Meighan Wells on 25 Years of Buying in Brisbane

That other agent gets the listing, this agent loses their commission and it is a really ugly, unpleasant situation.

Unfortunately, that's what I've seen a lot of in the last five years is people who don't understand what they're actually doing to the agent when they don't protect their privacy and they don't protect their commission.

So not understanding the real estate agent and their motivations is a massive, massive problem that new buyers agents have. Our motto is buy without regrets. If you can buy a property that will serve you for 10 years as opposed to three years, that will serve you well.

Buying a great property today, that's not just what it's about. It's also getting something that could be ripe for improvement when the time is right for that investor or for the next buyer. You think about, right, lifestyle, what's important to you? How do you get to work?

What do you need for your family? What amenities like parks and shops?

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

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

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

Welcome to Street Secrets. I'm Chris Bates. I'm in the studio today with Meighan Wells from Property Pursuit up in Brisbane. How are you doing?

Fabulous. Thank you. It's a beautiful day in Brisbane.

Absolutely. I mean, it's a good time of year, right?

It's springtime. It's 30 degrees. I don't know how we get that in spring, but we do.

Yeah. Yeah. I like this time. Once it gets in the middle of summer, it's too hot for me. But we've known each other for a while. We've got sort of mutual connections with Veronica and your podcast. But if you haven't

I heard of you, Megan, before, which a lot of our listeners probably haven't. Give us a bit of an understanding. I mean, have you been a buyer's agent for a long time? We really value experience.

Maybe give us a bit of a story of when you entered the industry and sort of what got you to enter initially, what you're doing before and why you've stayed in it for so long.

Like a lot of people, I didn't actually start my career as a buyer's agent and it wasn't something I fell into either. I'm hearing a lot of recently of people kind of falling into the industry because they like houses and they think they'll buy them for other people.

But going back to when I was a little younger, I did an undergraduate degree in psychology and I really liked the business parts of the degree that I did. So I started bringing in a bit more business and sort of went out into business.

recruitment of all things, which is actually really similar in a way to property, to buyer's agency, because you've got a number of different parties with different motivations. And so I quite liked that. But then I went into corporate consulting and worked Brisbane, Melbourne with one of the big five consulting firms.

and worked out that that really wasn't where I wanted to be. I'd bought a house, I'd renovated, I'd made every mistake you could possibly make in renovating a house, but I really loved the property side.

So I kind of looked for something where I could put people and the skills that I had with people with property, which was the product that I really liked. So I sold property for a little while in Brisbane with the Ray White Group who have an exceptional training program.

And I got the opportunity to get a great grounding in the real estate industry from the sales side of things, both from a property, a listing, an appraisal, a pricing, and from an auction point of view, which I think is incredibly valuable for our clients that have actually been on both sides of the ledger when it comes to auctions.

And it was while I was there that I came across this concept. And this is back in 2002. I came across this concept of buyer's agents. And so I did a huge amount of research in all the other states.

There was a lot more buyer's agents in Sydney and Melbourne than there were in Brisbane. I think there was two at the time.

and researched the overseas models, the UK model, the US model, the Canadian model, and then sort of brought all of that knowledge back in and looked at the legislation in Queensland and how do I do this? How do I make this a career?

And how do I make it really valuable for people who, at the time, back in 2002, the Brisbane property market was absolutely exploding. It was out of control in terms of price growth. It was the first really big increase in prices that we'd seen. The 90s were dead flat, even went backwards.

80s were a bit difficult. But those early 2000s, buyers were in absolute turmoil. They did not know where to turn, what to do. And of course, the traditional model is you think that the real estate agent is kind of helping you out when you're a buyer. but they really weren't.

Although the agent's job is to get the highest price for the property.

And I just thought that what I could do is actually bring a bit of balance to that with the consulting that I did and the risk management framework that I had and to help buyers do this better with a lot more control, a lot less emotion and a lot more surety in the process.

So that was how I worked my way into a career that I didn't even know existed at the time.

