Reach more buyers in a slowing market + Property is not an individual sport + What drives price growth and decline

23 Mar Reach more buyers in a slowing market + Property is not an individual sport + What drives price growth and decline

Highlights from this week:

• Don’t mistake an agent appraisal as a valuation
• How to cash in on ‘off market’ sales
• Finding the missing piece of the puzzle
• In a fluctuating market there is a requirement for some realism
• A new way to reach more buyers
• What stops most people from moving forward

Can you bank on an agents value? – Greg Dickason

Kevin:  Many people think that just because you get a real estate agent out who’s going to give you a price on a property, that that’s a valuation. Well, I have to tell you it’s not. There is a big difference between a valuation that a valuer will give you – a sworn valuation – and a market appraisal price.
But let’s have a look into this a little further. Greg Dickason joins me from CoreLogic.
I know you and I have spoken about this, Greg. Hello, welcome to the show.
Greg:  Thanks, Kevin. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Kevin:  Thanks, mate. There is a difference – isn’t there? – between the two. Could you just tell me your perspective on the difference between valuation and appraisal?
Greg:  Yes, absolutely. Appraisal is what a real estate agent will typically provide you, and it’s really their opinion of what the property would sell in the market. Often, it’s related to what they’ve recently seen listed, what they’ve recently seen sold, and also, to some extent, their belief in a marketing campaign and to what kind of buyers they can get in the market.
It’s a lot more belief-orientated. It’s focused on some confidence, and generally, it might be the slightly higher end of the kind of price that you can get. In most cases, it’s realistic. Real estate agents are professionals, but if you like, it’s more optimistic than a valuation that you’d get from a sworn valuer.
Kevin:  You talked about it there being optimistic. I think it’s more forward-looking – isn’t it? – what the agent believes they can get.
Greg:  Correct. In a rising market, often, they’ll get that or even more, and vendors can be very happy with the result. In a market that is flat or falling, sometimes there is a requirement for some realism to set in, and you might find that the appraisal that you get is maybe slightly higher than what you actually can get, especially if the market has turned.
I definitely think it’s a very valuable tool, because you’re getting a professional out to have a look at your property, but it’s not necessarily done for the same reasons as what a sworn valuation is from an accredited valuer.
Kevin:  So, then, explain to me why a sworn valuation can be so different.
Greg:  Generally, a sworn valuation from an accredited valuer is for risk purposes. If I am a bank and I need to understand the value of an asset that I’m about to lend against, I need to be very sure that whatever the valuation that comes in is a valuation that I can get regardless of the market conditions. Assuming there isn’t a massive drop in the market, but based in the current market, it’s a very, very confident value that I can get.
Generally, it’s for risk purposes and it’s a very realistic, even in some cases, pessimistic view of the price for the property.
Kevin:  They’re sometimes called bank valuations. It is a sworn valuation, and they’re sometimes perceived to be a little bit on the conservative side. You’ve probably explained why that is the case there, Greg.
Greg:  Yes, exactly. It’s about risk management, and therefore, it is sometimes conservative.
It also often comes with insurance. So, when a lender asks a valuer to do a valuation, often the valuer is insured, so if the valuation is too high and the lender has to sell and they make a launch, they can actually go and claim that loss from the valuer or from the insurance company.
Kevin:  Of course, there is another price that you can get on your property, and in recent times, we’ve seen desktop valuations. Would you like to explain to us how they are generated?
Greg:  Absolutely. If you think about the process, if I’m a lender and I want to lend – say you, Kevin – I want to lend you money to buy property, I have to take into account the total risk that I’m taking on. And that’s not just about the property; it’s also about the size of the deposit that you’re going to put down. It’s also about you, how much do you earn, how long had you earned that money?
If I can take an overall, holistic view about that lending, I can then make a decision as to how much effort I want to put into getting a very accurate valuation to manage my risk. In some cases, if you have a good deposit and I’m pretty sure you’ll pay back the loan, I might go to what is known as an AVM, an automatic valuation, in which case I don’t even go to a value; I simply use a model that’s provided by a company like CoreLogic, and that’s good enough.
In other cases, I think, “Actually, I do want a valuer to have a look, but I’m pretty confident in the property and don’t need them to actually drive out to have a look at the property. But I want them to sit down in front of their desk and do a little bit of desktop research and come back with their opinion of value without having actually gone to the property.” That’s called a desktop.
The benefit of that to the end customer is that that can be turned around very quickly. As you can imagine, a valuer sitting down in front of a desktop, they can turn it around in a couple of hours. If you want to buy a property and the bank accepts a desktop, it means that potentially, you get approval very quickly.
If, however, they want to manage the risk a bit more, you want to lend a bit more very close to the purchase price so your deposit is quite small, they will also then send a valuer out, and then there are different types of valuation even then. There is what’s known as a curbside where they don’t go into the property, but they do drive to it and have a look at it. Then there’s the full bells where they actually walk through the property.
There are lots of those and they’re all based on the risk profile that the bank is taking on and also how quickly they want to get a response back to the lender, to the borrower.
Kevin:  Very good explanation, Greg. Thank you so much for your time. Greg Dickason from CoreLogic. Thanks, mate.
Greg:  Absolute pleasure, Kevin.

