Stuart Jones On Scarcity, Stepping Stones And Sydney's City East

Price is what you pay, value is what you get. So understand the value and hopefully have a buyer's agent who's got the confidence to give you objectivity around the choice that you're about to make, giving you really clear guidance, not instruction. My clients are informed purchasers.

I don't use fear to get them to transact so I get paid. 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 and something...

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

What do you need for your family? What amenities like parks and shops? Then you look at the budget.

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

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

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

Welcome to Street Secrets. I'm Chris Bates. Super excited to be doing another episode today. I've got someone I've known for a long time within the buyer's agency world, Stuart Jones. How are you doing? Very well, thank you, Chris. And you? Stuart, very well, thanks.

I mean, obviously, I know you, I've known you for a long time, but a lot of our guests might not. Can you give us a bit of an understanding of sort of when you started in buyer's agency world slash real estate? What got you into it all the way back then?

Yes, so my brother-in-law and sister founded a business called Rosen Jones Property back in 1998, one of the first buyers agents in Australia, certainly in Sydney, and they were instrumental in forming the buyers agents chapter of Real Estate New South Wales. We're founding

They're founding members and helped co-found REBA, the Real Estate Buyers Agents Association. And I'd been involved in that business at an arm's length since they began with a background in business development and marketing.

And then in 2005, when we had our first major correction in probably in the space where from 2003 to 2005, people had to get refinanced every month as prices were rising. And then it kind of fell off a cliff in October 2003.

And Buyers Agency was new and they asked, could I add any value to the business around marketing, positioning, business development, and these types of things. And so I was on sabbatical. I came into the business, what I thought was going to be a short time. And 18 years later, I was still there.

we thought was needed in the market.

And so we developed the channels originally through private banks and through financial advisors like yourself, demonstrating the value that we could bring to your clients, fast track them to settlement sooner, make better quality decisions faster, supported by a really clear strategy and understanding of what they wanted the property to do as a home and a CGT free asset over time.

And then that went into creating and buying single investments, building investment portfolios, and then working for companies and family trusts.

And so from 2005 to 2023, I worked in that business and led a lot of the innovation in that business and arguably created some of the innovative opportunities in the industry which others have exploited better. And then after 18 years there, I decided to just go out on my own.

I just wanted a bit more freedom, more flexibility. And so Jones Property was born out of that. And from 2005 to now, I've bought around $2 billion worth of property. I've acted for hundreds of clients.

And I have worked across all asset classes, homes, investments, unit blocks, build portfolios, bought industrial, bought strata, work for developers, help people divest portfolios, help people invent or advocacy.

So I'm very fortunate that I've brought a corporate career into Buyer's Agency and tried to professionalize it. as a professional service provider and not just be in the business for me. My focus has always been if I look after my client first, everything that I need will follow.

And I think that's something that lacks a lot in the industry now.

Like you say, 2025 to 2005, 20 years within the industry. Obviously, Rose and Jones, very respected brand out there in the advisory agency world. Today we're going to be talking really what we're going to call like City East. So it's sort of like on the eastern fringes

of Sydney, and there's no rhyme and reason of what's the right way to come into Buyers Agency. But I do think everyone's got some lessons they can bring into it.

What were some of the things that you sort of when you started and over the years just were surprised about how difficult it was to get good at becoming a buyer's agent?

And what are some of the things you notice you got much better at over the years as you sort of learnt more?

Yeah, look, I mean, that's a really good question, Chris.

I think like with anything, like with what you do or anybody does that has a certain amount of professionalism as opposed to expertism, I often sort of think an expert is a drip under pressure and a professional is somebody who does and has credibility and is able to stack those reps to demonstrate to the market that they've got the capabilities in what they do.

Because if you're in business for 20 years, I'm certainly not the best, but I'm good at what I do because I'm still in the industry. And I think that's true of anybody that's doing it.

And I think it's great that the buyer's agency market is expanding, but I think we need to understand what we are. We're service providers. We're not property marketers. A sales agent's job is very clear. Maximum price for the vendor.

There's questions arising now a lot about the way they derive the maximum price for their vendors, but that's not what this conversation is about. But they're not concerned about buyers. They're concerned about vendors. On the buy side, we're required to act for our client to achieve the best possible price.

