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082: Carol Robertson on buying property with an advocate
2.4k Plays1 year ago
Mia and Dinah interview advocate, Carol Robertson, and discover how a buyer's advocate can help reduce the mental load of buying property, saving you time and stress.
Carol Robertson is a real estate veteran with more than 20 years of experience in property. She specialises in her clients' homes rather than property investment and provides valuable insights and guidance for her clients to make informed decisions about their next home and selling their current one. She is dedicated to reducing overwhelm for her clients in the real estate industry.
The Impact of the Current Economic Climate
- Market uncertainty affects both buyers and sellers, making it crucial to carefully consider the timing of buying or selling a property.
- Downsizers need to ensure that the sale of their current home will provide enough equity for their future plans.
Essential Steps for Buyers:
- Get your finances in order before starting the search for a property, including obtaining pre-approval from a lender.
- Research the market thoroughly, looking not only at current listings but also at recently sold properties to understand pricing trends.
- Consider your long-term goals and the specific features you want in a property to ensure it meets your needs.
Importance of Building and Pest Inspections
- Depending on the age and condition of the property, it may be necessary to conduct building and pest inspections to identify any major defects or issues.
- These inspections provide valuable information for buyers to make informed decisions and negotiate repairs or adjustments to the purchase price.
Strategies for Buyers in a Competitive Market
- Understand the local market and the tactics used by agents, such as underquoting, to set realistic expectations.
- Be patient and avoid rushing into a purchase, as this can lead to overpaying or making a decision that doesn't align with your long-term goals.
- Consider hiring a buyer's advocate to navigate the process, provide independent advice, and negotiate on your behalf.
The Role of Buyer and Seller Advocates
- Buyer and seller advocates are independent professionals who guide clients through the buying or selling process, providing valuable insights and reducing stress.
- Advocates conduct extensive research, shortlist properties or agents, and ensure that clients are well-informed and prepared.
- Advocates can also assist with coordinating other professionals, such as conveyancers and tradespeople, to streamline the process.
Buying or selling a property can be overwhelming, but with the right preparation, research, and support from buyer and seller advocates, it can be a more efficient and less stressful experience.
RESOURCES
- msproperty.com.au
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Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Life Hacks
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who has bought four different properties over the last 20 years and every experience was completely different.
Interview Preview with Carol Robertson
00:00:21
Speaker
This episode, I interview Carol Robertson, real estate veteran, all about buying property with buyer and seller advocates.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. This is a solo episode today without my lovely partner in Life Admin Dinaro Roberts and I talked to Carol Robertson who revealed how buyers advocate save time, money and stress and help you secure the property you want at the price you can afford. How doing your research on the floor plan, property, street and neighbourhood
00:00:53
Speaker
is essential to be confident that it all works for you and the crucial steps you need to take to prepare yourself to buy. If you're in the market to buy or sell or curious about how advocates work with agents, this app's for
Digital Filing Systems
00:01:06
Speaker
you. Before we jump into the details of this episode, we want to let you know that if your digital files and documents are in disarray and it stresses you out because you can't find anything
00:01:16
Speaker
then we have a solution that might be a little bit life changing. We've created an instant filing system for home, which is a drag and drop template that applies a folder structure to your Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or computer files. It has 11 top level folders for your main life admin categories, then 40 sub folders for statements, bills, contracts, policies, receipts, all the stuff which you can customize for your household. If you've struggled to have a folder structure that makes sense,
00:01:44
Speaker
or you're just relying on the search functionality to find anything, then you're going to love how much time the instant filing system saves you to set up, maintain and use your documents. Head to life admin lifehacks.com forward slash resources to learn more.
Carol Robertson's Real Estate Background
00:02:03
Speaker
Carol Robertson is a buyer and seller advocate, a licensed estate agent and a member of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, with over two decades of experience helping clients buy or sell their homes.
00:02:14
Speaker
specializing in her client's homes rather than property investment, ensures she has time to focus on them and their needs and everything they need help with as they transition their home. Carol provides valuable insights and guidance for her clients to make informed, independent decisions about their next home and selling their current one. She's dedicated to providing exceptional service and making the buying and selling process seamless and stress-free for her clients. She's passionate about reducing the overwhelm
00:02:41
Speaker
helping clients achieve control over their housing decisions, building stability for themselves without facing discrimination in the real estate industry. Carol, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's absolutely a pleasure. We've had so many requests from our Instagram and Facebook followers to do an episode on property, and Diana and I were wondering, like, how do we come
Global Real Estate Trends
00:03:01
Speaker
at this topic? There's so many dimensions to it.