Yeah, I love the relation there or the similarities with the recruitment. My wife did recruitment for a while and it kind of lifted the veil, I guess, or the lid for that for me. I was like, oh yeah, you've got a job, which is like a property, right?

And you've got someone who they're looking for a certain, maybe that's on a certain price, you know, they don't want to pay too much.

There's no recommended retail price for either.

for a salary or a property. Yeah. And then the, the, the talent, which is kind of like the buyer, right? The buyer's looking for the, and trying to get them.

And then you've got the seller who's the employer and you know, they're moving targets and yeah.

It's the unpredictable of it. And that's why I think it's really stressful in property fee. What you guys do is that the job listing could always get pulled, right? Yes. could be removed from sale.

And the buyer could change interest or they all want the same job and then there's scarcity of the job. So I think it's that unpredictability, which is really quite stressful for buyers, right? Not knowing how this thing's going to play out. I mean, this is 2003, right? I'm sending you back in time.

Do you think you're a much better buyer's agent today than you were five, 10 years ago? Do you feel like there's just so much more to uncover and get better at each year?

Or do you feel like it's a job you got good at really fast and that you've been able to maintain it?

Oh, great question, because it's definitely not the last one. You don't get good fast as a buyer's agent. When I started out, I was on my own, obviously. I was working out of the second bedroom of my home. I was newly married. So some people might know me as Megan Hetherington.

I had that name for 20 odd years. So I was really trying to work out

Had I do this as a profession, I wanted to do it professionally with good structures, great due diligence, a consultative approach, people not feeling like they were ever being pushed into a property that they weren't comfortable with or a decision that they weren't ready to make.

So in setting up my processes and the systems and the frameworks, that was sort of the basis of how I wanted to start. But I started purchasing anywhere from Cairns to Byron Bay. So I had licenses in Queensland and New South Wales.

So I had to throw it open so far just to be able to collect some buyers to start gaining some experience. And I look back and I had the background in sales and I'd done some purchasing by then, a few properties myself, but I still, I did not know what I didn't know.

And I think that's the greatest, that's one of the fallacies of the Dunning-Kruger effect is you don't know what you don't know until somebody opens your eyes to it. And I think that's the journey that I've taken as a buyer's agent is

I now know if I don't know something, 25 years in the industry, if I don't know something, I know that I don't know it, and I know where to go to find the answers from the professionals who have the experience, who can guide me in the right direction.

That takes a lot of years to actually have that comfort in yourself to say, I actually don't know the answer to that, but I know who I can go to point me in the right direction. That didn't come quickly. I think as a younger person, I was 29 when I started the business.

So I had a little bit under my belt in terms of corporate experience, but I still had the arrogance of youth of, I thought I knew more than I actually did. And I think the arrogance of youth also gives us that feeling that we can try things and take risks.

And that's how we break barriers and we innovate because we do go, oh, well, I'll give it a go and see how it turns out. With age and wisdom and experience comes that ability to actually self-reflect and say, oh, actually, I think that's too big a risk for these reasons.

And that is a good position to be able to put a client in too, is to say, I know that the broker has said that you can lend this much, but have you really thought about whether you're comfortable with that amount of money rather than just going out there and trying to spend every dollar that they've got actually having a bit of a conversation about this is the right thing for you.

It is great. Let's go hard. You've really thought it through.

yeah i remember that i mean i was an advisor in the uk very early in my 20s i mean i shouldn't have been advising and you know it was just like right you look back and you think what was i doing and then i started the business at 27 i you know i had that ignorance there you know i knew more way more than i did it was going to be way easier i had the arrogance of say a 27 year old guy trying to start out and you know you're right as the years tick over you start to realize there's so much i don't know and you think that you know you've got recency bias and i think that's what

A challenge we see in the buyer's agent industry is people are coming in and they don't know what they don't know and yet they're hot and they want to start going.

And unfortunately the property moves are some of the life's biggest transactions and their client's money is what they're sort of learning on here. We've seen it. We're a much better, obviously, broker than we were five years ago. But it's just once you know more, you start to realize you don't know a lot.

