Pete Wargent On What He Buys And Skips In Brisbane

One good thing about Brisbane is flood maps are made freely available and zoning maps. So that is definitely research you can do yourself. If you're looking for scarcity value, you generally stick to the low density zoned areas.

The LMR zoned or medium density zoned areas, you probably see more townhouses coming in over time. But the areas we generally try to steer clear of is where the high rise goes in. There's some inner suburbs where you get a lot of supply can come cyclically.

Our motto is buy without regrets and so... If you can buy a property that will serve you for 10 years as opposed to three years, that will serve you well. Buying a great property today, that's not just what it's about.

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

Then you look at the budget.

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

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

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

Welcome to Street Secrets, episode three today in the studio with Pete Wargent. I've known Pete for a very long time and looking forward to this chat.

Pete, how are you doing? I'm pretty good. Thanks, Chris. I think it was, when did we first meet? Maybe a dozen years ago or so. So yeah, a few more gray hairs on the head these days, but we've learned a lot over the years.

So looking forward to chatting a bit about some of that today with you.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of buyer's agents over the years and how I met yourself was actually one of my very close friends who was a client, you know, who knew you through their networks of back in the Deloitte days. And, you know, obviously we've stayed good mates since then.

Obviously, we've got a podcast, if anyone knows about that, Australian Property Podcast. And we've worked together with many clients over many years. So very fortunate to do this today. But for people who don't know you, Pete, let's just get to know you very quickly.

Obviously, your name is Pete Wardge and you run a buyer's agency called Allen Wardge. How long have you been a buyer's agent, Pete?

13 years. So yeah, we started I think 2011 and then we really kind of hit our straps around 2012. So yeah, we've morphed a little bit over time. We originally started out in London and Sydney. So I was doing the Sydney part. The Alan half of Alan Woodrum is doing the London part.

And then in recent years, we've been New South Wales and Southeast Queensland. So there's a few more in the team these days. We're still pretty boutique, mind you. There's half a dozen of us in total. We don't buy at scale, but we're very focused on quality over quantity.

Yeah, my business partner, Andrew Freed, He's been in Brisbane over the years and he's probably, in my opinion anyway, one of the top buyers agents in the country. Very, very good at what he does and has some great relationships with all the agents that you need to know.

I hope Andrew wouldn't mind me saying this, but I've known Andrew for a long time as well in pre-buyers agency days and I absolutely... We'll double down on that for you, Pete. This isn't going to be a show about just tooting your trumpet, I guess.

But Andrew is a great buyer's agent and he's a very, very strategic man. And, you know, interesting, which we'll talk about right now. He's coming from a chartered accounting sort of background and that finance background. Everyone's got different backgrounds. So what were you doing, Pete, before you're a buyer's agent?

Yeah, we're actually a buyer's agency comprised largely of chartered accountants. It's not by design, it's just the way things have panned out. So yeah, I originally did my exams or articles or whatever they were called all those years ago in London. Yeah, chartered accountant, many years with Deloitte.

I met my wife, Heather, who's also a chartered accountant and she's been part of our business over the years as well. And so, yeah, that was financial services background. I did some roles in industry as well, sort of CFO type jobs. But yeah, I do some other stuff around the buyer's agency.

So yes, we're sort of a finance and financial advisory type of background. Yeah, I've written a number of books over the years. I think eight now published and sort of a lot of media and so on. Of course, podcasting with you as well over the years.

So yeah, I do a few things around the buyer's agency to keep it interesting and I'm always keen to learn. That's one of the things I've sort of latched onto over the years is that you never know everything. There's always more you can find out or more to learn.

Of course, real estate is fascinating as a subject when you really get into the stories and the demographics and the journey that people go on. So yeah, there's always more to find out and it's kind of a people-orientated industry anyway in that respect.

Yeah, and I mean, I'd always like to, because everyone's got a story coming into buyer's agency, and I think you were doing your chartered accounting, your management consulting, and you've written a lot of books around property, but you were also a property investor prior to being a buyer's agent.