A way to get more buyers for a property – Liane Fletcher

Kevin:  Some months ago, I told you about a website called Property Whispers. Just to refresh your memory, Property Whispers is Australia’s first and only online website that instantly matches a buyer’s purchase requirements with the specifications of suitable properties. This is called off-market sales, and it’s a big thing. It’s happening a lot – and we’re going to tell you just how much more it’s happening. It’s a great way for you to reach potential buyers.
Now, we’re not cutting real estate agents out in this scenario because they’re still going to be involved. You can still list with an agent, but this gives you the opportunity to connect directly with buyers.
The lady behind it is Liane Fletcher who we have spoken to in the past from PropertyWhispers.com.au.
Good day, Liane. How are you?
Liane:  Very well, thank you, Kevin.
Kevin:  Nice to be talking to you again. This is really taking off. I understand you have $750 million worth of properties that have been uploaded already.
Liane:  That’s correct. Since we launched seven months ago, $750 million have been uploaded. Right now, we have over $550 million worth of property listed, so $200 million have gone through the cycle.
Kevin:  Tell me about this. How does it work? How do agents become involved in this, and how do sellers get their property on this platform?
Liane:  Agents register their details on the platform, and when they’re meeting with their clients, they offer this opportunity for vendors to sell their property off-market. As your listeners would know, off-market properties are quiet listings, so therefore, they’re not publicly advertised.
All an agent needs to do is to take those details of the property – its property type, bedrooms, bathrooms, parking, could have some photos, brief description, and their price range. They upload those details to the platform, and they are matched instantly with those buyers who have registered on the platform and they match those specific requirements.
Kevin:  Are you able to tell me how many buyers you’ve attracted to the site already? What’s the pool like?
Liane:  We have thousands of buyers on the platform since we’ve launched, and multiple buyers are registering daily. And that’s nationally as well.
Kevin:  Okay, so a good audience there. What are the benefits here for the seller? Why would a seller want to ask their agent to list their property on Property Whispers?
Liane:  Right now, the state of the market is such that clearance rates have come off. Vendors are uncertain as to whether they’ll actually sell their property at auction. So, this is a great opportunity for vendors to list in a quiet manner in the sense that they are not publicly exposing their property, they’re not spending lots of money on advertising, and they’re getting connected with buyers who match their property.
There are some vendors who just don’t want their neighbors to know that they’re selling. They may not be pressured on the timing, so they don’t need to have that sell within four weeks. And some vendors just don’t like the process of open homes and getting ready. This way, agents can bring buyers who are qualified, who are matching with their property, through the property when that match occurs.
Kevin:  We used to call them quiet listings. This is where sellers are not quite sure they want to sell. They just certainly don’t want to go through a big marketing campaign, but they just want it exposed to a database. This is like giving it to an agent who will expose it to the database, but it’s actually an even bigger database with buyers all around Australia.
Liane:  That’s correct. I think the important thing here is that vendors who do want to sell have an opportunity to be matched with buyers who do want to purchase. The buyers who are registering are taking the time to put their details on this platform, so what we’re finding is that they are genuine buyers who have missed out at auction or don’t like the auction process and are trying to find a way to find a property.
A lot of buyers may have known or do know that there are off-market properties and just haven’t been able to have access to those properties. Traditionally, what they do is they’ll try and speak to maybe three or four agents that they know in the area and ask them to be put on their database. But there’s more than that, selling off-market properties and off-market property sales happen all the time. About 10% to 20% of off-market properties nationally are sold every year.
Kevin:  Does a property have to be listed with an agent to get on the site?
Liane:  Yes, right now it’s with an agent.
Kevin:  Fair enough. So, when you’re talking to your agent, you’re selling your property, make sure you mention to them about PropertyWhispers.com.au. Say you want it on that site. It’s not going to cost you anything, it won’t cost the agent anything, but it opens up the possibility for you to expose it to many thousands more people – all potential buyers.
Liane, thank you so much for your time.
Liane:  Thank you, Kevin.

