it?

I think each of the regional cities that I'm dealing with are mainly the sort of the Tenworth, Davos, Orange, Bathurst, Wagga or Albury. There's sort of those main centers. What they all do is they sort of do flow in cycles. And if you look over the data over the last 30 years,

At some points, Dubbo has been the most expensive regional city and then over time that momentum shifts and now Orange is sort of probably the more expensive market. And you've got to kind of look at what's driving that.

And if you look at the pure economics, my background is probably economic, Dubbo is a stronger commercial center, bigger GDP, bigger population, but the property values don't reflect that. So over or so to places like Orange.

So what's going on in Orange which drives property prices higher when the economic fundamentals perhaps aren't there? And I think that's where lifestyle and amenities really come into it and being just a nice place to live. But that's what's changed, I think,

And each of these towns or these cities have their own unique personalities. Orange has really got on board with the food and the wine and the tourism.

And thankfully, those sort of things make it attract people to town, which means you can attract medical staff and people want to come here to work and live. And the city's not too big, so everything's five, ten minutes away. Relative to Sydney markets, the real estate values are still quite affordable.

We're not the Southern Highlands, which has got multi-million dollar price tags and so forth. We haven't reached that level. So it's still accommodating for sort of the general families.

And then you look at a place like say Wagga, it has a couple of large government departments there, military and so forth, universities, all that sort of stuff, which once again, it's sort of midway to between sort of Sydney and Melbourne, not far off to Hume, good transport links and those sorts of things.

So it also sort of kicks on pretty strongly.

These sort of the ability to live affordably but still perhaps retain metro jobs or whether that job can translate to work at home or what I work in here in Orange is a co-work space, I do a small office in a larger complex and even the existence of this building really is an example of what's going on in that

The office is filled with remote workers pretty much who don't want to be at home. I know the guy up the hall, he flies down to Adelaide five days a month for one of the mining companies.

The other three weeks he spends living in Orange as opposed to having to shift his whole family down to Adelaide.

So there's that ability now, which I think is driving the fundamental change, particularly with the larger cities, whether it's the affordability of the housing and the type of lifestyle you have, but also the physical connectivity, whether Orange is three hours into Sydney or you've got flights into Melbourne, Brisbane, as do a lot of these other regional centers, which is game changing.

Getting to Brisbane is a 12 hour drive, 10 to 12 hour drive, or it's a one and a half hour flight. You know, that for a regional city, that's amazing. You know, that's really a big game changer when we're so used to having to drive hours to get anywhere.

Australia is a big place. When you start driving around it, you realize how big it is. But I think those fundamental shifts that have really come in, you know, probably started 10 years ago, maybe a little bit earlier, and then COVID just fast forwarded everything, just made everything had to happen.

There was just no choice. And there certainly saw a lot of shifting coming out into the regions, the tree change and so forth.

And then with the property prices surging in Sydney post-COVID, the affordability factor is now starting to create economic refugees, if you want for one of the better term, people who just can no longer afford or want to afford a Sydney mortgage. You know, I've got teenage children and they're sort of

You know, their perception of value on real estate is being based off living in Orange. And when you show them what two, maybe $3 million buys them in Sydney, they are quite disheartened. They're like, really? It's like, yeah, because $2 million or $3 million in Orange buys you a very good home.

So their expectations of value is, you know, if they want to be in Sydney, they're going to have to change. But also their expectations around lifestyle.

Yeah, it's a really good answer, to be honest. And I think what you've touched on, there's lots of good points. I mean, obviously, these regional towns have an economy that might be supported by government or tourism. And you've got to really understand what's driving that, but also the lifestyle.

I mean, why would someone The economy is not as good, but the lifestyle is there. Like you say, someone like Orange has invested a lot in that. A lot of people see that move is not a big jump because it's still got people like them, I guess. Are you still finding?