Was that sort of the motivation? You just fell in love with helping people with property decisions?

yeah it was i mean part of my thought process was that by becoming a buyer's agent it could only help me to become a better investor myself probably like a lot of people working in accounting i didn't mind it but i didn't absolutely love it so we were both high rate taxpayers when we were

So we went pretty hard into property in London, Sydney and Cambridge in the UK, some of those kind of blue chip markets. And so we had a fair bit of experience in property investing before I became a buyer's agent. And yeah, but my thinking was really,

By being a buyer's agent, you're not just doing the odd transaction here and there. You're in the market every day. So it can only help me to become a better investor along the way as well.

And that's proven to be the case because there's a lot of things that it takes time for you to see.

I think it's only once you've been in the industry for a few years, you start to see a lot of little sort of nuances or little tips and tricks that you wouldn't really think about if you weren't in the industry or in the market every day.

Yeah, so Pete, you've done buyer's agency over obviously in Sydney, you had a business partner doing stuff in London. I mean, I know you've got also property over in the UK, but well, let's talk today about Brisbane.

You know, you've been buying in the Brisbane market, I mean, I know at least for at least 10 years, but what are some of the fundamentals you think, Pete, where that international experience about buying in different markets that give you a bit of an edge versus say other buyer's agents who have sort of maybe haven't got that sort of broader experience?

I mean, I guess like a lot of accountants, you know, kind of like the numbers side of investing.

One of the things I know from presenting over the last 10, 15 years or so is that people are always listening to these types of talks or discussions and people sort of are not really tuning in.

And as soon as you mention a suburb, everyone grabs their pen and paper and writes it down. I've seen that. so many times over the years. So I guess one of the first things we did when we started buying in Brisbane is say, right, where are the best performing suburbs?

Let's take all the data going back to around 1990. So the early 90s is when inflation targeting came into force. in Australia and also I think it's as well when we've got really reliable stats in terms of capital growth by suburbs.

So spoiler alert, well, Wilson in Brisbane is the number one performing suburb over the past 35 years or so. They're incredibly consistent, double digit growth over all that time, which when you think about it is an incredibly strong performance. And when you look around some of the other suburbs,

maybe not quite such high capital growth but still pretty consistent but one of the things we'll get into today chris no doubt is that i think people can get very hung up on suburbs or postcodes when they're thinking about places to invest or suburbs to pick but actually

I would say just as important is the property type, the street, the aspects, the school zone. I think obviously disaggregating a property market by suburb is a bit of an arbitrary way to go about things.

And one of the things you'd see in Brisbane is that almost every suburb, in fact, every suburb is good and bad parts. They nearly all have main thoroughfares and busy streets running through them. A lot of the areas are flood prone or some suburbs have low lying land and so on.

So, yes, the suburbs are important, but it's not the be all and end all. And we've seen good investments in bad suburbs and vice versa. So, yeah, there's a bit more nuance and a bit more detail you need to get into.

Obviously there's a lot of level, and that's level one thinking, right? Let's say I want to buy an investment property. I'll pick a city and then I'll pick a suburb, right?

And then you've got to pick part of the suburb and the street and, you know, and then how is that suburb versus other suburbs? You've got to kind of keep going deeper and deeper, which you're highlighting there, Pete.

But there's a lot of people, I think that a lot of people engaging buyers, they just think this is the value. But, you know, when you do a job over many years, you sort of what your version of what you think is valuable is different. And it's through those clients stories.

So what are some of the things that you think the buyers agents add a lot of value in that a lot of consumers just don't understand until they've gone through the experience?

I think particularly common in Australia, especially for people who are either relocating from interstate or they're investing from interstate, is that you've just got completely different legislation all around the country. So for example, if you live in Sydney or Melbourne, it'd be very common to buy a property as auction.

Whereas in Brisbane, it's not that we don't buy as auction, but it's far less common. Most stuff sells via private treaty and we buy quite a lot of stuff pre-market and off-market as well. Another thing that throws people from interstate, there's no listing price very often in Brisbane.

You'll just see property listed and it just says for sale or contact agent. There's no sort of guidance in terms of price in a lot of cases. So people don't really know where to start.

The offer process is different, arguably a bit more favourable for people in Queensland versus Sydney, where you often have to waive the cooling off period. So there's so many differences, not only in terms of the process, but also the property types.