So how has that changed you as a buyer? You mentioned there you were buying all over Queensland. Massive, yeah. Do you feel like you're now getting more and more targeted and it's, you know, look, we won't go to that area because we just know we don't know what we don't know?

Yeah, it changed pretty quickly. It only took about two or three years. And this is around the time where the mining boom was starting to happen. And I purchased in some of the mining towns pre-boom where the yields were around 13, 14% and you could buy a block of units for $130,000.

So I got exposure to that. But as that started to move really quickly, it was the first time that I'd seen a rapidly rising market where I was on the buying side of things.

that was so out of control and I felt like the value proposition was not there, that it was not a sustainable market. It was a single industry town. You talk about Mount Isa was where these sorts of yields were being achieved.

So that was where I sort of sat back and said, oh, I don't know these areas intimately enough to be giving advice to other people about the longevity, the long term potential

for capital growth in these areas or what the demographics might do or the economy in these areas might do so it was i was within about maybe two years i made a decision to come down to brisbane and just do the greater brisbane area and very quickly decided that the brisbane local government area was where i could absolutely have street by street house by house knowledge

at a very micro level that actually gave the best value to my clients. I could look at a property, and because I've been in sales, I could look at a property and say, oh, actually, I went through that property six years ago. It's got these issues.

Or I know that the Rebels Clubhouse is in that street. We don't want to be buying in that general area. So once you've got that I guess that decision, and this is why we do very much localize our expertise. Once you know that intimately, it makes the process of rejecting properties very quick.

So it actually shortens the process of finding a good property because we are very quickly able to reject properties that are not going to meet our investment criteria. And we've got 36 investment fundamentals and about 150 due diligence data points that we take every property through.

The first one, and you probably understand this in Brisbane, the first one we look at is flood. Flood and overland flow. Immediately rejected if either of those things come up. And then there's a whole number of other cascading elements that we look at around a property.

We couldn't do that and I couldn't have the knowledge about long-term capital growth potential in all areas. I can only do it really well in Brisbane. And I'm really comfortable with that, that we've made the decision to specialise just in Brisbane. But it's gathering, sorry, Chris, but it's gathering, it's that long-term thing.

So I know what we bought in 2005, how it's performed over a five-year, a 10-year, a 15-year, a 10-year, a 20-year timeframe. I'm not looking at the last five years where everything has done exceptionally well.

Anyone who thinks that they've done well and they are an expert because they've been doing this for five years are kidding themselves. You cannot think that this market is anything like it was for the previous 15 or 20 years, and it hasn't followed the same rules post-COVID.

So talking about what a property might have done in the last five years, you've got to go back 10, 15 years and have the knowledge of why that property has performed really well over the long term and consistently to know whether a property is going to be good or not for an investor and for an owner-occupier.

Yeah, I think it's so hard to get these reference points right unless you are actually on the ground looking at the market, knowing what the locals really avoided, you know, the issue. Because when you look at data points, it's so hard to have the actual story on the ground. Absolutely.

You might go, oh, this property's performed well for 15 years because you're looking at their capital growth rate. Well, you don't know that 2010, that property really would really sell. What sort of, you know, obviously the last five years Brisbane has been as hot can be.

And when you think about the sort of the 10 to 20 year timeframe, I mean, you mentioned floods. I think that's a common one that people would think of. There's a recency buyer hasn't flooded for a few years and everyone buys in the flood areas.

But what are some of the other things that

know because you've got a lot of interstate migration you've always got a lot of investors in the brisbane market where do they often get it wrong when it's just not where the people who have been in brisbane for five to ten years and they go oh i just wish i knew that before i bought

It's interesting because actually Veronica and I were just talking about elements of this in podcasts that we recorded yesterday. And it's actually sometimes for people taking the big picture data stuff and almost the rules of property.

You know, the rule is that you should buy a house on land over an apartment because land is the bit that appreciates. Now, there are so many exceptions to those rules. And I always say when someone says to me, oh, but this and this, I say, well, it depends.