I mean, I don't like to talk too much about now, but I do think that the regional markets are getting driven a lot by, like you say, economic refugees. It's a good word for it of people escaping, not just because they can't afford it because they don't want to afford it.

I think that's a really good point you make there.

and people sort of moving to the regions, obviously work from home is changing for lots of different people and there's a fight people back to the office, but there's always people who can work from home or like you made a good point before and the one who doesn't really need to be on site, but has to fly.

How are you seeing that shifting in sort of 2025 and is that still really strong part of what's driving these regional centres is people moving there?

Yeah, absolutely. And what I've seen more of is potentially rent vesting.

The bank of mum and dad, rather than trying to buy a house for kids in Sydney where a million dollars doesn't go far, or if they've got a number of kids they're trying to foot the bill for, they are buying investment properties in regional markets spending somewhere between $600,000 and $900,000.

and buy multiple properties, one for each child perhaps, as opposed to trying to buy or help assist them into a $2 million property in Sydney that might come with a $1.8, $1.7 million mortgage, which you're going to be earning pretty good wages to cover that sort of mortgages.

And if you're in jobs that perhaps are fairly standardized in earning capacity across different regions, a lot of government roles or service roles and those sorts of things, you can come out here and take on a $400,000 mortgage as opposed to a $1.4 million mortgage. That's massive differences.

And the jobs and the economies here, I will speak to a lot of business owners, everyone is struggling to get staff of all industries, not just, and I'm sure that's a universal problem, but if you're a teacher or a nurse, driving trucks, a whole range of, even professional services, medical, all those sort of, it doesn't matter really what the industry is.

you can move into the regions, maintain those jobs, still have meaningful careers and meaningful jobs and job opportunities, but don't have to have the Sydney or the metro market sort of price tag to go along with the living expenses.

I go to Sydney most weeks, so it's a day trip or a nice weekend. It's not hours in the car. Well, it's three, but it's all manageable. And if we decide to go to Melbourne or Brisbane, there's flights to do that and it's all accessible.

You still get access to the metro services or the entertainment or facilities. Orange particularly and Dubbo and Wagga as well and Albury have very good medical services. So I think there's like 250 specialists based in Orange across a whole facet of medical services.

So you've got a lot of options here from living here, but also from a work point of view and those sort of jobs. So we're seeing a lot more of that, people just choosing something different.

Yeah. I mean, you've highlighted obviously some, they're obviously the people leaving the city, you know, obviously when they get to that family stage, you might've highlighted something I hadn't thought about too much is, you know, people, you know, A, there's always people buying investment properties all over the country, right?

Whether they think Central or New South Wales or Queensland or Perth, like there's always, you know, I think, you know, just investors are considering that option just because of the cost to enter other markets is higher and, you know, they go, well,

I potentially can get a high yield and I can potentially go into these regional markets. And that's been a huge story.

But I guess is there people in the capital cities that are almost buying their future homes or the parents are helping them and maybe they want to stay there now because convenience is important, but they can see that they're preempting this shift to a regional hub and maybe they visited a few times.

You're finding that and so they're really a rent vester now. ultimately, they're buying their future homes. Is that something that's a growing segment as well?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, people who perhaps aren't quite ready, they want to get into the property market sooner rather than later, but they're not quite ready yet. And maybe they've got a property in Sydney, maybe they don't.

But they know that at a certain point, probably usually within two to five years, they've got a plan to move out here. pending employment or whatever else, because those things can happen a bit slower. But, you know, kids starting school is a bit of a push.

And there's a few of those things that people just, you know, when just coming into a new city, getting your head around the nuances of any new market, particularly if you're going to live there and how living on the wrong or right side of the tracks is an old example.

really shifts your options. And particularly around, if you're going to go down the public schooling route, there's school catchment zones, which they're quite strict, and there's preferences over that.

The regional cities these days have, once upon a time, the housing commission areas were sort of centralized into certain pockets of the town. Now that is sort of the older model.