That's a combination of terms, strategy, and economic outcome. And so as service providers, I think we've got a greater ethical responsibility, not just a legal responsibility. There's a tremendous amount of trust that's provided with an advisor who's providing a service.

And so to that end, what I've had to learn to do through the repetition of doing my work is get better at understanding at the very beginning that in the discovery call, what it actually is that they want to do. What's their 3, 5, 10, 20 year plan?

And how can we match our capabilities with the plan that they want to deliver for their families? or for the wealth creation of their future. We're not financial advisors, but we need to be better listeners than we are spruikers.

And so on that basis, if I've got a client and he comes to me and they say that they want to buy a two bedroom apartment, I've got to be really clear. Is this a three to five year plan? Or is this a three to seven year plan?

Because it influences where we buy, how much we pay for a property and what my client wants that property to do. And with the experience that I bring, will it be able to deliver to that strategy?

And if it doesn't, and I have to exit earlier, can I preserve the hardest thing to get before I start my property journey? And that's the first deposit.

If I can't preserve the equity, and if I can't recover the sunk cost of stamp duty, then have I done the right thing by this family? Because most Australians buy four properties in their lifetime now. They start off with their apartment, then they have their first child, then they get their second property,

then they might use that as a stepping stone to their forever house. Their forever house could be 10 to 20 years and then they empty nest into something. And so we've got clear stages in the way we move in the market.

And in actual fact, what a buyer's agent should be recognising first and foremost, in my opinion, is that we understand that property doesn't drive human behavior. So it's actually the inverse. Where do people want to live? Why do they want to live there?

And what's that locale going to give them that complements their strategy, their hopes and dreams for their family and their financial future? And so I put people in property and I put property in people. I hope that's clear.

Let's go there, because that's exactly the next stage of the conversation. But I do want to double down on what you said, Stuart, because I think it's a really good answer.

Basically, what you highlighted there is that over the years, you got better and better at really stepping from like a professional to an expert in the market, but also knowing how to deliver on the strategy the client's looking for by actually going deeper and becoming more of a trusted advisor.

And I think that's what great advisors do is they take the time upfront to truly understand and question. Even if someone says something, is that really going to work? Is this really property going to deliver what you want? You're telling me you want this, but

really, it doesn't add up and asking questions and going deeper and then really making sure, okay, I've got a clear idea of what we're trying to achieve here. And is this property and decision going to line up with that? If not, do we need to pivot?

Do we need to look at an alternative? And rather than just facilitating and validating and just getting a transaction on the books, making sure that actually works for your clients different. I mean, you're right. I 100% agree around sort of human behavior. What is the The livability of the suburb.

What are people getting out of living in that area? Why would they be willing to pay more and more money for those areas? What are they offering?

So if we think about the city east, right, maybe do a bit of a, obviously we haven't got a map in front of us, but a bit of a diagram of the pocket that we're talking about from the city and maybe just talk it through.

When we think about the east, we might like to think about the eastern beaches. So everything east of the CBD would be the eastern suburbs. And then eastern suburbs is broken up into living on an escarpment, living near the beach. And that runs from Watson's Bay down to Little Bay.

And then when we come back up the coast and we think of city east and we've got eastern suburbs and eastern beaches, then we think of the city part of the east is the suburbs that are close to the city, but not traditionally eastern suburbs, but they're on the eastern side of the bridge.

So they're your Surrey Hills. They border into your inner west. They're your Potts Points, your Darlinghursts.

your Kings Crosses, your East Sydney, you know, down to Central, as you start to move over into Pyrmont, you know, everything this side of the bridge, which mightn't be described as Inner West, but is in from the East, and those different pockets offer different lifestyles.

You know, a beach lifestyle is very different to a family lifestyle in Bellevue Hill, is very different to a city living lifestyle in Potts Point and Darlinghurst, where you might be more restaurant, cafe focused, you're family orientated in Bellevue Hill and certainly in the Easter beaches as well, but you're more into the outdoor lifestyle.

And they all become stepping stones to each other. But like in all these areas, there's a lot of talk about rent vesting. and living, renting where you want to live and buy where you want to buy.