00:03:03
Speaker
And we've met a couple of times now and I learned that she worked in property for more than 20 years and now it upside down and back to front. And I thought, there's no more perfect a person to introduce to our listeners and answer their questions. So welcome, welcome, welcome. So we have a global audience and property is by its nature something that's very location specific, but
00:03:22
Speaker
We want to look at some trends and influences that play out at each level. And obviously, there are probably some principles and steps to buy and selling that are pretty similar wherever you are. So we're curious to explore it all. But I'm wondering, to start off with, how has the current economic climate affected the real estate
Economic Conditions Impacting Real Estate
00:03:40
Speaker
market here? So we're kind of teetering on recession right now. What are you seeing in the market? Real estate is very much a supply and demand industry. When there is market uncertainty,
00:03:52
Speaker
And so people wonder, is it a good time to sell? Is it a good time to buy? And that sort of seems to go across the board, whether they're first home buyers or downsizers. And we're sort of hesitant because like anything with real estate, you've got to know where you want to go. And if you're a downsizer, you want to know that what you sell the house for, you're going to have some money left over because realistically,
00:04:18
Speaker
Our equity in our homes is the biggest asset that we have generally. And a lot of downsizers, particularly earlier baby boomers, didn't have super and don't have much super. So all they have is equity. But market uncertainty is certainly impacting on the sellers. So a lot of our listeners are probably, you know, we've got lots of millennials and Gen Xers listening.
00:04:42
Speaker
various of the other aids of the extreme. So they'd be able to be first time buyers or they might be looking to upgrade their house because their kids are getting bigger and they need more room.
Challenges for Different Buyer Demographics
00:04:52
Speaker
They might want more family living space. And they essentially waiting for the downsizes to sell their big family homes and move to an apartment in the Docklands or something before
00:05:04
Speaker
the stock becomes, did you create that stock? Is that what you're saying? It becomes really hard for first home buyers. Ageism exists at both ends of the market. From a first home buyer's perspective, from a real estate agents, when you're looking at first home buyers, my biggest recommendation for them is to get their money sorted before they either look where they want to go or anything. Get their money sorted because
00:05:30
Speaker
The way the real estate market is now, agents are going to encourage you to go unconditional. So it's not subject to finance. It's not subject to a building or a pest inspection. Auctions are unconditional contracts. It means that the house is pretty much sold. If you buy at auction, then the house is sold. If you buy at a private sale, you get calling off. The buyer gets three clear business days to call off to change their minds. They will lose
00:05:59
Speaker
0.2% of their initial deposit, but they do get the chance to call off. So unconditional is what agents want because then it's done. Okay. So they want you to have all your financing sorted out. So what are the steps to get that financing sorted out?
Financial Readiness for Buyers
00:06:14
Speaker
What do you need from the bank? From a bank's perspective, and I must note that real estate agents are not allowed to give financial advice. Any agent that does give you financial advice
00:06:26
Speaker
Go and do your own research. I know when I was talking about this with my daughter, who is a first home buyer, I told her she had to curtail her shopping at Kmart to stop going out and buying alcohol and clothes and all the rest of it. Depending on the lenders, they will look at, at some stage, they were looking at six months of what you were spending money on, and then they bring it into three.
00:06:48
Speaker
But you need to be secure in the knowledge that you can pay the money back because that's really all a bank cares about is that you're going to repay them on time all the time. So you've got some kind of loan approval letter from the bank essentially saying you are good for this much money.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's a pre-approval. Yeah. My recommendation to my first home buyers is to say to their lender, whether it's through a mortgage broker or their bank direct, if they wanted to bid at auction, could they? Because if you're a first home buyer, really, they will make you make it subject to finance. It's a safeguard for the bank.