And now they're spread throughout the towns and the cities, being aware of what that is and if it's a positive or a negative, all that sort of stuff.

It's just sort of very hard, unless you have been working in the city for a while, to tell the difference just by looking at the house or looking at the street or going to one side of the tracks or the other. That all has sort of diminished now.

Certain pockets are being gentrified just through pricing point. You know, the only place in Orange that you can buy a

A freestanding home now is sort of quasi what used to be classified as a social housing area, but with the sell-off of those assets, they've been picked up by either investors or first homeowners because of affordability point. And those areas are gentrifying.

Yeah, you've highlighted, you know, because I think it's worth really unpacking sort of the drivers behind these regional markets. I think there's a lot of probably misunderstanding. And I think myself, I'm trying to learn about it a bit deeper here. So, you know, I mean, obviously you've got the younger ones.

Is there still also a downsizer element to this as well? I mean, you know, they're maybe sat in the capital city. They haven't put enough away in their super. You know, the house price has gone up and, you know, they want a bit of space for their, you know, 20 years in retirement.

They're a bit not a downsizer. And, you know, the work, the health services are still quite strong. So they can stay close to hospitals and all the medical things they might need in later life. But they can still put some money in their super and enjoy a good life.

Are you finding that's also a strong part of the regional markets that people sometimes forget about?

Yeah, particularly where if you're of a certain age, retirement age now, where you've probably got quite a valuable asset, particularly if you're living in a metro market. And how do you unlock the equity in that? So you don't have to compromise on those things. You've got to leave Sydney, just as an example.

But what they do, they sell their Sydney property.

property come out here spend less than half of the capital in that to replace it possibly with a better quality property have their super nest egg there which is the old equity in the family home and then yeah access to that's what you say is it the services and what so forth and if you still need to get back to Sydney well there's a number of options for that that don't require you personally having to drive

So, yeah, look, there's certainly a big element of that coming through as well. And some of that is coming in from the West as well. Farmers who are retiring now and who might have been on a family farm and they've either given it over to the next generation or they've completely cashed out.

And some of that's, you know... some of those guys are coming to town with some significant coin and not just looking for a $700,000 hand, but sort of spending multiple millions on really quality property.

So there's real different segments of the market and that higher value property close to town or maybe on small acreage is really popular, particularly for the downsizes coming out of the West or

I'm also seeing, you know, young families who are either living on very small blocks, townhouse type stuff, or in apartments, whose kids are starting to, you know, look for more space, and they can, you know, move out and offer that traditional, not, you know, the quarter acre box, they're no longer, and people don't really want them, but...

More space, walk to town, safe to ride a bike on the road. Yeah, those types of things. Just sort of getting back to a, yeah, not a bygone era, but just a different way of living where everything's for your kids running around outside. They're not going to get run over or go missing.

So yeah, it's that kind of vibe as well that people are chasing, I believe. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's a good point. I mean, the growth of houses, apartments, you have a lot of people who have got somewhere to live. They're not first-time buyers. But to make those bigger jumps to the more space, the bedrooms is a big whack.

And so a better shift could be a similar purchase price, maybe a similar mortgage, but just a much better home that's going to get them through those maybe the school years and then be where they want to end up.

And like you say, school times and changing over from primary to high is always starting. primary is a good driver to make a shift. I think you probably find as well, maybe the people like them has made that shift as well. It's gone from a sleepy town.

So actually now there's more going on here. And the city themes are coming into the regions, whether it's cafes or restaurants. And I think people who potentially wouldn't have lived there before are living there because And there's more of a growing economy that they can sort of serve as well.

I mean, let's go around the property per se, because I could probably talk about an hour of this for you easily around all the different mistakes people can make in regional markets, not only valuing a property you said at the start, but where do people get it really wrong where they come to these regional markets and they can easily make big mistakes?

I mean, you said certain parts of suburbs, but what are some of the other big mistakes you see people make?