But you can also, if your goal is to live in Randwick, but you can't afford to be in Randwick, money's like water, it's got to find its level. So you might want to start in South Coogee or Maroobra or Little Bay.

and then work your way back up the coast to a pocket that you actually want to be in because you're staged in the market that's going to benefit from the growth holistically that allows you to stay in that same market because you're not trading from Parramatta to Bellevue Hill.

You're trading from Little Bay to South Coogee to Coogee to Randwick to Bellevue Hill if you wanted to do that.

One of the reasons I love working with BAs that have been doing it, you know, ideally 5, 10, maybe 15, 20 in your case is particularly in one market, you know, say for example, in the Sydney market is that they've just got, you know, all the clients they've worked with at the time and all the searching, the briefs, it's just naturally clients can't afford sometimes what they want and you have to look at an alternative strategy for them.

There's a bit of a wishful thinking and what you're sort of talking about there is, okay, right, I know you want to be in this pocket, but what's an alternative option? Maybe we go a bit further south, maybe go to a bigger apartment versus a semi.

And I think that's what great buyers agents who've got that knowledge can sort of know because they've tracked those markets and they can see where's good value and they can do those comparables in their head and then they can do some digging and

Yeah, and that would mean that you probably bought properties all over the city and over the bridge. But while that's not maybe where the first you're doing most of your looking, you do often sometimes go into different parts of the city and you can apply the same fundamentals.

But if we think about the city east, I mean, got so many different demographics in that market, right? You know, and you've got everything from, you know, your houses and your terraces to your, you know, your high density apartments in these pockets as well.

So when you think about like what drives those markets, like particularly the markets you look to buy in, like what are the demographics you're really trying to target?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think one of the things is that something that a buyer's agent should be able to offer his or her client is the ability to have objectivity. You can't read the label from inside the jar. Everybody's expectations are always going to be bigger than their budget.

And so part of the discovery is to understand what are the must-haves and what are the nice-to-haves.

And once we understand what those are, we need to be able to confidently reflect to the client that, you know, your must-haves are 90% of your brief, but your budget's only $2 million, but you've got a $5 million appetite. So we need to do one of two things.

We need to move you $2 million to a market that'll give you 90% of your must haves or we adjust your must haves to meet the market.

And then so once we understand budget and where it's supposed to be, have the confidence to reflect that back to the client based on our experience in the market and our understanding of demographics and how they move, then we can come down to demographics. What type of lifestyle?

I think people now, particularly more so after COVID, but probably unconsciously before, are looking for lifestyle. Can I be close to borrowed landscape, like parks? And do I like the beach culture, so do I need to be near a beach? How important are cafes to me?

If I'm thinking about having children, how important is a school catchment area to me or proximity to it? How important is me being close to work and access to work through hard infrastructure?

We know that tram lines can get taken out, so light rail also could be taken out, and also that bus lines can be removed, but we know that train lines can't. Now, there's more likely and less likely for things to happen, but we need to just discuss those options.

How important is it that you're near a church if that's something that's important to your place of worship? So lifestyle, price first, lifestyle second, and then how do we match lifestyle and budget to an area that you want to be in?

Because I come from a marketing background, psychographics are really going to influence the way and where people want to live. And so in Paddington, you have a predominance of investment bankers, lawyers, and sometimes doctors.

In Potts Point, for example, you will have a predominance of a more multicultural, more diverse, more same-sex, more entrepreneurial, perhaps, residency. In Darlinghurst, you might be more artsy.

Newtown you're going to be more probably more liberal and so if you're not moving into an area where people are like you or that you can connect with and have community because we all need it then these things are going to be drivers so I try to make the unconscious conscious and consider dollars lifestyle and then have the demographic that fits into that but if you look

macro at the demographics in the city and city east, they're all going to be AB quintile. They're all going to earn more than $150,000 a year individually. They're all going to have investable assets outside of the home. And so they've got certain professional proclivity. They've got certain intellectual proclivity and therefore

The support and amenity that they require is going to be good restaurants, good cafes, good bars, and probably good schools if you're family orientated. So I sort of try to think of it a little bit more holistically, reveal the unconscious, reflect back the realism or the unrealism of their expectations.

And I had a client, for example, who wanted to be in Randwick. I said, okay, let's run that experiment. See if your budget will get you there. I'm telling you why. I'm sensing you don't believe me. Let's run it and see where we land."