00:07:28
Speaker
Because if you are going to go buying and the agent's pretty hard on you and you overpay, if it's subject to finance, you can get out of the contract. Unless you're buying at auction, you can make every contract subject to finance if it's private sale. But that's one of my first criteria with my advocacy clients is, first of all, I want to know their why. I want to know their mindset. You know, what's leading them down
Understanding Buyer Motivations
00:07:53
Speaker
this path? But the second thing is their money.
00:07:55
Speaker
They really need to have thought about what their money is, at what point they are in the finance approval stakes. If someone says to me, oh, we haven't thought about that yet. Well, I'm not taking them on as a client because they can't do anything. Unless it's an inheritance or something. And it has to be money in their bank because if you're waiting on an inheritance again, that can take time to actually filter into your bank account.
00:08:21
Speaker
So what do you mean by their mindset? What kind of questions? What do you need to know? Is it simply, is this for you as a residence or is it a property or is it more than that? What do you want to do? Okay, you want to buy a house. Why do you want to buy a house? Do you want it as a property investment? How long do you see yourself living there? Because that gets to longevity.
Property Purchase Criteria: Wants vs. Needs
00:08:41
Speaker
Are you intending for this to be your fair ever home? It never is. I'll give you the hot tip. It's never your fair ever home. Why do you want to live there?
00:08:49
Speaker
what do you want in your property? And then it does get into, I have three lists. I have a want list, write down your want list, and I give you guidance on that. Then we look at, okay, what do you need? And then I get into, okay, it has to have this. And if it doesn't have it, then you're not buying the property.
00:09:14
Speaker
There's a little bit of flexibility with it, but I really want my clients to have thought about the home that they want. You know, I've got clients at the moment that they have a house provided for them with their job, but they want to buy something that they will move into. And that becomes an interesting question because, you know, if they're going to rent it out in the interim, are they looking for capital growth? You know, do they want it to increase fairly well in value over time?
00:09:41
Speaker
Or do they want the rent to help them pay the mortgage in the interim? Do they want both? Because everyone always wants both. What's their intention? Because often when people buy a house saying that they're going to live in it in 10, 15 years time, well, the area can change. Their needs can change. Yeah, so much can change. So knowing their motivation, knowing their why is to me really important.
Renovation Decisions and Inspections
00:10:05
Speaker
I have clients that say, oh, well, I want the kids to be closer to school.
00:10:10
Speaker
Well, how old are the kids? Because if they're in their teens, are you going to buy a house that's really a long-term proposition for kids that are going to be in it for five years? The kids actually ever leave home.
00:10:24
Speaker
a prop pool these days, Gail. Yeah. But it's like, oh, it must be fully renovated because that's the big thing. People want things to be fully renovated. Personally, I would rather my house was unrenovated because I'll do a building and pest inspection on it, uncover any little problems or anything. And then I'll do it myself because so many people have watched renovation shows and who's done the Renault? So you mentioned building inspection, pest inspection. How essential are those?
00:10:53
Speaker
So it depends on the house. If you're going to buy an old character weatherboard that's over 100 years old, it's not going to comply with current building regs. So get that out of your head immediately. But what the building and pest will detect is if there's any major issues.
00:11:13
Speaker
A building inspection is usually subject to a major defect. A major defect is something like stumps or the roof, the real structure of the house. If there's three window winders that don't work, that is not
00:11:29
Speaker
a major structural defect. If I'm buying a house, I want to know that it's solid, but if it's not, I want to know that, because then I can factor in the cost of restumping or doing those sorts of repairs. A pest inspection, what we're really looking for is termites, that T word that terrifies real estate agents.
00:11:49
Speaker
because it puts the absolute sealer on many sails. Yeah, I can imagine. Okay, so if the property's over a certain age, it's in your best interest to have those pest inspection, building inspection carried out to make sure it's structurally sound, that you haven't got the terrible termites in there.
00:12:08
Speaker
If you do find issues, then I guess you have a choice about whether that changes what you're prepared to offer or whether you can be bothered going through whatever repairs or remediation is required at all. Yeah, it's a building and pest inspection.
00:12:23
Speaker
If the house is on stumps, I would get a building and pest inspection, because even if it's on concrete stumps, you don't know how old the concrete stumps are. It's just a safeguard. Agents will try and talk first-time buyers, everybody out of the inspections, because they can. The market is such. We're in what we would call, I think, to a degree, we're still in a seller's market.