A lot of weatherboard housing in Queensland, which people aren't always familiar with. And then that's even before we talk about flood zones and termites and white ants and all the other things that can be traps that people fall into if they're not really familiar with the local market.

It's interesting, you kind of highlight, because Brisbane and, you know, southeast Queensland are sort of one of the most attracting places for people to invest. I mean, it's just common that people in the eastern seaboard feel comfortable investing in those locations.

They go on holidays to Gold Coast or Brisbane and think, hang on a sec, I'll just buy an investor property up there, it's been a bit more affordable. Not so much nowadays, but...

Do you think that's been a big problem when buyers agents are coming from interstate and they're sort of going around the country, wherever they think the next hotspot is? It takes them a while to get up to speed with how to sort of play the agent game and play negotiation?

I don't think it's been a problem. I know it's been a problem. This goes all the way back to the 70s and 80s in the white shoe brigade. I think it was incredibly common for southern investors to be tempted to buy properties, often high rise apartments, Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise.

You know, a lot of times I think people thought the prices were

seemed a bit cheaper than sydney and melbourne a lot of people like to buy properties when they go on holiday as you mentioned there's been so many tales of woe over the years where people have been caught out by two-tier pricing schemes or things that look really good in a brochure but not so good in the real world or just overpaying for properties that are new just so many stories over the years so

Yeah, it's always been prevalent and real estate attracts its fair share of characters and spruikers and so on. And yeah, Southeast Queensland has probably been the main hotspot for that kind of thing.

Yeah, I mean, obviously the market's boomed over the last five, ten years. I mean, we had a number of clients who have bought with you for many years, right? And we've had clients who have often bought, you know, Queenslanders, you know, six, seven hundred thousand, maybe eight, nine hundred in some cases.

A lot of those properties have probably doubled Pete over the last five to 10 years. I mean, what's some of the, do you sort of highlight why you think they've been so successful?

Yeah, I think the affordability advantage, in fact, that's what took me to Brisbane in the first place. I always track statistics and at one stage, the ratio of Sydney housing prices to Brisbane was about 2.2. And it was really easy. You know, you don't need to do too much technical analysis.

You just look back through history and you can see every time the affordability gap widened in favour of Brisbane so much. That gap's always been closing, you know, so it was a pretty straightforward move for me. We were partly ready for a change and we were having a family.

So we fancied a move and we relocated from Pyrmont in Sydney up to New Farm. But yeah, it was less than half the price. So I think that was a big driver. And you do see through the cycles, there are periods where a lot of people leave Sydney for South East Queensland.

And we've just seen another one of those periods and that has closed that affordability gap. over the last three, four, five years. We've had really good examples, properties in places like Ascot, where we bought and the prices more than doubled in a really short space of time.

So we've had some cracking results over the decade. It's a bit harder now, of course, because 6,700 doesn't get you a detached house unless you go a long way from the GPO in Brisbane.

So yeah, we have to work a bit harder now to add the value, but you can still find good deals, but not quite so easy as it was maybe a decade ago

yeah so markets are always moving it doesn't mean that they finish their growth cycle though i think that's one of the the well if something gets unaffordable it doesn't mean it's not going to continue to get unaffordable but pete as the markets moved particularly in the brisbane market i mean you probably wouldn't have even considered buying you know apartments or townhouses five ten years ago because you could have got great queenslanders on great streets and um

you know, just done your good building and pest and off you went, right?

What are some of the things that you've got to be a lot more careful on now when you're looking at investors up in Brisbane and what are the things you just definitely don't buy and what are the things that you are considering now?

Yeah, I think units and apartments is an interesting one because if you went back to the previous cycle around 2015, 16, 17, it was Brisbane saw the biggest uplift in the share of attached dwelling stock of anywhere in the country.

I think the Reserve Bank even listed it as a systemic risk for the housing market and for the economy more broadly because we went from having very few apartments and suddenly there was high rise going up all over the place and we got a big over build through to about 2017.

I'd say that generally if you've got the budget in Brisbane, the biggest buying demographic is families. The type of dwelling that people want is a detached house.