Within a very short period of time, three weeks, she realized that her family couldn't get there. I said, what about Maroubra? She didn't like the idea of Maroubra because she wasn't socially aware. She hadn't had that social proof for her. So she went down and ran the experiment of running down in Maroubra.

Now you can't move her out of Maroubra. She loves it. She loves the proximity to the beaches, nine minutes to school, husband's 15 minutes from the city. And so things change once you're able to change your perspective.

Yeah, I like that, making the unconscious conscious. I think you're, you know, whether it's a life stage or whether you, you know, they're potentially not knowing what's ahead of them, whether they're going from the couple to the kid stage. And, you know, that's just, you just don't know until you get there.

And, you know, it's like when it's got two kids versus one kid often. And then also when you're moving to new areas, everyone's often not living where they want to buy. They're renting, they're renting where they want to live, and then they want to buy something.

And they have to make not only a massive investment decision, but they also have to make a big lifestyle shift. And often those things aren't really getting... There's a lot of emotional attachment to living a certain way, and they're not really ready to make those pivots.

So I think that's what a great sort of understanding of the markets and the communities in different areas, and not just the properties within those suburbs. I mean, Where do people go wrong though? I mean, the City East is so diverse. Some properties would outperform others.

What are some of the danger areas or types of properties that you see people buy, but often you avoid for your clients?

Jack Henderson has coined my phrase after meeting with Jack and good on him. And I'm not the only one. It wasn't an original idea. I hammer the nail of scarcity drives value. And I think what people don't try to do is buy as scarce as they can within the budget that they've got.

Scarcity always has more value, consciously and unconsciously. Buyers will walk into a property. They'll go, it feels big. I like the light. The renovation feels good. There's not as many common walls. There's not as many people in the block. I feel like I'm going to have more harmony. I'm closer to coffee shops.

I'm closer to transport, I'm closer to lifestyle amenities like borrowed landscapes and beaches. And so the scarcity factor, consciously or unconsciously, and preferably consciously, and that's what I bring to the attention of my clients, we've got to buy as scarce as we can.

You go into the Horizons building in Darlinghurst, you don't want to buy lower than level 14 because you might get built out on in the future. And you probably don't want to buy above level 28 because it gets so windy up on the balcony.

Even a bloke like me with no hair will probably lose all his hair in the wind that's up there. Also, the view perspective isn't great. But guess what? There's only between levels 14 and level 28, there's only 14 northeast cornered, which is preferable. two bedroom apartments.

So for me, they're the most valuable two bedroom apartments in the block. You get some city view, but you get a lot of light, you get more view corridor to the harbour, and you get to look over the districts of Paddington and Potts Point.

So that scarcity within that huge building can still be acquired if you understand what drives consciously and unconsciously the next buyer.

It's the scarcity, you can feel it when you go in there, you've been looking and you're like, hang on a sec, this is way better than what I found.

So naturally, already buyers are way more interested by just getting and it's bigger or it's in a quieter pocket or it's leafy and there's no better privacy. These are things maybe you're not picking up on as a buyer, but that's what other people are feeling on when they're going there.

They're like, I like this. I like this. And I haven't seen something better than this. And that's showing the property is going to be hot. And that's absolutely what you want to be buying. They're the type of properties, not the ones that people go, oh, I'll take it if it's a bargain.

Or I've looked at this and there's hundreds of others like this. And I guess that really protects you in down markets, right? If it's super scarce, people are looking around. They go, hang on a sec. I'm concerned about the market, but that's just such a good place. I'd love to buy that place.

And all of a sudden, it's got competition in down markets. And I think you're absolutely right. You've even just highlighted within a building. So it's not an area. It's not a street. It's not a location. Within a building, there's scarcity. There's...

which is big, has more units than most people would want to buy in and most buyer's agents would want to buy in.

But I've bought several in that unit, understood the lifestyle desires of my clients and matched the desire to a property that is more likely than less likely to deliver growth over time.

Yeah. So I think the eastern suburbs have been pretty good with NIMBYism and community action groups have been very good at sort of restricting new development. And some of that's right, because there are pockets that just don't make sense to develop.

But I guess for Sydney to sort of evolve, we're going to have to build more. And that's going to not just be high density apartments or greenfield estates in certain pockets. And so eastern suburbs is a lot changing, more than I've ever seen. How are you thinking about this?