Getting a gauge on what value is. I know that over time I've certainly spoken to sales agents who, and the vendor's preference is to find a Sydney buyer. Of course, the price they're asking the locals won't pay. And during COVID we saw a lot of that.

where Sydney buyers were just coming out with Sydney price expectations and selling stuff for half price and wouldn't care if they paid an extra $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 for that, which, yeah, it was on a $700,000 property, that's significantly more.

you know and that still goes on a bit you know it's all relative from whatever people can afford and what they decide to pay for it but if you overpay properly overpay you know it's going to take you years to try and recoup that and then if you've just you know you move out and decide that life changes and you've got to go back to the sydney then you've got to try and resell that you know given it

more than you should on the way in, you're going to straddle on the way out. It's going to become a long-term purchase unless you want to take a loss. So that's the critical thing is just get your head in the game when you come out to the regional markets.

Understand where the value propositions are for each property. And then really it's about Why are some parts of town more valuable than others and how do you decipher the difference between that? Because driving around the streets is not necessarily going to give you the indicator that you need.

Public transport doesn't exist, but it's not a major influencer in property prices. Everyone just has a car and drives. So what else is driving? It is a walkability into the CBDs or to the local schools or the school catchments.

Flooding, particularly a lot of these regional cities, with the exception of Orange, sit on a rear system. Yeah, you see what happened to Lismore earlier in the year.

They do try to these days map around all that and develop around those, but the older parts of town, they didn't even think about it or didn't care, one of the two, in understanding what that means. So... It's all those sort of localised nuances, school catchment zones, I think we've touched on before.

And what's the mix of the neighbourhood and who's living in there? And do you want to be the, if you're going to have an investment property, do you want to be the investor in an owner-occupier market? Or do you want to be the owner-occupier in an investment market?

There's a sort of a real mixed bag of what that looks like. You know, if you're doing it for investment, you know, is your budget right for that market? Often, you know, people who would try to spend a million and a half in orange on investment property, probably not the right market.

The meat of the market sits, in capital value terms, sits below $1,900,000 property price.

may do exist over that, but that's not where the meat of the market is. And you want to be positioning yourself into the most common rental value properties for a whole range of reasons.

Whereas if you go to other, certainly in Sydney, a million and a half would be, well, even more would be quite suitable for property investment, residential investment. If you're getting into commercial markets, understand what that looks like and what the property yields are.

I don't know whether, of course, it's cheap and it's got a good tenant in it. That's not the only reason to be buying properties, commercial properties particularly. I'm getting a bit more interest in people wanting to buy farms for investment, but it's not as easy as doing that.

I think if you're looking just for a hands-off investment, you're better off with residential, commercial, industrial sort of properties. Farms can be problematic unless you're going to commercial scale farming.

So, yeah, there's a whole, you know, even down to the right side of the street or a particular block, you know, don't go past the, you know, these three blocks of this street are fine. Either side of it, not so much for various reasons. style of home.

Orange has a really popular central double brick market, bungalow, California bungalow style properties, which are really popular.

What the orange market will call the heritage style properties. Going to Bathurst, those properties are probably 50, 60 years older, developed in different times, not as good as quality because the building standards weren't as high.

So they have a lot of other issues down there that don't creep into the orange double bricks, understanding those sort of nuances.

So there's a whole even aspect, particularly in these cooler climates, you know, you want the popular properties have the rear yard facing to the north because the living areas typically sit in the back of the house and you want the northern light, particularly in the winter months, hitting the back of the house.

Those types of things don't get thought about too much. The new estates they are developing

blocks on an east-west axis so that the northern light will run across the one full side of the property and that's solar passive design and that's part of the basics and sustainable development and all those sorts of things.

If you haven't lived in the area and you're just buying a home and you're not aware of these things you know, come August, all these things really come to a head and they start to make sense.