00:12:47
Speaker
seller's market is when there are more buyers than there are sellers. Because there's been such low stock levels, there are more buyers. A lot of people are trying to buy because it's easier than getting a rental. Sometimes it's more affordable than a rental. Yeah. And so, at what stage of the buying process should you get that inspection done? Say, if you're going to auction, you need to have that done
00:13:11
Speaker
and seeing the results before the auction so you can know if you're happy to bid at all or what you're happy to bid to. And I guess if it's a private sale. You can get the reports done in your calling off period if it's private sale, bearing in mind that if you do call off, you'll lose that money. And if you're a seller, does it make sense?
Pre-market Inspections for Sellers
00:13:31
Speaker
I actually recommend to my clients that they get them done before we hit the market because I want to know, and I will do that with my own house, I want to know what's likely
00:13:40
Speaker
It's not guaranteed. I want to know what's likely to come up in the reports because it might be something that I'm aware of and I can fix it. And I haven't gone, I haven't wasted my marketing campaign time when I got to fix something. Yeah. And then do you disclose those reports to the buyer? I guess if you fixed it, possibly not. There's, it depends what it is. There's a lot in real estate that depends. Yeah. There's things that we do have to disclose. We have a material facts disclosure thing now.
00:14:08
Speaker
And if the agent is aware, you know, there used to be caveat emptor, barbed aware, but it's not so much that now with material facts. When you said that material facts, do you know where my brain went to like if someone died in the house or if it's haunted or something? Absolutely. Is that the kind of thing? Yeah, usually with the dying, it's usually violent that people want to know because realistically, once a house has a certain age, quite likely that somebody at some point has died in it.
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah. And you want to know, you know, I ask, has anyone done a building and pest inspection on it? And if the agent says, oh, yes, OK, can I see the reports? Sometimes I can bully them into giving me the reports. I know that's my job. And sometimes we can buy the reports. Yeah. And you mentioned that, you know, in Victoria here, we're sort of still in a seller's market. What does that mean for buyers?
Strategies in Competitive Markets
00:15:03
Speaker
Are there specific strategies they should consider?
00:15:06
Speaker
when the market's competitive like this? Know their money, do their research. I mean, research to me is one of the most important things that buyers don't do enough of. We're getting better. You've probably got about 10 points of when you're doing research that people look at the buy component on the real estate portals. They should be looking at the sold components. When you're researching, so when I'm researching for a client,
00:15:32
Speaker
I'm looking at, okay, what's currently on the market. When we're selling a house these days, we have a thing called the agent's estimated price, the statement of information. And that should list houses that we used to get the price that we're putting it on the market for. So have a look at what's on the market. Go in your price range a little bit lower and higher.
00:15:55
Speaker
and have a look at what's on the statement of information or the agent's estimated selling price. Look at those homes. Is it genuinely a comparable or is it as much the same as the house you're looking at or are they just fluffing the figures? Often a lot of agents will leave the SOI blank and that's, I'm happy to ask an agent, how did you get the price?
00:16:18
Speaker
because sometimes they're beyond my fathoming and I've been doing a lot of research on it. So have a look at those and then keep your eye on the market. Don't go and buy in the first two weeks. The bank said, okay, you can have a million dollars. Don't go and blow your million dollars in the first two weeks unless you've already been researching. So you're looking at homes set up on the market and then you're looking at what they've sold for and you will start to build up
00:16:42
Speaker
a profile of each agent and each agency. Some agents will always quote low. Most agents will quote low. They do that to increase competition.
Evaluating Property Value
00:16:54
Speaker
I've just been researching for a new listing that I've got coming on and I'm gobsmacked at the underquoting that's happening. It's frustrating. It's unfortunately part so entrenched in the industry and buyers unfortunately now expect that.