What are you seeing on the ground and what do you think is going to play out?

Well, I think we live in a, if you look at the total eastern suburbs market, it's got a tremendous amount of affluence and it's got a tremendous amount of desirability. People will extend themselves to live in the eastern suburbs for different reasons, which might include status, but probably includes

lifestyle amenity and infrastructure. You know, we've got two birthing hospitals in really close proximity. We've got, you know, numerous private schools. We've got really good public schools. We've got great beach amenity, great park amenity. We've got great proximity to the city. And so all these things are desirable.

But what we've also got is we've got a median price in Bellevue Hill now for an 800 square meter block apartment north of $9 million, right? When $9 million has to compromise to going to Bellevue Hill, because money's like water, it finds its level. Guess what?

Borcluse is now the darling to Bellevue Hill because you can get larger land. potentially better value, but you trade off that for distance from Double Bay or the city or the private schools.

It doesn't seem like a lot, but if you're trying to travel in peak hour for school drop off or peak hour to get to work, Vaucluse can take 40 minutes to get out of and Bellevue Hill only takes 15.

But if Nine Mill can't get you what you want in Bellevue Hill, you've got to go to Vaucluse. So now what we see is we see the ripple effect of capacity. When market capacity reaches a peak and

the group of buyers that can afford to buy in that established market, like Bellevue Hill, are fewer, then the next teardown of money has to find a new market to buy into. And so Barclays speaks to that.

The other challenge that we've got is that if you went back to just after the GSC, What's now the $30, $40 million property was the $10, $12 million property. So the market for what I would call uber prime property as opposed to just prime property has increased.

COVID has seen a wash of money coming to Australia. Australia is now the second highest destination for ultra high net worth after Dubai, not an insignificant number. And we don't have the favorable tax rates.

So when you've got people who've got $30, $40, $50 million to drop, and you've got people who've already consumed a lot of that uber prime property that's not going to be on the market again in my lifetime, or perhaps in any lifetime because of the cultures that are bought into it, like Chinese or Indian, they retain assets.

but I'd sell them unless they absolutely have to, then more scarcity comes into play. So instead of having 20 properties 10 years ago at the $10, $15 million a mark available every year, we'll call it 50 then, we've got 15 now.

And because there's more scarcity, it's more prized, so people will pay more money for those things. So what we've got is a continental drift of prices moving upwards, and that will continue.

Yeah, I mean, you've highlighted a really good point there as well, Stuart, around sort of turnover rate and that drives scarcity as well, right? So if not only is that scarce, but if people are not selling them because they're really able, because they can't, because they

They don't want to, but also they can't because they can't afford to go to something even nicer because the next market's run on them. So just because prices are going up, people are getting stuck. They'd love a 20 mil, would love a 40 mil, but they can't in this example.

But also different cultures, you're right. They're holding assets and generational wealth and they're just passing it down. They don't need to sell. Even if their lifestyle shifts, they just keep it as an asset because they know it and they don't even need to rent it out. They just have it as an asset.

I think you're absolutely right. You're highlighting scarcity is also driven by how likely it is there's someone looking to sell. And you're right, you're hiding a great point around the fudge effect and the nudge effect, as in what you call a bridesmaid suburb, when something becomes comparatively good value to the other one.

I mean, a lot of buyers shift, A, because they're forced out and B, because they think, hang on a sec, I can go to Volcluse, I'll get a lot more land and I can deal with the commute because I don't commute that much. So you're absolutely right.

But if we talk about this, like Todd's rezoning of eastern suburbs, If you go for a drive down Double Bay right now, you see Fortis everywhere, for example, and there's a lot of blocks are getting put together in Rose Bay and Edgecliff's got a massive tower getting built.

There's a lot going to happen in the next five, ten years, Bondi Junction increasing height. So how are people thinking about that? How are your buyers and your past buyers thinking about these shifts? Is it changing their desire to live in the east?

Are they being more careful on where they want to buy and where they don't want to buy?

And how are you thinking about it? I think what the MIDS government has done is a great way to introduce more stock on the market. But in the case of Double Bay, for example, and Hedgecliff, it's not about affordability. It's about availability is the way it needs to be looked at.