Learn from case studies  – Luke Harris and Matthew Bateman

Kevin:  I picked up a book the other day – well, it was actually sent to me – called Let’s Get Real. You probably guessed, yes, it’s about real estate, as you would expect. It’s been written by Luke Harris and Matthew Bateman, who are my next guests, and they run a company called The Property Mentors, which is Melbourne-based.
Gentlemen, hello. How are you?
Matt:  Good, Kevin. Yourself?
Luke:  Very well. Thanks for having us.
Kevin:  Good. Matt, tell me about The Property Mentors. What is the business all about?
Matt:  As the name suggests, The Property Mentors is a business that’s designed to assist investors at whatever level, helping to get them to the next level. So, if you’re just starting out, you’re new to the game, and you want to know how to shortcut the learnings and learn how to do things properly from the start, then that’s an invaluable service that we offer.
And then if you’re a little bit further into the game, so you have a couple of properties, or you might even have 10, 20, or 30 properties but you’re looking to take your portfolio to the next level, we have experienced investors who really work with our members one on one over a period of time to help them really accelerate their results.
Luke and I came together really because we were doing very similar things. I was a chiropractor by training, of all things, and spent 20-odd years helping people get healthy. And during that period of time, I used my business income to build a sizeable property portfolio.
When I got to the point where I was questioning what I’d do next and stopped doing the health and wellness business, I thought, “Well, what do I do?” I had a bit of an extended break, and there was only so much golf and sitting on the beach I could do before I got a bit bored. Friends and family said, “Hey, can you show me what you did?” And I actually got a lot of emotional satisfaction out of helping other people set up and build really strong portfolios.
I was doing that, and at the same time, Luke was doing that. It might be a good time for Luke to jump in and give his story.
Kevin:  Just before you do, Luke, if I could just ask a question about the book – and I was going to direct this at you, Luke. A lot of it has to do with mindset, from what I’ve been able to pick up. Do you think this is a key thing for property investors to actually get the mindset right?
Luke:  Absolutely. Matt and I both realized this after going through the same process that a lot of property investors do. They go out in the marketplace and they start looking at property. We go to barbecues all the time, and the first thing that people say is “Where should I be investing?” We think that’s an important part of the process of becoming a successful property investor, but having the mindset and the strategy behind your long-term investment plans is more important than the actual property a lot of the time.
Kevin:  While I have you, the book is called Let’s Get Real. And it’s not so much about real estate; it’s about getting real with your attitude, getting real with your mindset, isn’t it?
Luke:  Absolutely. And obviously getting real with your current financial situation before you go out there and throw your money at any particular investment.
Kevin:  Matt, back to you if I could, talking about strategies for a minute. What do you see as some of the common mistakes that you’ve tried to highlight in the book here that may be pointing investors in the right direction?
Matt:  I think personally, the number one thing that you need to have if you want to become a professional property investor is you need a clear plan. The amount of people out there who are literally jumping from one strategy to the next, whether that’s buy and hold, looking for some tax deductions, or they’re buying out regional mining areas looking for some cashflow, they’re doing some renovations, or they’re trying to subdivide or develop, they’re often doing it without any clear structure as to – first and foremost – why are they doing it? Second, how are they doing it? Who are they doing it with? And in what sort of timeframe do they want to get the results that they’re ultimately trying to achieve?
Really, it’s that plan that is lacking and missing. We travel around Australia every year and we speak to thousands of investors, and I often ask the question “Who here has a clear, written plan for how they’re going to use property to help them improve their life?” And very few will ever have anything that they can actually show us.
Kevin:  One of the things I love about the book, is the number of case studies in there. There’s so much you can learn from other people’s mistakes and their successes as well.
Just looking back on some of the things that you guys have learned over the years, what do you think were some of the challenges that other generations faced over the years?
Matt:  That’s a very good question. My investment journey started when I was 20 when I bought my first property in Perth, and quite naïve going into the marketplace just looking at properties that I could improve or renovate.
I think one of the things that I’ve learned from that I’ve been able to implement here at The Property Mentors is being able to teach people that it’s not just about the property; that it’s just about understanding finance and the tax systems and structures and how to really set out a plan to maximize your portfolio rather than just going out there and adding a property to your portfolio every year or two.
Kevin:  Just on that point about the financial plans, how do you help someone get clear on that? I would have thought that most successful investors are fairly clear on that, Luke.