00:17:11
Speaker
So if you offer a price, say the house is on the market for $700,000, buyers automatically take that to say $750,000, $740,000, $750,000 upwards. So if you're a genuine seller and you want $700,000, then
00:17:27
Speaker
you're not going to attract the right buyer. It's a huge, I think it's a huge flaw in the system. But when you're researching, so you want to look at houses that are a similar age, a similar construction, a similar size, similar condition. And you really want to also look at the land size and the composition of the land. Because, you know, if you're looking in regional areas, if you're looking in the Peninsula or Dandenong Ranges or out the other side of Melbourne,
00:17:55
Speaker
then you can have an acre. But if it's a steep acre, then the land usability is not as great. So there's a lot of different points. Yeah. And when you say you look at the size of the house, is that just the square meters or is it the fact that it's got three bedrooms and two bathrooms? I would look at the number of bedrooms and then I would look at the size. One of my first houses had, I think it was five bedrooms, but they were tiny.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And look at the floor plan. The floor plan's actually, I think it's price, location, and floor plan that buyers look at first. Because if it's a two-bedroom home and you need four bedrooms because you've got three kids, then can you reconfigure the floor plan? Because there might be two massive bedrooms, but adding on, extending, you're not going to do that overnight, and it can be quite costly. Okay.
00:18:47
Speaker
So Carol, you sound like you're doing a lot of research on behalf of your
Role of Buyer and Seller Advocates
00:18:50
Speaker
buyers. So talk to us more about what a buyer's advocate or a seller's advocate does and why might someone choose to hire one. So a buyer's advocate or a seller's advocate, we are independent. So when you buy a house or a real estate agent, the agent wants you to be on their side to a certain point because you want them to know, like, and love you so that when you go to sell,
00:19:15
Speaker
you will choose that agent. As an advocate, I have no vested interest, completely independent. My job is to walk by their side and guide them through the process. And so when I'm researching for a client, I have a massive list, a massive checkpoint list that
00:19:35
Speaker
I work through, which is why my initial questions are so important. You have to go through every possibility, every eventuality, whether the property is in Melbourne or in Reginald Vic. Most agents are only licensed to work in one particular state, so I'm licensed for Victoria. And when I'm selling, I help the seller work out what they need to do to their home before they
00:20:00
Speaker
do actually put it on the market. And then I go through an agent selection process. I'm not just gonna choose the same agent every time because I like them. I have to know that they're gonna do the best for my client. I choose an agent and they're actually gonna be the one that is at the house. Because so many agents, they're listing agents. So they list the house and you never see them again. I really don't like that.
00:20:27
Speaker
If an agent's going to do that, then I want to meet the person that's going to be at the house. I'm not employing a newbie. I'm employing an agent that's usually got at least seven years experience. If I employ that agent and then they give me someone who's been in the industry less than six months.
00:20:42
Speaker
That's so interesting. I was just reflecting as we're saying that. I bought this house that I'm in now a year ago, and I bid at six options I went to. I can't tell you. It was 18 months of just going to property inspections the whole time. It was so confusing seeing the paperwork, the one pager, or seeing the listing on the website, and it'd be someone's name. Then you turn up at the house to inspect it because someone could
00:21:05
Speaker
completely different. And you're getting emails from a mother person or it's just, yeah, it was really irritating. And some agents don't even contact you.
Advantages of Hiring an Advocate
00:21:13
Speaker
Some contact you too much. One of my biggest things that I sort of say to clients is when you're about to start looking, get a separate email address.
00:21:21
Speaker
which are about having dedicated life admin email addresses to handle all of that stuff. So this is a perfect example where you want all of that stuff going, keeping that out of your personal email address. That's great advice. Oh, so, okay. So it sounds like an advocate, you know, do you, do advocates get paid like a fixed fee? It's obviously, it's not, nothing related to how much they've bought, you're buying or selling the house for. It's unrelated. There's no vested interest in terms of how much you can spend. And then it sounds like you're saving so much time.
00:21:49
Speaker
and bring that extra level of quality to the process because you're either shortlisting agents or you're shortlisting properties to look at. It depends. Every advocate is different. I prefer a flat fee because real estate is generally done on percentages. I personally want to know how much something's going to cost me. The buying part is a flat fee. Then I have three different levels. If people just want advice,
00:22:15
Speaker
they can book a time with me and it's paid upfront. They can get me for 30 minutes and they can ask me just about anything real estate related. And I have PDFs that they can just download that might help. And when you're selling, we tend to share the commission, which the agent that we select agrees that we share the commission. The selling agent actually gets the greater proportion of that. Not all advocates do that. Some of them are up to 50%, which earn thoughts on that.