Because what it depends on is where is that apartment located and does it match the demographic of the people who are going to want to buy that in the future? Future capital growth around scarcity, owner-occupier appeal, number of factors, livability and so forth.

But that house on a bigger block of land might be in a substandard area that maybe has a lower socioeconomic profile. It might be in an area, it might be the wrong property type. for the area that they're buying in.

So actually trying to apply these rules and some of the macro level is really difficult. And anyone coming from, well, it's actually will lead you down the wrong path.

Anyone coming from interstate or overseas, the first thing they want to do is apply the rules of their knowledge of their market to the Brisbane market. And it's just, it's not applicable. You just can't say a brick house is what I want in Brisbane because that's what you're used to in Sydney.

the things that grow at the greater rate, all other things being equal, are timber and tin houses.

And they are things that people from Sydney and Melbourne do not like, and they feel very uncomfortable about, and they feel very risk averse around, but they're the types of things that we like to educate people on. And it takes a long time to help people take that journey through

Everything you have known previously, you need to put it aside and let's fill you with local knowledge and local information that has survived over the long term. I remember buying places back in, let's say, 2006, 2007, maybe up to about 2010.

in areas that were considered not up and coming, they actually weren't up and coming at the time, but all of the indicators, everything that we could see from an investment assessment point of view was there, they just hadn't gentrified yet.

And I look now at where we've purchased and where those prices are and what those suburbs are doing now, and it's a very big transformation. You've got to have an understanding of what is going to attract people in the future to get that right. It's not just looking at data.

It's not just looking at historical growth. It's not just looking at median house prices. It's actually looking at what is it about those areas that people are going to be attracted to when they can no longer afford to buy in that area.

Yeah. And I love that. So you're looking at the gentrification metrics, the things that as the new buyer pool changes over time, because often they get forced out of their ideal location, but that's out of their price point and they go to the next location.

And some of the best growth rates within those cities have actually been in those areas that were affordable for a reason because buyers in the more affluent part of the market didn't want to buy there. And now all of a sudden the affluent market does want to buy there. And

But there's got to be reasons for it. It just can't be that it's cheap because I've seen areas that have continued to be cheap relatively.

You want to be in an area where people with more money than you are prepared to spend more money than you on properties because that's really what transforms and changes suburbs.

Yeah, let's talk about that because I think it's interesting, right? So it's all about the livability and the likability of, you know, the similarity of what they would love to buy, maybe closer to the city, but can't afford, right?

So it's all those same lifestyle benefits, but yeah, maybe it's a bit further from the city, right? Or maybe it's a bit further down the river in Brisbane. So what are some of those things that you really are looking to apply no matter where you are buying, I guess, in the Brisbane pocket?

there's two different two different things we look at one is investment fundamentals and potential for capital growth that's largely investor focused and then of course there's the owner occupiers who at the moment make up about 60 of our client base normally it's about sort of 50 50 but we're a bit heavier on owner occupiers at the moment because we've got a lot of local upgraders and what people are looking for when they're looking for a home to live in is as you say the lifestyle aspects are incredibly important

but they're thinking about the now and the then. So they're thinking about where am I in my life stage now and where am I probably going to be if I'm in this house for about seven to 10 years is usually the timeframe people are thinking.

So they're thinking about, am I coupling up or are we a couple and we're going to have children? If we're going to have children or we've got children, where are they going to go to school? And some of those sorts of factors

can sometimes overrule how long is it going to take me to drive to work. So it might be depending on the different stage in life. It might be the commute that's important. It might be the lifestyle factors. It might be how close is the really cool cafe strip.

Those sorts of things might be a different life stage to where you're thinking very centrically about where are my children going to go to school? How long am I going to be sitting into the car driving them to sport every Saturday and every Thursday afternoon?

So the factors and what becomes important really changes depending on stage of life.

But I think for people who are looking for an investment property, if they can keep those sorts of things in mind at the same time, that's the emotional driver that actually is the difference between average growth and above average growth, because you really want to be targeting who your future owner occupier is.