Luke:  The key point there is that most investors aren’t successful. Most successful investors probably do have a plan, but I think if you’re talking about the average investor out there, most real estate investors in Australia only have one investment property.
The reason we found that they don’t have more than one investment property is they don’t have a plan. Not only a finance plan to help them get more than that, but they don’t have a clear, defined plan of attack to actually help them to build a successful property portfolio.
Some people might invest in property because the media is telling them that property is doing really well right now, but as soon as the media changes their view on real estate investing in general, people will go and sell their portfolio because they want to jump into the next best thing.
I’m sure there are quite a few people who got out of property in the last 12 months and put all their money into Bitcoin.
Kevin:  Really? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m lost when it comes to Bitcoin.
Matt, what do you hope that people will get out of your book?
Matt:  The reason we wrote the book… When we sat down, we asked a couple of really deliberate questions, because there are a lot of books out there that will teach you a little bit about property and tax and accounting, renovations or whatever it is you want. There’s heaps of knowledge out there. What we wanted to do with this book, one of the questions we asked was how can we add value to our audience?
The first thing we said was “What’s really fundamentally missing for many investors?” And as we said, it was really that awareness of themselves and what they’re actually hoping to achieve and why they’re hoping to achieve it as well.
I think oftentimes, people just go “I’m in property to make money.” Yes, so what? But what does the money actually help you to do? How does it change your life or how does it change the life of the people around you? Whether that’s at a local level, meaning your friends and family, or how does it change the community?
Realistically, we get clear to start with as to why they’re investing in the first place, and then we’ll lay out structures and strategies and opportunities on top of that. That will just help them hopefully. We ask questions: How do we do it safer? How can we do it faster? How can we do it more predictably than just being out there on your own in the marketplace?
Kevin, you’ve been around property for a long time. You know that property is not an individual sport; there are so many allied professionals you need to have at least some knowledge of and have some working relationship with in order to get really superior results.
Kevin:  Yes. Luke, you mentioned Bitcoin just a minute ago and my reaction there was one of horror, I guess. One of the things I think about with Bitcoin is that people try to get results quickly. They look for the quick, fast buck. Good property investing takes time, doesn’t it?
Luke:  Absolutely. Look, the fundamental structure of our business really is that we didn’t come into this place from some other business where we thought “Hey, let’s just do property investing and make some money.”
We were first and foremost property investors, like everybody else probably listening to the show. And we started the same way a lot of people do. You go out in the marketplace and buy a property, and then you go and buy your second and third and fourth property. And before you know it, you’re a property investor.
I guess through that, there was no real structure or planning with that. We look back in hindsight and say “Hey, how could we have done it better? How could we have actually put a plan in place and actually structured a long-term plan?” Because as long-term property investors, we want to help our members long-term as well.
We don’t want to help people just to go and buy one property; that’s not really going to give them the results that they want. There are a lot of people out there these days looking for that silver bullet, and that’s why they’re putting their money into the stock market or putting it into Bitcoin or even putting it into real estate without really understanding the fundamentals of why that investment may or may not work for them.
Kevin:  Matt, I just want to ask you a question about fear for a minute, the fear of failure and the fear of success. How much of that actually holds us back from succeeding?
Matt:  It’s hard to probably quantify, and everyone is going to be probably a little bit different, but as a general rule, obviously fear is what stops people from moving forward in all different areas of life. It’s the fear of missing out.
The fear of success for some people means that they might lose their friendship group, because in Australia we have this thing called the tall poppy syndrome, which is whenever anyone starts to show signs of success, the rest of the herd tries to pull them back to their level, which can be emotionally challenging.
But again, this is the thing that we work with with our members over the longer term. We look at not just the financial strategies, but we look at the emotional strategies. How can you control fear? How can you use fear to your advantage? How can you recognize the fear and actually recognize what’s driving that fear at an emotional level?
Whilst we’re not psychologists and don’t want to be and we’re not marriage counselors and don’t want to be, we tend to do a lot of work with our members on life skills and on becoming not only better investors but becoming better human beings along the journey.
Kevin:  Guys, we’re out of time but it’s great talking to you. I wish you every success with both the company, The Property Mentors, and also the book, especially the book because I think it’s a great read: Let’s Get Real. My guests have been Luke Harris and Matthew Bateman.
Thank you so much for your time, guys.
Luke:  Thanks, Kevin.
Matt:  Thanks, Kevin.