00:22:43
Speaker
Sometimes when you're when you employ an advocate, it's not necessarily about the money that you pay, but it's securing the property and all the research and everything that goes into it prior. I've had numerous clients who've paid well above even their original budget because they wanted the property because they could really see how it would work for them. It's not always about money. It's about the outcome the client is looking for.
00:23:13
Speaker
I've got clients that it's not about saving money. It's just that they both work full-time, high-stress jobs, and they just want the grief and the stress taken away from. They don't want it to be their problem. It's my problem.
Complexity of Real Estate Transactions
00:23:29
Speaker
Yeah. Real estate transactions can be very overwhelming. We're talking about huge amounts of money, often talking about all sorts of regulatory requirements. You're dealing with financing.
00:23:43
Speaker
There's so much paperwork. I've got a list here of all the various paperwork you require. We talked about the mental load, like buying or selling a property. And if you're selling your own property, just preparing that property for sale, there are so many steps and little jobs to get done. It is one of the most overwhelming. It's like a wedding, really. In terms of the scale, it can be just enormous.
Preparing a Property for Sale
00:24:06
Speaker
It's one of the highest stress activities that you can do.
00:24:11
Speaker
You know, for my house, for example, I've got a four pages of lists of things that we need to do to the house. That's some repair stuff. And even when you're getting your house ready, you know, you'll have agents who tell you to basically renovate the kitchen and the bathroom. As I said before, I would prefer a house that was unrenovated. That's me.
00:24:33
Speaker
I'm picky. I want what I want. And if you give me a bathroom that looks like I'm in a hotel room, I'm going to hate it. It's not a hotel room. It's my home. I think you have to not go halfway, but you have to think about, okay, how much money am I spending?
00:24:50
Speaker
How much money am I going to get back? Or am I just making it easier for the real estate agent to sell? The renovated houses are easier to sell, but it might cost you, what, 30 grand? Yeah. I don't know too many people who have that money. Well, there's the money. There's also just the grief of it going through a little renovation. It is tense. It is tense. And I could tell you the volume of houses that I've sold
00:25:13
Speaker
The owners have done all of this work and the buyers have had a skip waiting on settlement day and they've ripped a lot of it out. I'm of the opinion that have it presented well as sparkling clean. There's nothing worse than going into a dirty house and we all have different standards with that. Get professional cleaners in. Once you think the house is ready,
00:25:39
Speaker
after you've removed all your glamour shots. People who are thinking of putting their property on the market soon, they're going to sell. What are your top things here, Carol? Get rid of your glamour shots. Stumble word. Get them off the walls. Take away a lot of the personal stuff, particularly take on paranoid ideas.
00:25:57
Speaker
recommend taking photos of kids away, any identifiers, you know, like where they go to school, that sort of thing. Anything that names owners, it's private. People shouldn't be looking at that stuff. But I still want the house to have personality because you can have so many staged homes and they look like they're a staged home and then you don't know which house you're in.
Importance of Home Staging
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah. So let's talk about staged homes.
00:26:18
Speaker
What is the line? What is the criteria? You know what? You just need to stage this home. It's one thing if you're selling a property and you've all moved down and there's no furniture in it. Houses with furniture probably sell more readily than empty houses. But if you've got your furniture in there, they're like, yeah, this isn't quite up to speed. We need to stage it. Sellers are so offended. And I have clients who have got beautiful furniture and they were highly offended.
00:26:46
Speaker
because their agent told them that they had to move all of their furniture out and stage it. I look at it and I think, yeah, okay, my furniture is not fantastic. We've had kids, dogs, chaos. I think be practical with your furniture. There are companies that you can
00:27:00
Speaker
get to come in and tell you what should stay and what should go and maybe they'll bring odd items of furniture in, I would do that. Is this sort of a symptom of the Instagramification of everyone's houses and all the property shows and you have to be living in utter glamour? Is that what we're seeing? Can people look through that and just go, oh, look, this is... Some people can.