If you get that, then your investment should outperform all other things being equal.

I liked your line before around tin and timber houses. It's one of the things I think it does take a little bit of time. Just people think, oh, the maintenance and the upkeep and I don't really want to buy that as an investment, et cetera.

But it's what the people in Brisbane want, right? Yeah.

It's the character, it's the history, they are just charming.

Yeah, exactly. But they are fraught with danger a little bit, right? So you've got to be careful which ones you buy, right? What's some of the other things where people get it wrong? What aspects are common when I think about the Brisbane market? How important it is and what's the right aspect there?

And does the main street matter as much in Brisbane as it does in, say, Sydney? What are some of the things that people get wrong a little bit and maybe they over-discount

over emphasize and really try to chase yeah it's an interesting one when you talk about busy streets because people from larger cities mainly sydney and melbourne are much more open to being on what we would call a rat run or a local arterial if you like that carries those that bits of traffic where people avoid the main road so we know those at a very intimate level and we know which ones

are really going to impact your life and which ones are probably going to be a little bit of a pain at school drop off and pick up time but the rest of the time going to be okay so in terms of pricing you've got to take that into account and i think one of the things that people overlook is how much of an impact that can have on

the price of the property what you should pay for it when you're looking at comparable sales so comparable sales being the main methodology that you and i use when we're looking at a property and saying well where does this probably sit in the current market all other things willing buyer willing seller not under duress what's the market value of this property and if you get the comparable sales analysis wrong and this can happen when people do like an automated valuation a property report and they just click a button

And they get all of these sales and they go, oh, yes, it probably sits around here. But what they haven't done is actually adjusted for some of these things like was it on a busier road?

You need to adjust down if it's on a busier road and you need to know how much to adjust down by. What was the layout like? Now, Queenslanders can have a pretty quirky layout, but they can also be functionally quirky.

So you've got to kind of put aside what you think is a traditional formal lounge dining area and kitchen living area that you might have in Sydney. You're probably not going to have that up here. Most of it's open plan living. But we have these quirky old layouts from the original Queenslanders.

And there is a pattern of probably about 10 different styles of Queenslanders. And you walk and you go, yeah, that's an asymmetrical bungalow. And so there's layouts that you know and you can work with and you can make them

functional if you're going to renovate, and there's layouts that we know you just can't fix. Those sorts of things, they're the sorts of properties that are going to underperform. They're going to be difficult to live in, and you don't know that until you understand the property itself.

But also, as you said, aspect being incredibly important because up here, we can have 35-degree days regularly, and if you've got a western-facing rear that's unprotected, and you've got that sun going down. I know I lived in a home in Ashgrove with a western-facing rear for 11 years.

at rear for 11 years and that was my compromise. But I went into it eyes wide open and I adjusted my pricing accordingly. But it's harsh, it's hot, it's difficult. The parties that you have are morning parties or night parties, you don't have afternoon parties.

So aspects really important and certainly a northern rear where all of your living and your outdoor space is facing the north is more highly sought after and therefore has a premium price attached to it.

Got to be careful then that you don't overpay for that if there's other aspects of the property that aren't good.

So these are the sorts of things that people bring, some of the biases that they bring in from what they thought might work or might not work, or they overlook because it's a great big block of land. I'm an investor. Land is the thing that's going to appreciate.

It doesn't matter what the house is. I'll buy the back to front layout with a Western facing rear on this slightly busier road because it's a big block of land. it's not going to perform as well as a smaller block of land with all the other things being right.

So you just got to make sure that the mix has got to be right in the property for it to perform really well.

Yeah, I love the, oh, he's looking, how big's the land? Oh, 900 square meter block. Okay, but show me the quality of that land.

Is it flat?

Is it, what way is it facing? Is it like this? What road's it on? Like, have you got privacy problems? You know, it's so much deeper there. I think it's important, right?

When you've got experience in a market, it's like, you know what those, the upgraded market, when it gets switched on, which I think is what's happened in Brisbane, right? Absolutely. You know, everyone's sitting on their hand, no need to upgrade.