Big bank backs comparison site – Matt McCann

Kevin:  We’ve spoken in the show in the past about LocalAgentFinder, a very fast-growing comparison website. It’s just received a significant shot in the arm, announcing a brand new heavyweight partnership agreement with the Commonwealth Bank. Joining me to talk about this is the CEO for LocalAgentFinder, Matt McCann.
Matt, congratulations on this link. What does it mean to LocalAgentFinder? What does it mean to consumers?
Matt:  Thanks, Kevin. It’s nice to be talking to you. It is a significant partnership. I think probably the first thing is you bring together Australia’s largest bank with the largest real estate agent comparison service to provide an entirely bank-branded service for CBA customers.
In a sense, what it means is that the ability of a customer to understand the options to them when selling their property or even considering doing something with their property is now far greater because they now have access to the ability to compare the information that will help them select an agent to do any one of those things.
Kevin:  Is there any indication about where people go to first, Matt? Do they actually go to check on their finance, or do they start looking for an agent first? What comes first?
Matt:  There’s a mix. I think a lot of consumers will start with the idea that if they think they’re going to go down the path of selling their property, they’ll go straight to the idea of looking for an agent first.
That’s the LocalAgentFinder piece of this, which is providing those four big pillars of information: sales history of an agent, independent reviews, pricing and fees, and then our videos, so seeing an agent in action means that the consumer is now very well-informed in terms of what they want to do. What the bank has seen in the partnership is that that is a key driver of that first step, and they want to be there in terms of offering that service to the bank customers.
The corollary of that is that actually, there’s a number of people who do look at finance first. They go off to the bank, and within the banking universe of CBA – which is over 16 million customers across the country and about 6.2 million who access digital assets – they want to build out a much deeper and wider offering so that they’re providing all the services they possibly could to their customer base and being seen to be a real value-add.
Kevin:  As I understand it, the bank will be accessing your platform to help their customers find the agent of their choice. Is that right?
Matt:  Yes, correct. The way that the partnership will work is a CBA-branded Agent Finder service will be positioned all the way through CBA’s digital assets, but obviously particularly focused around the property portals that they run.
And there are millions of customers a year accessing those portals looking for both information on their finances but certainly information on how they might go about approaching a sale of a property. So, this is a real step up in the level of functionality that the bank is now going to be putting in the hands of those people.
Kevin:  It’s interesting, Matt, how the landscape has changed so much, and we’re now seeing a lot more consumer demand for this type of service.
Matt:  Yes. I think there are two things that come out of a partnership like the one we’ve announced for CBA and ourselves. One is – you’re right – the consumers are really marching with their feet in terms of what they really want to understand before they pick an agent. I think that’s starting to be recognized by some of the biggest brands in the country, and so you see something like CBA saying to its customers “We recognize that you really want to understand this information about agents and which agent will be the right agent for them, and so we’re going to offer that service to you.”
Now, we expect that there will be others who will follow us in. This is a unique partnership and it’s the first time a bank has branded up a service like ours, but we would expect to see more follow.
And the changing nature of that for the consumer means that there will be a range of places and you’ll be offered services just like the one we’re offering with CBA in many places throughout that digital search process that you go through as a consumer before you make that step of appointing an agent or even selling a property. So, it’s a big step.
Kevin:  A big step for the bank, but a huge step for LocalAgentFinder to get that type of endorsement and that amount of traffic, I would have thought, Matt.
Matt:  It is. This is a very big deal for LocalAgentFinder. What it really means for us is that the size of the opportunities that are coming to the platform will more than double perhaps what’s there today for us. And with that kind of volume comes the ability for us to provide many more Australians with an opportunity to be really very fully informed about the information that they use to pick and select agents across the country.
We’re obviously very excited for what we can deliver for consumers, as well as agents because there’s a significantly larger pool of vendors and property letting/management opportunities that we now will put in the hands of agents as well.
Kevin:  Yes. It’s great for agents, great for LocalAgentFinder, and particularly good for consumers. We’re happy to endorse anything like that, and we do actually support the services of LocalAgentFinder. You’ll hear a lot more about it on our portal.
Matt, thank you very much for talking to us. Congratulations on this, and full marks to you and the team. It is truly a great endorsement of your services. Thanks for your company.
Matt:  Thanks, Kevin. Cheers.