00:27:23
Speaker
find with a lot of first-time buyers that they want perfection and they struggle to see past that, okay, they could go to Kmart and spend $250 and have that stuff. Or they bring their parents through and their parents are the harshest critics and you think, well, hang on a second, tell me about your first house. And they said,
00:27:43
Speaker
Oh God, it was awful. I've had this and think, well, okay. So for your kids to get into the property market, they're probably going to have to do what you did. They're not going to get perfection. It is about the Instagram, this, um, I remember my first house or the first people I came in touch with that had staged their home and they came from Ivanhoe and that would have been back in 2005. And when they were talking about staging their house, that had not hit the Dandenong Ranges.
00:28:11
Speaker
didn't hit the Dandenong Range quite a few years after that. And I was really surprised and I'm still surprised at how people feel that it's necessary. I think if you've got clear lines of sight when you walk into a room so that there's no clutter to impede your outlook, no junk, no personal stuff, then you can actually see the size of the room. People find it hard to visualize the size of the rooms. It's why vacant
00:28:39
Speaker
houses are better staged. Okay, so it's getting a better sense of the size of the room. Yeah. Not so much how you might use a room. You're decluttering, you're getting rid of any signs of the kids and identifiers of your family. And you are clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. Your dog and your cat's stuff is not in the house. And please get rid of your kitty dinner. Yeah, okay. Or please clean your kitty dinner. You have to have the landscapers through and get the fresh mulch and
00:29:08
Speaker
I must admit, a good clean deck is lovely. And landscaping, it depends what the best features of the property are. Like if you have a smaller property, then being able to not see the fence line, but get
00:29:25
Speaker
an idea of the actual perspective of the size of the property. You're just trying to sell the lifestyle. Really, if it's an apartment or it's a five acre property, you're just trying to sell the lifestyle. You want buyers to think this is easy to maintain. Do sellers and advocates help people find, if you need a handy person to come over a landscape, did they help find those people? Yeah, we have lists of different trades. Often a handyman can do a lot of the things.
00:29:53
Speaker
But if it's anything to do with plumbing or electrical, pay for a plumber, pay for a sparky. If you're going to build something, you have to be cautious with that, even replacing a deck. The most important people that you can have on your side is your conveyancer. Answer them truthfully. When they give you paperwork, do it, finish it, keep it somewhere safe, but action it straight away.
00:30:20
Speaker
don't say I'll get to that later because we can't sell a house without a section 32. So the paperwork from a conveyance set is really important. So I don't know if we explain what a section 32 is. Could you explain that and what kind of
00:30:33
Speaker
What do you mean about being truthful to the conveyor? Is this we put up that carport and we just did it on the weekend ourselves after a bunny trip? Yeah, if you lean on it, it's going to fall over. So a conveyor handles all of the legal elements of buying or selling a property.
Section 32 Explained
00:30:52
Speaker
When you sell a property, you need a Section 32. It's the Section 32 of the Sale of Land Act.
00:30:57
Speaker
It's a disclosure document. It won't necessarily tell you much about the house. It is all really about the land. So it'll tell you whether there's any easements, any covenants, any caveats, what services are connected. It'll go through a whole gamut of things. If you're buying and it says it's got a lease document in it, it's probably tenanted.
00:31:21
Speaker
Is it a state level document or is it Australian? It's all state. Everything differs. Victoria is, I think, is the only one that actually has a statement, a section of 32. Some of them don't have anything, which absolutely bamboozles me. But you have to, in Victoria, you have to cite that. Make sure that you convey answer. Ask your convey answer if they will actually have a read through of that document before you sign a contract. And getting into contracts is a whole other world
00:31:47
Speaker
Yes, you have to read the contract, but you're not expected to actually know all the ins and outs. But whatever information you've given the agent, which will be your full name, which is your first name, any second names, your surname, anything that is filled in, such as the price, the deposit, settlement dates, special conditions, they're the main things that an agent can insert into a contract.