Oh God, we've got to upgrade and we should upgrade and we want to upgrade and we've got some money to do that now because our property's gone up.

Like that's just this force behind the Brisbane market on top of the interstate migration, on top of people moving back from overseas, et cetera, and getting forced out of Sydney, Melbourne, up the coast.

So I think the Brisbane market and, you know, did underperform, you would say, you know, it was much more affordability or benefit compared to Sydney, Melbourne. I'm not sure if that's really the case anymore, but more expensive than Melbourne now. Yeah, that's right. And there's, there's reasons for that.

I mean, not all pockets are Brisbane as well, right? Like it's some... No, it's no Brisbane market.

It is very suburb and pocket specific.

So you've got 20 years of dealing with agents. I think the agent game is ridiculously hard.

Like the recruitment game, to be honest, it's about sort of peddling the pavement year after year in the local market, knowing who you are and you have to wait for the top dog to sort of move on and then you can step up so that, you know, you, the agents that are often dominating markets have been doing it.

It been for a long time, right? How does working within, you know, for 20 years.

really help you to build stronger relationships with the agents that do get the majority of the sales within suburbs versus, you know, you're a new buyer's agent entering a market and Joe Bloggs doesn't really know who you are. And there's a lot of other new buyers agents in the market as well.

Like, how does that give you a bit of an unfair competitive advantage?

It's incredibly important. And when I started the business, I had sort of three things to do. I was starting a business. I was really starting an industry because it was very unknown. One really good quality strong player in the marketplace at the time, but again, a new industry.

And I also had to educate agents. The education of the agents was, for me, was one of the biggest things that I had to do, including, you know, as well as educating buyers as to why they would use a buyer's agent.

But the agents were so reluctant to deal with a buyer's agent because largely they're very protective of their commission. So an agent's job is to list a property and then to sell the property to a buyer who will pay the highest price for that property.

So they've got a list, which is a big part of the day-to-day job. When they list that property, they've got a commission that they're going to earn.

If somebody else introduces a buyer to the property, another real estate agent introduces, this is a bit of background for buyers who don't understand how motivation works in the real estate industry.

But if somebody else introduces a buyer, another real estate agent, then that agent has to share their commission with that other agent, right? So it's called a conjunction or commission split.

So every time I picked up the phone to an agent, their fear was that I was going to take some of their commission. So there was this absolute barrier to understanding, hang on, no, no, I am representing my client. My client pays my fee. There's no impact on you.

And that sort of got from an industry point of view, we got past that first hurdle. The next thing was when an agent has an off-market or a pre-market, which is really, you know, there's lots of buzzwords around that at the moment and people are really excited about, ooh, is it off-market?

When an agent has an off-market or a pre-market, often they actually haven't signed that person up. They might have done an appraisal, maybe four other agents have done an appraisal of that property as well. They are guarding that secret with their life.

They do not want another agent to know that that seller is potentially going to sell because it opens the door to another agent to go and knock on the door.

and potentially get that listing so the circle of trust that we place around the agents when they give us access to a property that they've just appraised or they're about to list or whatever the case may be when we get that that is treated like absolute gold it's put in a vault it is not spoken to by anybody else because the worst thing a buyer's agent could do is actually tell another agent about a property that they found out about off market through another agent

That other agent gets the listing, this agent loses their commission and it is a really ugly, unpleasant situation.

Unfortunately, that's what I've seen a lot of in the last five years, is people who don't understand what they're actually doing to the agent when they don't protect their privacy and they don't protect their commission.

Not understanding the real estate agent and their motivations is a massive, massive problem that new buyers agents have. They think that their job is just to represent the buyer, but what they're doing is they're cutting off access to stock by not having good relationships with agents.

Yeah, I mean, I haven't actually heard that before. So that's a real gap of blind spot. I haven't really thought about a lot of deeply.

