Episode 180 | Are buyers agents worth the cost? | Cate Bakos, REBAA

Where does the real value lie in buyers agents and how to avoid costly property mistakes?
In this episode, we welcome back Cate Bakos to discuss from beginning to end the role buyer’s agents play in assisting consumers to achieve their property objectives and how the guiding principles of REBAA and its members have directed consumers away from risky property mistakes.

Cate Bakos has appeared in previous episodes to discuss buyers agents and the value they add to property buyers. Cate is a prolific and experienced buyers agent based in Melbourne and is also the President of Real Estate Buyers Agents Association of Australia (REBAA). REBAA is Australia’s foremost peak body for buyers agents and aims to lift industry standards that protect consumers against rogue operators. The integrity of REBAA has been crucial to highlight individuals and agencies that adhere to self-regulating principles in an unregulated industry.

GUEST LINKS:
www.rebaa.com.au
https://www.catebakos.com.au/cate-bakos/

HOST LINKS:
Looking for a Sydney Buyers Agent? www.gooddeeds.com.au
Work with Veronica: https://linktr.ee/veronicamorgan

Looking for a Mortgage Broker? www.wealthful.com.au
Work with Chris: hello@wealthful.com.au

Send in your questions to: questions@theelephantintheroom.com.au

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Please note that this has been transcribed by half-human-half-robot, so brace yourself for typos and the odd bit of weirdness…
This episode was recorded in June 2021.

Veronica Morgan: Buyer's agents are in hot demand at the moment is anxious house hunters attempt to gain an edge in a rising market, but how do you choose a good one?

Veronica Morgan: Welcome to the elephant in the room. This is the podcast where we love to talk about the big things in property that never usually get talked about. I'm Veronica Morgan, real estate agent buyer's agent co-host of Foxtel's location, location, location, Australia, and author of auction ready.

Chris Bates: And I'm Chris Bates mortgage broker. Before we get started, I need to let you know that nothing we say on here can be taken as personal advice. We always recommend you engage in the services of a professional.

Veronica Morgan: Don't forget that you can access the transcript for this episode on the website, as well as download our free fall or forecast report, which experts can you trust to get it right? The elephant in the room.com did I? You

Veronica Morgan: Regular listeners may have heard me rant about the low barrier to entry to a career in real estate in general. And my belief that buyer's agents should have to clear a higher bar than that, which is set for sales agents. One bar that only a portion of buyer's agents choose to clear is membership to Australia's only national association of exclusive buyer's agents. Today. We're joined by the president of rebar. That's the real estate buyers agents association of Australia, Melbourne based buyer's agent Kate baker. We going to give you some tools to help you sort out the wheat from the chaff. Thank you for joining us, Kate,

Cate Bakos: Always a pleasure. I love coming on your show.

Chris Bates: Great to great to have you on, I guess it'd be interesting to start about a bit of a history on buyer's agents or buyers advocacy. I think they call it in Victoria, but you know, sort of where does it really start? And you know, what portion of agents are really out there versus sales agents?

Cate Bakos: Here's a great question. We'll I think that a lot of paper will lay claim to being the first or one of the first. I certainly know that 20 years ago, it wasn't a concept that was mainstream, but there were buyers agents out there 20 years ago. And the reason I know that is I did a bit of time in my early real estate days as a selling agent in a real estate office. And we had a few buyer's agents that would contact us to save properties. And I was a little bit intrigued and it was not something that the consumers broadly knew about. And I think back then it was fair to say they were more for the, you know, the rich and famous and for the time poor people. And it was before a real focus on picking quality assets and getting good quality investment advice was, was something that we talked more about.

Cate Bakos: So they have been around for a long time, but as we all know, we've a little bit of a proliferation of the number of people calling themselves, buyer's agents out there. And I think it's really important to be able to distinguish someone who's got the right training and the right experience and, and the ability to add real value and protect the consumer versus someone who's doing it because they enjoy dabbling in property or they like houses. And there's a lot of shades of gray here, but you know, there's a lot of reasons why consumers need to be really savvy about picking a good buyer's agent. Have you got

Chris Bates: Any idea of like how many are really out there? I mean, obviously they need to be some registered in different states as real estate agents, I guess. You know, how many call themselves buyer's agents versus how many real estate agents there are any idea.