Yeah, if you don't have the budget for that, then townhouses are kind of the next cab off the rank, and then units and apartments are a bit less popular, but there have been some good deals in recent years.

I think what we generally steer clear of is the high-rise apartments where you've got expensive amenities, like lifts and pools and gyms that people don't use. 24-hour concierges and things because you're really not buying any land value in those big tower blocks.

The land value might be just a few percent of the asset value. So if we do buy a unit or an apartment, we go for the boutique blocks in the blue-chip suburbs generally, sort of New Farm or Ascot, those kind of markets that don't get overbuilt in the same way.

So those are some of the things we look to avoid. One of us mentioned just earlier on flood zones, even in a suburb like Newfoundland, for example, some of the best streets in Brisbane.

But if you go down to the bottom end of the suburb, down by the park and towards the river, well, there are areas that have flooded

fairly frequently actually over the past dozen years or so so there's things like that which um they're an easy risk to avoid and sidestep it's just a headache you don't need and even if you're tempted i think the insurance premier are just making it just untenable really for a lot of people so i think that's a that's a big no-no we just steer clear of the flood zones

Obviously you've got the investor market, but you've also got the owner-occupier market.

And while Brisbane's gone up a lot, that's been because a lot of interstate migration, you know, money flowing up the coast, both, you know, families and downsizers and the older generation, and then the parents following their kids and things like that as well, and friends following friends.

And so there's definitely been a real push up towards Brisbane. I do feel like it comes in cycles when Sydney and Melbourne get maybe COVID in Melbourne was definitely a thing that drove people north, but When Sydney gets unaffordable and gets really pushed, people go off.

I'm going to move to the central coast of Wollongong. I might as well move to Brisbane. I'm going to leave my friends anyway, right? It's going to be hard with work. So we've absolutely seen that. But if you go back over the years and the interstate migration, they're coming with rose-colored glasses, right?

They're coming for their Sydney mindset. This is cheap compared to Sydney. Where do they go wrong?

The locals, you know, when you've lived in a city or for many years, you just know where not to buy, where's not good or where's maybe got a bit of a bad rep. Where do the interstate migration homebuyers get it wrong versus what the locals want?

Yeah, it's partly to do with suburb, but it's also there's certain things that just work a little bit differently in Queensland. So, for example, aspect. In southeast Queensland, the best orientation for a house for natural light is to be north facing.

So the rooms on the north side of your home will receive the most light through the day. So there's things like that at the sort of property level. And then there's some sort of suburbs and locations where I suppose they might be cheaper, but then

I guess if you get out towards the city fringe, you've got a lot of land available for release. So it's not like in Sydney where people will pay up to live 50Ks from the CBD.

I mean, Greater Brisbane covers an enormous area, but the area that you and I would think of as Brisbane is probably... 15K radius from the CBD, maybe a bit further to the north. But then as you get out towards the fringe, there's sort of paddocks as far as the eye can see.

So I think sometimes people feel like you can buy a cheaper house in those kind of fringe areas, but you do run the risk of sort of being swamped by new housing. And if you go up towards North Lakes, every time prices go up, there's more housing.

So yeah, you might just lack scarcity value.

Most of what we do where the budget allows for it is we focus on the sort of landlocked locations where there's just no land available for release and therefore there is a kind of a scarcity value in the blocks of land and the properties we buy.

Often some of the sort of new housing estates are superficially cheap, but they may not be quite as good as investments.

Yeah, so obviously you're looking at, yeah, things that suit high-income families, things that are landlocked, you know, suburbs that are great to live in for schools, accessibility to the city, you know, amenity, et cetera.

Once you sort of narrow down a suburb, which is often probably based on budget, right, and also lifestyle preferences of clients, where does it sort of go wrong where you're searching and you fall in love with properties, but, you know, when you start to do your DD, you find that Brisbane, what happens up there, and your knowledge starts to rule certain properties out that on paper look really good.

That's right. So, you know, you kind of usually, as you say, you start with a kind of a top-down approach and you think about, right, lifestyle, what's important to you? How do you get to work? Proximity for the commute? What do you need for your family? What amenities like parks and shops?