But yeah, that's the heating and the cooling and all those sort of lifestyle factors that people just don't always think about, particularly for the cooler climates where most of Australia is a warm climate. And if you're coming from a warm climate into a cool climate, things change.

And what works in those hotter climates does not work in orange and vice versa. So it's just, I just don't understand the nuances really.

You've highlighted on so many good points and I was letting you sort of run with it there because there's just so many things you've said along that. Even just your final point around the climate, I think that's a really good one.

I think people are sort of used to living through wherever they are. And, you know, it's a whole different world when you move to the central and you get hotter summers or the colder winters. And, you know, it didn't matter to you before, but it really matters now.

And having someone to sort of guide you on that and say, hey, this is going to be the challenge you're going to face, particularly when people are moving to a complete, not just area, they're moving to a complete whole other part.

I mean, are you finding that a lot of people are sort of, you know, having those sort of decisions and they are having to sort of reframe what they thought they originally wanted before they spoke to you and what they end up buying?

Like, is it quite different, like, than what they, or are they coming in quite well informed and end up getting what they, or do you have to reframe them a bit?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, realestate.com and domain will highlight the addresses, but understanding what those addresses mean without being on the ground and talking to a lot of people.

I was dealing with a client recently who'd been looking to do property development and she'd spent probably six months being in Orange and talking to every man and fully across a lot of detail and had really sort of broken down orange into quite some distinct areas and where she thought.

But she was still missing some of the key fundamentals just because some of those things are not written on the internet and you can't Google this stuff. AI is not going to produce the answer for you. You've got to be able to live it.

And that's the difference between making the right choice or regretting a property you've purchased and not really understanding that until you've lived in it for probably a couple of years. But when it comes to resale, you're going to have to find someone who's as naive as you to buy it.

So I think with more and more data that's becoming available, people do get themselves up to speed on a number of things. They can do some checklists of due diligence and all that sort of stuff available at people's fingertips if they want it. They understand. But also putting the right weighting on risks.

I know with the software that we use, there's

There's 20 points or at least 20, 30 points of DD stuff that we do before we even look at a client's brief to make sure that the property is going to get across the line from our point of view to have the right fundamentals to be an investment property.

And then there's the buyer's brief and preferences over the top of that.

Now we don't show our clients that because usually it's too much information and they might end up focusing on the wrong details because of just not having the broader knowledge and knowing how to put into context flood zoning, bushfire zoning, heritage listings, heritage conservation areas, all those types of things which

may or may not have critical bearing on a property. We interpret it. We understand what it means. If it's a negative, we certainly flag it and have those conversations. But what I do see is people who are sort of going alone, they have a sort of analysis paralysis on things.

They just have so much information. They don't know which part's relevant or are they emphasizing on the wrong stuff, which the local market perhaps doesn't, just rolls with. And you see that a lot with out-of-town solicitors who are not used to the local nuances of any particular regional markets.

And they start harping on things that don't really matter. I mean, it all matters, but it's not a deal breaker. It shouldn't be holding up a program. And buyers are the same. They sort of miss opportunities just like an experience, really, is what it is.

know obviously agents probably don't even some of them wouldn't even like you when you started even though it's such a more mature industry than it was when you started it's still quite new i mean how are they with buyers agents and do you have to explain what you do and how do you sort of you know because such a broad area you're recovering as well like um and probably a lot of turnover of agents and so how do you sort of get cut through to to make sure that you're sort of

A, uncovering opportunities for your clients and actually getting potentially the trust of the agents rather than the opposite, because they just don't understand what you do.

That used to be certainly the case. When I first started out, you had to explain to sales agents how you worked, how you got paid, what your role was. And I would say 95% of them were pretty good. Once they understood what you did, it was a bit of a novelty.

I was sort of the first one running around for a few years. I think it's, you know, when you see the blokes on the block, when I used to caught a lot of heat over this. The buyer's agents, not so much this. It was certainly the earlier ones. I didn't watch it.