When we go back to the point that you just highlighted around scarcity of properties, available because turnover is less. A lot of the turnover is less is because we're living better longer. So the 65 year old doesn't need a two bedroom apartment anymore. The 65 year old is as fit as.

And if he's a family and with his partner or even by himself can't find something suitable to live in that supports the lifestyle that he's enjoyed, then, and his legs give way, he'll quit lifting his home as opposed to moving into an apartment because he or she can't.

So that's one less property on the market. If 50 people do that, there's 50 less properties on the market. But if we build properties that are above 150 square meters with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, now these are all first world problems. I agree and I will not argue with that.

But what a lot of people are missing with the LMR scheme, particularly in the eastern suburbs, is that the more people we can move out of mid-tier, second tier and uber prime properties into luxury apartments in Double Bay or perhaps even Enschcliff or Rose Bay, the availability of houses

for the second and third stage buyers to move into becomes greater. We're more likely to get more price normalcy over time.

We won't get a huge correction, but what we do is instead of properties that have bought for $15 million 18 months ago selling for $30 million 18 months later, maybe that $15 million property gets $17 or $18.

And I cringe saying this, but now a family that only has $18 million can afford to buy a property. that they couldn't afford to step up to because there wasn't enough of those 18, 30, $50 million properties available.

So if we build 300 units or 250 units sensibly around Double Bay and Edgecliff, technically we've not only provided homes for a group of people, we've also provided more empty nest as an opportunity to downsize, which means we unblock the supply chain.

Every market has a supply chain. Every market can't be mutually exclusive of economics. And we either have a bottom-up bottleneck or a top-down bottleneck.

We've got a top-down bottleneck in Sydney because we don't have people moving out of their homes into more sustainable, easy, turnkey, low-maintenance living so that we can have more families move up the ladder as people step off the ladder. So do we have to be sensible at LMR and Todd? Absolutely.

But do we need to understand the positive benefits for younger guys and gals who one day want to become family men like you? You know, what have you got, five kids now? Are you still stuck on two?

Just got the two. But I think you made a good point here, Stuart, is that often people don't miss that. Oh, these aren't affordable. No, no. But the reality is developers are a business. They're only going to build what they can stack up, what's feasible, what they're going to make a profit on.

They're not a charity, right? And they've lost a lot of money and had some tough times over the last five years. Builders, developers, everyone.

they're more risk adverse than they were before and they're absolutely going to want to make sure they've got enough margin because they have to right and so yeah if they are going to this if this is what they can build and make a profit on and people are willing to buy it and yeah it might be people selling out of houses in the east it might be some international investors buying it might be people moving over from the northwest that you know they can sell their house and that'll create a house for you know open up a house for a family over there and

But we do need to build and I guess we just, and these are things, they are going to change suburbs though. And I think there's some that are potentially going to be completely out of line.

And I think that's a conversation, but with this sort of, this change, it is going to change suburbs in the years. Like it's such a tight area, you know, people

Like if I was living in Rose Bay, for example, and I know that it was always single level dwellings, all detached, all full of jacarandas and beautiful trees around me. And now I've got a six level apartment block within 100 meters. Do you think that it's going to change?

And are you advising clients to potentially avoid certain areas now because of this? And do you think it's shifting the eastern suburbs, for example?

Yeah, I do. I think particularly around the villages, it's something that needs to be considered. You know, fortunately, a lot of the villages that we live in, a lot of the established suburbs we live in, we've got conservation areas, corridors.

So whilst developers might want to, you know, planning isn't going to allow to. So there's going to be some protection brought in. So we maintain a fabric and we maintain aesthetic.

I think what we've got to have more influence over, if the inevitable is going to happen, we've got to influence what the inevitable looks like. Let's have beautiful buildings, not ugly buildings. Let's have the right setbacks, not the wrong setbacks. Let's be sympathetic to the fabric of a suburb, Rose Bay, Double Bay.

could be any of the 130 odd LMR precincts that were identified by MINS. It's just about being sympathetic. It's not about pushing back on progress. It's about working with progress and what it sensibly needs to look like. The reality is, is we're a young country.

You know, we've got beautiful apartments in the Editeurs in Milan, in Rome, in Paris. people will have a lot more apartment living.