Then you look at the budget, okay, which suburbs are kind of in scope for that budget. And that's not always that easy to do if you're not familiar with the way pricing works in Brisbane.

You think about your long-term goals about, you know, you're going to be in this suburb for two years, five years, ten years. I suppose there's all the sorts of things like that.

But then I suppose you get down to, you know, this is where the local knowledge comes into play because there's things like... There's some places where you think, well, okay, this looks like a suburb that's only a few Ks from the city, like Bulimba, for example, but you wouldn't want to drive.

There's only one road in and out of the suburb. So it's a beautiful suburb, don't get me wrong. And if you want to get the ferry to work, it's fantastic. But there's things like that. If you just didn't visit the place or you didn't know it, you'd probably move there.

bring you two cars and then realize you're going to spend half your life stuck in traffic. So there's things like that, which you probably would need some local knowledge to know about.

If you go further from the city, things like, yeah, just like crime rates or neighborhood safety, it doesn't really show up on a property report when it's listed for sale. You kind of need to know just by living there or via experience.

Those are some of the sorts of things which wouldn't be immediately obvious unless you'd spent a real amount of time in the locality.

What about some of the planning and the zoning and council appetite for development? I think Brisbane is definitely pro-development. If I compare that to maybe NIMBY isn't as strong up there versus it is in, say, Sydney and Melbourne. How does that sort of affect your search?

And what do you do to sort of protect yourself from that?

Yeah, you're right. It is pro development. But one of the good things about buying in Brisbane is it's pretty easy to get a zoning map and it's really clear.

So if we're going to buy a family home, we'd really try and stick to the low density zone suburbs because you know there's going to be no new supply. The worst case is somebody subdivides a block or something. You're not going to find there's a tower block being built next door.

And that's really easy for anyone to look up. Always when we buy a property, we would do a search for developments, applications, DAs within a radius of the property, just so we know what's coming. Sometimes it's just renovations or subdivisions. Yeah, I mean, that's a good example.

We sometimes see people come from interstate and they decide to buy a property.

and then they discover well it's actually housing commission next door and by the way that they're putting in 25 new units you know which it might not stop you buying the property but it might you just need to be fully informed about that stuff but um yes one good thing about brisbane is uh flood maps are made freely available and zoning maps so that is definitely research you can do yourself

And yeah, if you're looking for scarcity value, you generally stick to the low density zoned areas. The LMR zoned or medium density zoned areas, you probably see more townhouses coming in over time. It's a funny sort of a city, Brisbane. It's not very logically laid out, but the areas we generally

try to steer clear of is where the high rise goes in. There's some inner suburbs where you get a lot of supply can come cyclically. We're probably due for a construction boom over the next five, 10 years. So probably the next five, I would say.

So those areas do tend to get swamped with new apartments and that really dampens prices and rents.

In Sydney, Melbourne, a lot of properties that just go like hotcakes, you know, the quintessential frontage, the nice flat block with the rear aspect to the north and, you know, good access to the schools, etc. What are the properties just in Brisbane that just really just go super hot?

Like, what are some of the fundamentals that, you know, that are going to ride out any wave?

The typical type of property that would fit our bill in Brisbane would be, let's say, 607 square meter block. So it depends if you work in the old money, the sort of 24 perch, 36 perch, or we just use square meters these days.

But a 607 square meter block because the small lots are 405 and they're fairly popular, but 607 is what most families would want. So there's room for a pool or entertainment, barbecues and a back garden, that kind of thing. As you mentioned, yeah, flat block is really popular.

And the stuff where we see people really bidding against each other is when somebody's renovated or even rebuilt the property. And it's just a turnkey option where somebody can just walk in and everything's good to go. That's when you see families really bidding against each other.

And actually some of the best results we've seen with our clients over the years of where people have bought maybe a three bedroom Queenslander on a nice flat block of land, quiet street, leafy suburb.

And then over time, they've decided to raise the property up and turn it into, say, a five bed, three bath or something like that.

And if they do that renovation really well, yeah, I mean, it's almost name your price in some suburbs like Paddington or Ascot, because there's just so much demand for that type of property. Anyone who's been to Brisbane will know there's a lot of decrepit old housing stock that nobody wants to live in.