I couldn't remember exactly who they were, but they used to carry on a bit. Entertaining for TV, sure, but you try and carry on like that in a professional setting, day to day, in a finite market. I mean, maybe metro markets are different, or if you're buying nationally, you can

You can behave a certain way and get away with it because next time you're dealing with someone else.

But in original markets, if I'm in Orange and I've been dealing with the same agents for 10 years, longer, 20 years that I've been in Orange, firstly as a valuer and now as a buyer's agent, if I was a Muppet and carried on like I'm accordingly, let's stop answering your phone calls.

It's simple as that. I just wouldn't have a business. You just cannot carry on like that. You've got to be professional, respectful. You've got to work with them. You've got to have professional relationships. And it's really about being a professional in the role.

And because I come from a professional background, being a property valuation and consultancy, You have to stand by your word. That ethic basis and professionalism is carried through. Now, it's like any professional base.

If you engage a lawyer, you expect him to talk to you to a certain level and present himself a certain way and act a certain way. And if he was out of character for that role, is that the kind of bloke you want representing in public negotiations?

For me, that's being a sounding board or a person of responsibility, being easy to get on with, helps in that role and helps build those relationships. So now that over time that I've been doing that and conducting my sort of professionally, I believe for 10 years or more as the buyer's agent,

um you have those relationships so when you do ring someone they do ring you back they do offer you you know off-market properties or pre-market properties but the back side to that is having clients who have been prepared before anyone starts with me there's a checklist that they've got to go through because you've got to as a buyer and a client of mine you've got to be able to perform because i'm going to go and

represent you and say, hey, I've got a real buyer here who's looking in the market. Maybe we buy what you've got, maybe we don't. But if they decide to go with us and then my buyer can't get finance, well, I look stupid and the whole program falls over.

So it's about being a trusted person by my clients, but also by the sales agents that they know if they deal with me, The deal will go through. If we shake hands on a deal, it'll happen. Sometimes it's slow because of banks or solicitors or whatever. Everyone else's fault but mine.

But the deal goes through. And that takes years of building that trust. And all the agents talk. And if you're a muppet with one, they'll all find out about it. So you've got to not embarrass them, make them look good, but work with them and work professionally with them.

They've got a job to do. I've got a job to do. And yeah, between us, we've got to get the deal across the line. Now, if we can't, we can't, that's okay.

But having that time in market, that experience and background and personal relationship and being able to pick up the phone and have an answer is critical.

And that's, you know, when you're competing on hot property or you're trying to get your deal in front of, on top of the list of potential other purchasers,

There is favoritism there, I would say, most of the time, because they know that the process with me is going to be, well, it de-risks it. It's all about risk, isn't it? The sales agent wants to de-risk the deal as much as possible. I'm a known entity that helps.

I think, but it takes time. It takes, you know, doing what you say you're going to do multiple times. And they're, oh, hang on a sec. He's a safe pair of hands. Like you say, agents talk.

And, you know, so it sounds very similar to the sort of capital city markets, to be honest. And agents are more aware. They're willing to, and they want to buy just as much as they've got a property to sell. They want to, but they want a safe buyer, right?

They want someone who's actually going to, you know, make them look silly because they've got the seller all excited and then it falls over. And yeah, so I think you've absolutely obviously built that across different regional areas and probably possible to do because they are sort of small areas.

So you probably can cover lots of agents. They're just in different parts of these locations. I mean, I wasn't going to go here, but I think I might. So are you finding there's an issue in the last few years, we've seen a massive increase in regional property investing for lots of reasons.

also proliferation of buyer's agents that are investment focused, they don't do it on a rock, they're buying based on data and they're going to the next regional hotspot and they're moving markets just because it's almost like they're all going together and they're buying massive volume just due to the power of their marketing.

Are you seeing that in central New South Wales or you're not on the hit list yet because they've gone to the Perth, the Darwins and Townsville and et cetera, they haven't gone to your area yet or is that an issue?