We're seeing a lot more families move into apartment living because they're leveraging the borrowed landscape, the low maintenance, the proximity, the things that they love, but they're opting out of houses and semis and opting into apartments. And that'll increasingly happen and probably follow that European trend.

because of the same problem that they had that we're getting now, affordability. And so people opted to get an apartment in the city and perhaps a summer house or a winter house down the coast or up the coast. So it provides more opportunity, it increases availability.

And when we look at Rose Bay, for example, that $173 million transaction down there, what it is actually going to provide is important accommodation for our elderly. It's not going to be luxury apartments. It's going to be a retirement community.

Don't we want to be able to look after our elderly and have them in the community that they've grown up in where their church is or their house of worship and their friends and their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren? And guess what?

They build a big retirement community there like Moran did up on the Vaucluse High School. That means a whole bunch more homes become available for other people to buy and move into. So it's not all about affordability. It's also about availability.

And we need more availability of options and those that can do and those that can't don't and they go somewhere else. But we protect our fabric. We're sensitive to the community. We want to maintain some tradition and some connection to the past.

but we want to recognize that there's a future and that probably by around about 2050, our population's going to be nearly doubled. If we don't want to adjust to change, then we're going to be living in tents and cars.

Stuart, I think you've made some amazing points here. I could talk to you all day, but I won't. So let me think, let me just flip this because I think you've, highlighted a lot of the knowledge on the East and that's what I think you need.

You need someone who is potentially just going to give you a bit of a reality check of how things are shifting. It's not all bad, but you do need to factor it into your decisions now because things are changing and you do need to be extra careful where you're buying.

And so if you think about the value that a buyer's agent has had, you know, like not just net, like when you get to the end of the transaction, client's settled or you've exchanged, you know, it's a done deal or

Or you give them a call a year or two later and they say, Stuart, I wasn't expecting this, but thanks so much. You really add a lot of value. What were those things that clients didn't expect that you think you really made a difference in your client's minds?

Well, the top of our talk, I spoke about my client went from Randwick to Maruba.

know she just loves it for her family and she's transacted twice since that what purchase that we did down there she's an architect she's designed her own home her kids are really happy at the school they ride to the beach they just they got a lifestyle that they didn't expect um and they got more

for their money that I thought they'd get. I think what people confuse is price and value, they're not the same. Price is what you pay, value is what you get.

So understand the value, understand what's important to you, and hopefully have a buyer's agent who's got the confidence to give you objectivity around the choice that you're about to make. the why, the how, and then support you on that journey, giving you really clear guidance, not instruction, right?

My clients are informed purchasers. They're not controlled purchasers. I don't use fear to get them to transact so I get paid. If I put their needs first, question their questions, question the why to help them get closer to the what,

then we're able to execute confidently without fear. And guess what? You know this, you've lent a lot of money to a lot of people. How many people do you speak to after they finally bought that purchase?

They let you know that they didn't realize how stressed they were, but how relieved they are now from actually just being in the home that they wanted to buy and the investment that they wanted to own.

Yeah, I mean, I think you made a great point around our value and price.

And I think in property, the value or the livability or the lifestyle benefit, what you get every day when you wake up in that property is different in the property next door that is on the cross of the street. And I think people don't really go deep on that.

And then years down your line, what you're talking about there with Maruva is exactly the point. She's talking about all the suburb benefits, but intrinsically, there would also be a benefit of living in that home, whether it's a better aspect, a better street, really nice neighbors, privacy. There's lots of other things.

And I think you've really got to understand the value of one property versus another. And sometimes clients won't understand that. I mean, you're right, just jumped off a client. getting them to basically encourage them to buy this place in Manly this morning.

And they're very scared and nervous, but I know that they're going to absolutely love this place and they're going to have a great life there. And it's a great asset, but it feels nervous. It's a lot of money they're spending on this house.

And you think I'm looking at it from a value point of view, not so much price. I'm going, What are you getting for your money? The price is always where the market is and they're actually getting a decent price because the market isn't that strong on the higher end.

So Stuart, it's a great chat. Obviously, we've worked before together many times and you're in super safe hands with Stuart.

And I think what you do so well there and you've articulated on this call is just how deep in connection you build with your clients in actually making sure they get the value they want from working with a buyer's agent and not just getting a transaction done.

So thanks so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure, Chris. Thanks for having me.

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.