Even in the good suburbs, there's a lot of real sort of crappy old weatherboard housing. So if you can deliver the right product, there's, well, you see some of the prices every weekend.

Some huge numbers get paid. But you sort of highlighted a point there around the quality of the buildings in Brisbane. What are some of the major issues that people, obviously we talked about floods, but how important is a good building in Pest up there?

You wouldn't buy a house in Brisbane without it. I mean, even just owning an old sort of weatherboard house, that's going to entail more maintenance anyway, because it's going to need repainting maybe once a decade.

But yeah, if you were to buy a property, unless you were going to demolish it, and you'd be sort of asking for trouble if you bought somewhere without a full building and pest inspection. I mean, there's termites everywhere.

A lot of times we would see on a Queenslander, there'd be signs of previous termite activity, but what you really want to avoid is any signs of live termite activity, because that can be really costly.

Yeah, I think it is sensible to get a treatment done regardless, but you just don't want to pick up issues like that. I think other things that can be expensive, roof, anything relating to needing a new roof or something like that, that can be very expensive to repair or replace.

And, yeah, of course, like, as you can imagine, damp and things like that with weatherboard housing is quite common. Issues with rotten stumps or decay, that kind of thing. So, yeah, look, how long is a piece of string? Like every building and pest report will find issues.

But there's certain things like structural issues you really want to avoid because it can get pretty nasty.

Yeah, I think it's just having that, you know, knowing if this is just a common issue or it's something that you're even going to have to like it, you know, or lump it no matter what property you buy.

And, you know, you try looking for this perfect property or, you know, these are real deal breakers, right? These are things that are a bit of an unknown and it could become a bit of a money pit and basically wipe your growth away with just paying sunk costs.

Pete, I mean, you mentioned highlight around the Brisbane legislation and the negotiation process up there. It's different to different states. Where does that sort of help you as a buyer's agent? You know, where does the relationships with the agents versus, say, other buyers, how does it help?

Yeah, look, it depends on the state of the market. I think in a relatively balanced market, it can be quite nice in Queensland. It's very common to make an offer that's, let's say, subject to building and pest inspection, subject to finance and due diligence.

And you might get 10, 14 days to work through all of that. And then you go unconditional at the end of that period. In a hot market, sometimes it's a bit trickier because we've seen in recent years there have been cases where property gets listed and there's 30 offers.

So you might not have the same luxury in that situation. So really it depends on the property type and the state of the market. I think one of the things you can definitely do if you've got good relationships with agents is get first look at property before they're listed on the main portals.

I'd say quite a lot of the stuff we buy is really pre-market rather than off market. It's going to be listed. but the vendors haven't got through to the stage of tidying the property up, having the professional photographer go through and so on.

We do get some off-market properties too, particularly with older downsizing couples who just don't want the hassle of having open homes every weekend. Sometimes on subdivision or development blocks, I think we get that kind of stuff off-market quite regularly.

so yeah the properties themselves might not be much chop but you're really looking at the potential to subdivide and build two new dwellings so there's kind of this misconception that buyers agents have this kind of like secret database of properties and it it's not really true it's more so about relationships and it's not to say that an individual can't build relationships with the local agents they definitely can i suppose one sort of edge that a buyer's agent might have is

If you've been working with an agent for 10, 12 years and you bought a lot of properties with them before, of course, human nature being what it is, they're going to want to work with you again because they know the process is going to work.

They know you're serious and they know that you can sort of get a deal done easily. So that's a bit of an advantage for an industry insider. But if you're buying yourself, you can still do it. There's only going to be, let's say, 10 or 12 agents that cover it.

a location you might be looking to buy so you you can get to know those people tell them what you're looking for and you might get a phone call before things hit the market what's some of the the big lessons you've learned that you know maybe properties you're buying or some of the mistakes you made in your early years that on reflection you didn't realize till years down the line it's just natural you you're always learning pete you know we were doing our podcast every week and there's always things that were sort of hey i haven't thought about that before hey i need to maybe do a bit more digging and research on that like

What are some of the things you feel like you've got better at over the years?