No, no, they're certainly there. I mean, when I first started out, I literally had the wild west to myself. And now, you know, I was talking to some guys, you know, some sales agents in Albury and, you know, you've seen many buyers agents, da, da, da.

And I said, oh, yeah, you know, we used to deal with you and maybe one other out of Victoria or whatever. I said, now we've got a buyer's agent's list of 250, which we go out to. And I said, oh, that's interesting. And how many of them come to town?

He goes, oh, well, it's you and another guy. I think there might be three of you who come to town and actually look at what they're buying. It's just like, yeah, right, yeah. He goes, oh, we love it because they just buy anything. We don't care.

They don't even care as long as the price is right. And it got so bad down there, they had to stop buying.

But the agents were loving it for a while until what seems to happen is next-row market buyers agents offer 30, 40, 50 grand over the asking price, tie the place up, take it off the market, and then try and beat the price back down and then try and find a buyer.

It's a really murky world. And I think with the volume of buyer's agents who have no property background, no formal training, very limited life experience, the damage that that style of business is doing I don't know where it's going to end up.

For me to get a valuation license was a university degree and two years of practical experience before I was allowed to sign off my own reports. I believe that from my personal point of view, Buying property is a kin and the same level of responsibility as signing off a valuation.

Now that's the level of education and training a value has got to have. If you're a trusted advisor in any other industry, accountancy, law, whatever, there is a depth to your education and training. That is fundamentally missing with the buyer's agency space.

And just because you can go to Queensland and get a real estate license in a number of days and then transfer those into New South Wales or Victoria or wherever else you think you can operate without ever stepping foot on ground and just looking at software data.

I think there's some fundamental things that are going to go wrong. And when this does go wrong, I hope everyone's got their insurances in place because it's going to be, you know, Whilst the markets go up, sins are washed away.

But as soon as people start making mass losses on tanking markets, which will happen, maybe not on mass, but individuals are going to get burnt and they're going to look for someone to blame.

And the buyer's agents who didn't get out of the office, I hope you've got insurances in place and your processes tucked away. Because someone's going to take a fall for this eventually.

I mean, I was in the valuation industry in the early 2000s when their standards slipped as an industry, struggled to get insurance, struggled to remain relevant in the property finance world. And they, as the Australian Property Institute, had to take it in-house and really change the industry.

I don't know what organization has the power in the buyers agency space to do that across the nation. It's certainly not New South Wales Fair Trading.

You've highlighted some, you know, some good points there.

And I think, you know, a lot of people in the buyer's agency world are frustrated, I guess, with the probably lack of standards and would absolutely, you know, want to increase them, would invest in training and retraining and make sure they're, you know, because they're fully invested in the career.

And if that's the right outcome, I think there's a, obviously a lack of appetite with the property market to regulate it just due to the past wanting to sell property, right?

Not having to put too much responsibility on the person actually doing the advice that put it more on the person actually making the decision to buy and shifting that blame and blaming the individual buying rather than the person providing the property research. But I think you're right.

I think when consumers start losing out, I think they will, because markets, the promise of what they thought they were signing up for and what actually delivered, and particularly if markets unwind due to a lot of people bailing, you can see some pain.

And I think people are going to really understand that the most is people like yourself. To be honest, I think you're working in these markets, you know them deeply and can see the way that not only they're not going to the property, but they're overpaying. They're not buying all the

elements you're going to UDD. So they're buying poor assets, more expensive, and then they're flooding markets and pushing prices up. And I think that's a real issue. And so I don't want to go there too much on this podcast, but I think you and I see it very clearly.

If you are working, you know, looking to buy in sort of central New South Wales, absolutely. I think you're in safe hands with Matt and Sam, I think more than ever after this chat. And I appreciate you taking some time today.

Yeah, no worries, Chris. Thanks for having us. Thank you, Matt.

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.