Cate Bakos: We don't have a super fam idea only because we have different legislation in every state and some states have, have different barriers to entry. And we've also got a few buyer's agents who are doing a course in one state and then coming straight back into their state and avoiding a few different requirements. But in short we've about five years ago, we had just over 300 registered buyers agents in the nation. And now it would be fair to say there's, there's way more registered than that. If we look on the portals for each state and territory, you can say there, how many, a real estate agent licenses are issued, but in terms of accurately pinpointing how many people are working full time as qualified, registered, insured buyer's agents? I think it, it has to be somewhere around the one to 2000 mark in our nation

Chris Bates: And real estate agents. I guess I probably, I know 50 times that sort of thing. I think more

Cate Bakos: Than that, Chris, I believe that we've got over 70,000 real estate agents in Australia. Yeah.

Chris Bates: Which is amazing. So you've got maybe say, you know, three to 5% of maybe the sales, I guess potentially if there were one for one, could we go for your boss? I just do think that's around the amount of sales that are actually going through buyer's agents

Cate Bakos: Question. I think probably not because we've got some that are doing it full time and have teams behind them. So volume will be a lot more noticeable for businesses like that. And then we've, we've probably got buyers agents out there that might not be doing any more than five transactions in a year if they're part-time and doubling. So it's a tough one to measure. And there are some locations where a buyer's agent is almost unheard of and, and not mainstream, but certainly in our busy capitals, the, the agents who are active in those capital cities, we'll talk about the number of deals that they'll have, where buyer's agents are involved every

Veronica Morgan: Now and then an email that's accidentally included. Everybody's email list on that email to the agents.

Cate Bakos: So terrible thought, stopping my way. You meant to put everyone face ECC.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. They've always CC and that's quite quite funny, but it's actually, this is interesting because I was literally talking to a client yesterday, who we bought for last week and she said, oh, you know, there's this buyer's agent out there. That's really nice. And she's really smiley. And she's really friendly. And she's at every open house that we went to, this particular client had been super active before they engaged us. They'd been at every, they were looking at absolutely everything. I mean, obviously they were highly interested. And so she was at first, she said, and at first I thought the fact that I saw her every time an agent told me about an off-market and I also saw this same buyer's agent at every inspection that I was at at first, I thought, wow, she's got, you know, she's so busy. She's riding there with the agent. She's hearing about everything first up, you know, she's right on the pulse when it comes to off markets. And she said, and then I realized when I met you, that most of this stuff is not worth looking at. So you sorta gotta be picky. And I'm like, ah, yeah, hello. But it was just funny how that whole now I don't know why I started telling that story. What was that?

Cate Bakos: Spare time to go to every ridiculous, overpriced, lofty off market, you're not busy enough.

Veronica Morgan: It comes to value add though, doesn't it. And what people expect of a buyer's agent. But I just, I honestly can't remember why I started telling that story, but you, he all the time, these expectations of what people expect to buyer's agent to do and add value. And I think I can remember why I started the conversation now. And the other comment she said, she spoke to an assistant of a sales agent who said, oh, we would put about probably 20% or maybe even 30% of our off market sales through that particular agent. And we also get access to all of that agents off market stuff. And I will say, this agent is not a member of Reba. We get access to all the same stuff and we wouldn't touch most of it. And you know, it's horrific to think that, you know, these relationships, you talk about, you know, how many product properties are actually bought through a buyer's agent, then you add another layer and say, how many should have been bought. Yes. But by anybody let alone a buyer's agent, you know what I mean? It's, it's actually a bit of a scary thing. So are we sort of segwaying and I'm, and I'm acting, I'm advocating for the case of not using a buyer's agent, right. The minute, even though I am one and you are one, and we're talking about how to choose a good buyer's agent, so let's get stuck into that.

Cate Bakos: Well, I think to your point, Veronica, a lot of people ask the wrong questions when they're looking at the value proposition of a buyer's agent, and I'm often asked by someone, how much of a discount would you typically get? Well, that's a very, very tough question to answer. The real question should be in a, in a flat market, a stable market, what sort of percentage discount do you feel you can get from your apprise to value? Because the thing about measuring a discount is can't repeat an auction under the same conditions. So it's a one hit wonder, that's it? You get one go to see how that auction unfolds or a negotiation for that matter. So the point of anyone saying, I can get these kinds of discount or I've regularly negotiate to this level. It's not the question that people should be asking because I would rather pay market value for an I cried asset than get a bank ride bargain

Chris Bates: Week. Yeah. I mean, that was one of my questions. Kai was, you know, some of these worrying marketing floors or sales tips, the buyer's agent shoes, and one of those is, you know, average client's savings or save their money clients 50,000 on that property. I'm like, well, how do you actually know that? Because you know, and really each paying market value, because you've already really actually negotiated better than, and it's yes, there is some secret circumstances where you potentially, the client was willing to go a lot further than you allowed them to, I guess, and you stopped them getting too emotional, or maybe it was a bit of inside information that you got, but there's always these sort of worrying marketing floors. I think buyers, agents sometimes use, like, we buy really fast all our clients by, within two weeks. I just think, is that really something you want to be telling people? Like, what are some of the things that you think, you know, people engaging buyers agents need to be worried about, I guess, that sales pitch.