I think one of the things that we try to tell our clients these days is it's probably smart to have a bit of a contingency when you buy a property because

Even with the best will in the world, sometimes the building and pest inspection is clean, everything looks like it's good to go, get tenanted, but then the tenant moves in and they find bits and pieces because there's always an asymmetry of information when you buy a property.

Almost by definition, the vendor is going to know more about the nooks and crannies and all the little details of a property than the buyer can because, yes, we go through, we do our inspections and we send the building and pest inspector around, but there's going to be issues with

who knows what, missing keys or issues with a pool pump or just things. So that's definitely one thing we've tried to improve on in recent years is just set the expectation. You might find the perfect property where there's nothing wrong. There'll still be something. There always is.

So I think just to have that expectation with unit purchases or things that are on body corporates and strata, I think we always get a professional report done these days

In the early days, we used to read all the body corporate minutes and the strata, the forecast and the sinking fund and everything like that. But even then, you can miss stuff and you can end up with special levies happening. There's some repairs that need looking at down the track.

And if you can get a professional to go through the minutes, at least you're going in fully informed. Then you're not going to get any nasty surprises. Just because there's a special levy, it doesn't mean you should avoid buying the property, but you want to know. You want to know what's coming.

And even in my own journey, I bought places way back when in Sydney where I bought somewhere and then six months down the track, here comes a special levy. Nobody picked it up in the review. Those are just parts of the lessons that you learn on your journey, I guess. But

As a buyer's agent, yeah, I mean, you can qualify and do the exams, but it really takes a few years before you start seeing enough scenarios to get wise to the sorts of things you need to be looking out for.

But is there any parts of Brisbane, let's just say, that you often get clients really considering, but you have to sort of reframe their thinking, you know, where you think, oh, hang on a sec, that's just not going to work for you.

Maybe we should, you know, look at a different part of Brisbane. Is there any sort of areas you think that just aren't attractive to invest, but on paper they feel like it?

Yeah, I mean, if you go sort of to the south of Brisbane, there's more flood areas just generally south of the CBD. Some of those suburbs that are close to the river, for example, people are keen on them.

But yeah, I guess as a buyer's agent, what you really want to avoid is buying a property. And then in 10 or 15 years time, someone's on the blower saying, well, you know, we've got a flood issue and why didn't we?

If there's areas that are close to the river like that, we don't generally sort of go for that type of property unless someone's sort of hell bent on it.

Sometimes if you go further out from the CBD in that direction, there's places where you can buy relatively cheap property, but then when you go there, you see why it's cheap.

There's just no end of places that can be developed, either very old and large blocks or just paddocks that have never been built on. If you get down to places like Cooper's Plains and so on, and then into the Logan Shire as well, which is lower socio-demographic.

Now we don't really buy in places like the Logan Shire. We'd either refer to another agency that would be a specialist in that area, or would encourage people to consider maybe buying a townhouse closer into the city. But we probably wouldn't delve into those markets.

You know, you've got to stick to, you know, stick to the nitty and your core competencies and, you know, we understand young professionals or aspirational young families, that kind of thing. That's the kind of tenant and the kind of market we understand.

We're probably a bit sort of less knowledgeable when it comes to some of the low associated demographic areas. And we wouldn't even pretend to know what we're doing in those areas. That's just not for us.

Yeah, look, I mean, we could do a whole episode on Logan and the appetite for investors over the last decade there. And yes, some have done well, particularly the ones who have bought bigger blocks that have now they're able to subdivide.

You know, there's been some amazing results, but people have bought maybe the smaller blocks on the best streets down there and even the better streets versus, say, the better streets in the inner ring. And you can't argue that

the growth on the inner ring hasn't also been ridiculously strong and obviously there's been an affordability benefit over the last few years which has pushed a lot of buyers down there and investors so does that continue who's to know i guess but um pete thanks so much for the episode today obviously if everyone wants to get in contact with alan ward and the team there pete's not in the team aren't just buying in brisbane they've also got people on the ground in newcastle as well and so yeah i'm sure his team would love to have a chat so thanks so much pete close out 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.

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