And, you know, it's one of the things you make sense that a lot of these sort of off-market platforms sort of won't get, you know, you'll get some that'll go on these platforms where they probably won't put all their good stuff on there. No way. It's in their top drawer.

that's right that's a really interesting point so i mean obviously getting access to the top draw is you know and we've seen this right like if you get first mover advantage on a high quality off market but it might be a pre-market right we're just getting it ready for sale that's usually a huge advantage but they're not going to give that to 20 buyers agent right because they don't want to get it out in the marketplace and so they're only going to give it to their sort of trusted people like yourself i mean where does it help when you start getting to the point of negotiation though because

Ultimately, they're acting for the vendor, but the vendor's interest actually also sometimes aligns to your client's interest, but it's getting that cut through between the agent and you. How does your experience in knowing the market and these agents actually allow you to have a more meaningful conversation?

I think the thing that agents enjoy with working with us and for different people, it's different things, right? There are some agents who want to get the deal done quickly and we can help facilitate that. We've got pre-qualified buyers who are finance ready. They're educated. They know the process.

They're not going to balk at small things. We can talk them through, hold their hand and help them resolve issues. So there's agents who are really keen on doing things quickly. We can work with that. There are owners who are very keen on doing things privately and quietly. We can work with that.

So it's actually about working with the agent to uncover what their motivations are, what their seller's motivations are. And I don't mean like their divorce or their moving or whatever. I mean the real intrinsic motivations behind the sale and how they want to feel throughout the sale process.

So we can help and support the agent in how they help and support their seller by understanding their seller situation a little bit more. What that enables us to do is talk about things that aren't just monetary focused.

They're more focused around actually solving problems that maybe the agent didn't even know that the owners or the sellers had. We can help them uncover them. We can help them resolve them. And in a lot of cases, it means that we're not necessarily paying the most amount of money.

We're actually just making sure that everybody in the whole deal is feeling like they got the outcome that they really wanted to achieve. And sometimes that's not the most amount of money. But we can only do that by having honest and open conversations.

I know of buyer's agents who walk in and they say to an agent, here's the offer, it's best and final, accept it by five o'clock or I'm withdrawing it. It doesn't get to the root of what the owner actually wants to achieve.

And it can sometimes put them into an emotional state of disarray and leave them feeling quite discombobulated. Oh, what do I do? Do I lose this? And they had that fear approach to them. I just don't think that either helps the sale process itself nor a relationship with an agent for future interaction.

Yeah. I mean, it's one of the, another classic, I don't know what I don't know. And I mean, back in the day when clients wouldn't use buyer's agent, I'm like, yeah, you would say that. And a few years after being a broker, I was like, I don't know what I'm talking about.

And to be honest, I actually think every sale is different and every transaction is different. And the way that every buyer's agent goes about it is different. And yeah, and I think that's what buyer's agent training course

tells you to do is go and create this scarcity and agents will look at it and go, mate, I've seen this a thousand times. That's not exactly going to motivate me.

Oh, can we differentiate between a buyer's agent course and a proper buyer's agent mentoring program? Like they're two really different things. One teaches you how to get clients. One teaches you what to do when you've got clients.

Yeah, and that's right, exactly. You know, you and I both know the proliferation of buyer's agents who have done a buyer's agent course rather than a mentoring course.

And they're great at social media.

Yeah, that's right. And that has absolutely created a lot of issues. But I mean, let's talk about the, this is kind of the, you know, final points here is around the misunderstanding of the value of buyer's agents.

Like we talked about off-markets there and pre-markets, et cetera, but if you think about over your 20 years and all the clients you've bought, where are the things where

at the end the client says to you oh that's not what i thought was going to add the biggest value but that really did add the most value that was the for me the missing ingredient the intangible that i saw at the end that i really is so glad i engaged your services like i think that's the things that buyers often don't understand and in your view what are some of the biggest ones

It's very market specific. So depending on where we are in the cycle, what people see the greatest value in us, it changes. So let's talk about people who have been in the industry for five years.

The greatest value for buyers in this period of time where we're in a rapidly rising market with a lot of competition and lower levels of stock, we're down, I can't remember the stat, but we're down 12% or something on market sales since last year.