00:32:11
Speaker
If there's other random clauses that are filled in, make sure your conveyancer sees it before you sign it. That's why you're a conveyancer. You're a conveyancer, you're a broker, get your house insured as soon as you've bought it, and not when you've settled as soon as you've bought it. With each stage, there's different people that are involved in the transaction. And does a buyer's advocate stick with you right through to
Role of Advocates Until Settlement
00:32:33
Speaker
settlement? Like, when is obviously active right through the purchase process, but they're helping coordinate
00:32:38
Speaker
those people as well, are they involved in that? Yeah, I do. I come from a couple of decades of being a real estate agent. So how I do it might be different to other advocates. You know, I'm there until probably after settlement, I have a list of emails that I send to you so that nothing should come as a surprise. You can think, Oh, God, that's right. Yeah, Carol mentioned that, what sort of order things will happen in, because I think that's the hardest thing is
00:33:05
Speaker
It's the great unknown because every agent and every agency is different. But if you can at least know what the process is, then I think that's really helpful. Okay. And so for anyone out there who's thinking of buying a property and they're thinking, maybe we need a buyer's advocate, where do you find a good one? What should you be looking for? Most of my business is word of mouth. And realistically, when I'm doing something,
00:33:32
Speaker
I ask. I don't put it on open Facebook because you're going to get every man, cat and dog giving you a response and an opinion. But I will ask different friends. When we're searching for a property, I'm asking friends, okay, who knows something about Macrae? Who knows something about this area? So with anything like that, I'm asking friends and family. I always think it's funny when people employ someone who
00:33:58
Speaker
is brand new in the industry and they employ them to sell their biggest asset because they're their nephew or their niece. And you think, oh, God. So if you've been looking for someone, ideally who's got some years, some runs on the board, but is also familiar with the area that you want to buy in. Have I got that right? And the advocate should know an area as well. Do they specialize in areas the same way that agents do?
00:34:23
Speaker
We do a lot of research. So, you know, the people that I'm helping buy at the moment in Bendigo, it's not just doing the comparables or pricing, it's actually I'm researching the area. I want to know what are the hazards in Bendigo, it's mine shafts, old mining stuff, but every area has an area of risk. Now I look into burglary statistics, I look into what are their zones and overlays.
00:34:49
Speaker
you know, can my client do what they want to do with the property? So the advocate's not so much because most of them are pretty good at knowing what they need to know. So yeah, but from a selling point, if I'm employing a selling agent, I do want them to be pretty local. But the advantage of having an advocate is that I'm there to make sure that what they say they'll do, they do do, and you're the intermediary. So it's not the agent is not massaging the clients about price.
00:35:18
Speaker
One thing we haven't talked about is the buyer's advocate actually purchasing an auction. I have. I've been outfitted by buyer's advocates and they're always the cool, calm and collected person leaning against a tree, reading the newspaper that you don't even realise is about to bid and then they take you out
Auction Strategies for Buyers
00:35:35
Speaker
at the end. Well, it's because they don't care. They don't have the emotion, you know, you've got, you know, after six auctions, you're fed up with the process.
00:35:45
Speaker
You're emotionally vested, whereas an advocate, yes, we want the property, but we also know at what point. We've done our research. We know that where it should go. We know where our client walk away price is. There's no point sort of getting too crazy with your bids until you know it's on the market. And that's why you'll hear them say, are we on the market? Because up until that point, it's all moot. The agent's just trying to get you up as high as they can.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's very interesting little sort of spectacle to be part of an auction. And I think Victoria is quite unique in Australia in the proportion of properties that are sold at auction versus private sale. It's really only in the inner and middle ring. You will have some agencies that will only sell by auction.
00:36:35
Speaker
Good thing, bad thing. I like to go to auctions. I go to auctions every week. It's research. It's absolutely research. Do it all before the auction. Know your absolute walk away price. If this goes $1 more, it's out of our budget and we need to walk away. And just remember, auctions are just a process. An auction is geared to find out who has unconditional, who has
00:37:04
Speaker
the money to pay for the property outright. Then after that, if it's passed in, it usually moves into a private treaty. It's just a process, whereas a lot of sellers get really caught up on the actual auction day, but it's just the first part of the process. It's just sorting out who can give them an unconditional offer. Then after that, you might actually get more money after that because someone might be subject to finance.
00:37:30
Speaker
but they could bid a lot more. They just couldn't bid on the day. And in Australia, just remember that every state has different legislation. Every region, every sort of area can be slightly different. Carol, thank you so much for sharing your experience and ideas.
Where to Find Carol Robertson
00:37:44
Speaker
So where can our listeners find you if they want to hear more? They can find me at mspropertymsproperty.com.au. And if they want to just book a call, the first one is free. Thank you so much, Carol.
00:38:00
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeagminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.