The real facts about the market – Michael Beresford

Kevin:  Recently I caught up with Michael Beresford from OpenCorp and had a good conversation with him. There’s a video currently on the site, on RET, and we’re sending it out as a special broadcast for you next week as well. So, tune into that.
It’s a video where I talk to Michael about lots of things, about whether or not the property market’s going to collapse, how he’d help a young couple maybe earning $100,000 and renting to get into their first property, what’s the ideal path forward for those who wish to get on to the property ladder, and what are the telltale signs of a trustworthy operator in the field?
It’s about a 10- to -15-minute video, well worth watching. Here’s a small portion taken from that where I talk to Michael about the current state of the market.
Michael, one of the things that I did want to ask you about is we’re seeing a lot of negative press. One of those is that the property values are going to collapse. Is there any foundation to that?
Michael:  Have you got two hours, Kevin? Look, being serious, I’ll try and distill it down to a few key points for the listeners here today. The first is if we think about what drives price growth – and vice versa price collapses – in anything, it’s the simple notion of supply and demand.
So, there are definite steps that investors can be taking to mitigate those risks and maximize their chance of obtaining high-performance properties. The best way to do that is to invest in the major capital cities, because we have the most amount of people, the most amount of jobs, and the least amount of land supply.
We have a bit of a saying here in the office that “Get rich quick equals lose money fast.” Properties in mining towns are a property example of that. Bitcoin is an example of that. I’m amazed on a daily basis that people would be putting significant amounts of money into this hype-driven investment and following the pack when we have a proven performer here in property that they choose not to invest in.
And the only difference is that one can make you a return overnight but can lose you a lot of money in the process, and the other one just takes a bit of patience and focus over the long-term to be able to get results.
With respect to the negative press in the articles, I’d just encourage people to take everything with a grain of salt and understand the motivations of anyone they’re obtaining information from. Whether it be a company like OpenCorp, whether it be the media, the newspaper, the nightly news, all of those media outlets are aiming to play to your emotions.
It’ll be boom one day, it’ll be bust the next day. And to use a Sydney example, I read recently that the median house price has come down 0.5% and all the headlines are “Crash, the boom is over, doom and gloom, property prices dropping,” etc.
Now, if I said to you five years ago that you could invest in something that went up 79.5% in a five-year period, I’m sure you’d be pretty happy, right? It’s gone up 80%, it comes back 0.5%, but that’s what the media outlets talk about. It’s heightened emotion through boom or bust.
The property market, first of all, there’s not one property market in Australia. The property market within capital cities is even different, far less the different property types and geographical locations. So, that’s the first thing to remember: there’s not one size fits all.
And really, the second part is that the fundamentals of property don’t change overnight. The population growth data and the government strategy around jobs and so on does not change from 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday to 10:00 a.m. on a Wednesday.