So the greatest value that our clients see in us in this market is that we can move really quickly and we've got a team. So we've got a team of five here plus support. And the moment an agent, we're talking to an agent all day, every day, what have you got?

This is a new brief. Don't forget we're looking for this. And they'll go, oh, hang on. Actually, I do have one. Can you get here in half an hour?

And one of us in this office is able to get there in half an hour, see that property, get the videos, do the due diligence and the research before the client even finishes work that day. So for our clients at the moment, the greatest value is how quickly we can move

and how quickly we can properly evaluate a property. Because you can see a property and put an offer on it, doesn't mean that you've evaluated it properly. You haven't done all the due diligence, you haven't checked all the risks, you haven't priced a property, pressing a button and getting an automated value.

No, that is not how to price a property. So we can actually, as a team, get that work done for people whilst they're still getting on with their life. It gives them the opportunity to be first cab off the rank, to consider a property before everybody else does.

Now, some owners are going to say, no, I want to get through the first open house before I take any offers. We've just got to deal with that. And that's when understanding motivation comes into it. So in a different market,

Our greatest value and what clients really appreciate is dependent on where we are in the market.

So in a slower market where there's less buyers, less competition, more properties to choose from, a little bit more time that you can take, it's actually in the negotiation where we can get really good outcomes because we're not competing with other people like, well, you know, there's 11, 15 offers on properties at the moment.

There's not a lot you can do except meet terms and conditions.

whereas when there's no other offers you can really be patient the longest i've negotiated was 32 days why i did that was i just kept plugging away until we got to the price that we wanted it to be i had patient buyers it was a great property but we really wanted to get a really good outcome you can't do that in this market but that's what we can do in a different market

I mean, in this market, when you've got to act fast, and I think I do look for, when we're looking at referral partners who buy as agents, I think I do place a high value on a bit of a team.

I do think it gives you a bit of an extra advantage than, you know, a sole operator that has to do it all themselves. All themselves. Yeah. And it's just covering, particularly a number of buyers, I think it's really helpful because you can cover a bit more ground.

They're often seeing properties and they've got stories. And I think when you work together as a team, I think that's a really good outcome for the client. But the part's getting the deal done fast, which is, you know, a system's a process, getting access to it.

But it's also the client mind will be moving as fast as you. And so I think having the skills, have the conversation with the client to give them the confidence to this is actually a really good property for you based on everything you've told me.

And you should really go hard at this because it is that sort of needle in the haystack you're looking at or Yeah, it's a great opportunity, but maybe just don't go- At a price that works above that, we're not in it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. And I think that market knowledge gives you that confidence. Ben in our team always talks about this, just how good he's at, when the client is feeling like that, he can jump on the phone and just give him that confidence to transact fast.

And there's something that him and I do sometimes in the business, just give the client the confidence, actually, no, no, everything's going to be okay. And I think that's what the top buyers agents do.

I just want to pick up on that point that you made about the team thing. The other thing is that when we're doing a negotiation strategy, we're pulling in the knowledge of all of the people who have been in this industry together. You know, there's about 80 years collective experience in here.

We've seen a lot of different things and we can pull that in. We also put the best person for the negotiation who knows the agent best and has dealt with the most on the negotiation so we can actually match the buyer's agent to the agent. I think that is invaluable.

Yeah, agents all like doing things different ways, right? And humans don't like change. And you understand the agent. I think that's definitely a key part of having a lot of experience and relationships with them. So thanks so much for the chat today, Megan.

Thanks, Chris. And I really want to say well done on doing this because there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of people. And I think it's really important that people see the difference between what longevity and experience can provide. Enthusiasm is fantastic, but there is no replacement for experience.

Yeah. And there's a lot of good eggs in your industry and the local knowledge and that local specialty. So if you are looking to buy in the Brisbane market, we've worked with Megan a number of times over the years and all the links are in the show notes and you're in safe hands.

Thanks so much for listening. And thanks, Megan. Thanks, Chris.

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

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