Kevin:  I want to pick up on that point you made about Bitcoin, because I think that highlights where a lot of investors go wrong, and that is that they look for this quick fix, this quick buck. And even the media play to this. When we talk about boom and bust, the point you made there about the Sydney market dropping 0.5% yet there’s “The market is going to crash.”
It’s almost as if we expect there to be a boom-and-bust market when the property market over the long term is really quite stable.
Michael:  Yes, it is. And one of the things that I get very passionate about – so much so that in our presentations, I dedicate a good five-minute section to what we call white noise. And white noise are those distractions that can impact an investor’s ability to achieve their goals over the long-term.
The big one is social media as well. The way that I describe it to our clients and the people we talk to is that social media is opinion-based and it’s instant, and those two things are the polar opposite to what it takes to be successful with this investment game.
You need to have focus and you need to follow a process and you need to be patient. And remember that the reason why it can be a daunting process to undertake is because it’s something different to what the majority of people are doing. There’s not safety in numbers. Only 10% of Australians invest in property outside of their own home.
Yes, it takes a bit of a thick skin, especially in the early days, but I’ve read just a couple of days ago that Harry Dent – the U.S. demographer – is out in Australia. I was reading paragraph two of this article and I said, “Harry Dent must be about to launch a new book,” and she said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, I’m reading this crap about how Australia’s property market is going to crash, and he only ever has something to say when he’s promoting a new book.” Lo and behold, in paragraph five, Harry Dent has got a new book.
Some people call that genius, but when you’ve been doing this a while, you see the patterns and these things tend to unfold .But the reason why I get so passionate about it is that Harry Dent had a lot to say around the negativity and the potential market crash in the Australian market in 2012, and I’m sure anyone who owns property in Sydney and/or Melbourne since 2012 is glad they didn’t listen to him.
You’re right; it is a long-term, stable beast underpinned by the supply-and-demand equation that is working in our favor and the government’s commitment to population growth. Again it’s not get rich quick, but I think we’re in for a stable and high-performing ride over the medium- to long-term as always.
Kevin:  Those sorts of people are never held accountable for those claims. We very rarely go back and check on what Harry Dent said, and if we did, we’d find that even though the fact they promote that he is a guru and he picks all these things, we’d find that he doesn’t really pick them at all. He might pick them in certain markets, but certainly not in our market.
Anyway, don’t get me started on Harry Dent. It’s not one of my favorite subjects.
Michael:  You and me both.
Kevin:  Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to catching up again soon.
Michael:  Thanks, Kevin. Enjoyed the chat. Cheers.
Kevin:  That’s just a small portion of the 10-to 15-minute video that you can see on the site now. Just go to RET and have a look for that special video. You’ll find it on my channel, my chat with Michael Beresford from OpenCorp.