Cate Bakos: So I think you should be worried about anyone whose unique selling proposition is how many off markets they're privy to this a first one, because there's two kinds of off markets, there's opportunistic off markets, and then there's situational off markets. The situational ones can be great because vendors got themselves into a situation and you might be able to create a win-win by having the right settlement terms or it's the right match. But the idea of going for an opportunity cough market, that's a massive waste of time. And that's a vendor in a hot market who might turn around when the deal is just starting to come together and decide to take it to auction. So you've wasted all of that time and you've got lost opportunity to contend with. So that's the first one I avoid any promise of off markets because that's only a small part of the value that we bring in.

Cate Bakos: And again, not every off market is good off market. So it's, it's the stuff that we say no to I, I talk about the John West principle, it's the fish that John West rejects that makes John rest the best I like being John West. And, and if that means that a client is with me for three and a half months and not two weeks, well, if that's the right solution for the client, that that is exactly what that proposition is about. Yeah. So I think that when asking what value of buyer's agent can deliver, you can look at the experience and how they made you feel and how involved you were in the journey and what sort of education you got out of the experience and how protected you felt you can't really measure their success though, until a few years down the track.

Cate Bakos: That's right. Or I look at the auction clearance results and the auction results every Saturday night. And it's not just to keep up with values it's to look at all of those results and recall all of the clients that I've over the years in those straits and surrounding areas that the, these values play a pot for in terms of underpinning the value of their property. I want to know how past clients properties attracting, and I want to be able to have that conversation if they call or give them the good news. If they didn't realize the one around the corner broker record, here's

Veronica Morgan: A good one, too. What's your auction success rate

Cate Bakos: At the moment? It's, it's around 25%. What I signed my stuff don't lose hope and, and feel despondent about that in a hot market, like a market that we're in right now, my feeling is if you're, if you're getting an auction success, right, about 50%, you might be either picking low hanging fruit properties or prying too much. Yeah. There's no perfect formula because sometimes we get lucky, but it's harder to get lucky in a hot market. So if you, if you're getting less than 20% success, right, you could have bad luck on your side, or you could be dealing with comparables that are too dated and not having that honest conversation with the client.

Chris Bates: I guess I'm one of the other things I noticed is that a lot of buyer's agents promise to help everyone out of it, nothing against them, starting out. It's really tough in any industry to say no to people, especially in those early years. And you've got to put food on the table and pay for it for offices and all those sort of things. But how does that sit with buyer's agents that sort of buy all over, say cities or even interstate we see quite often, and whether that really aligns to actually being a real successful, trusted buyer's agent,

Cate Bakos: That it's really important to know what your name is and to choose what your specialization is and do it really, really well. And if that means just servicing owner-occupiers in one side of town, or if that means just looking at the multi-million dollar properties and dealing with the rich and famous, or if it means targeting coastal areas and bank, right at Peking holiday homes, would it be a nice she's? I've always been a believer in, in being intimate with an area when you're selecting property, particularly if you're selecting property for, for long-term future growth, potential, you know, that's investment advice. And I think if you're going into multi-sites, you need to be very, very confident that you know, those areas in those other states, intimately, because if, if you're competing with local knowledge, who's very skilled up and investment savvy, and you'll not intimate. You, you could be making mistakes. So I'm a big believer in sticking to your lines and knowing what you're great at, but I've seen some people do it very, very successfully into state when they've had a specific type of property that they specialize in

Veronica Morgan: A good one, because there's a chat room, obviously in the Rebbe membership group. And one of the sort of recurring themes that comes up very regularly is typically Brisbane based buyers, agents. Whingeing about interstate buyers, agents buying crap, basically on the outskirts of Brisbane and for investor clients. And it's a, it's a, and this is the thing it's like the chicken or the egg, isn't it. So the buyer's agent says, okay, you want to buy a Brisbane shore, I'll go and find you something in Brisbane or the buyer's agent, actually advisors their client to say, look, you know, where if you want to buy an investment, why do you want to buy in Brisbane? What are your, what are your goals? You know, is that really the right solution or not? If it is then, you know, do I have the, actually the, the local knowledge to be able to help you do that?

Veronica Morgan: Or should I refer you to somebody else? You know what I mean? Those questions and those conversations probably don't happen enough because I guess if you've got a scarcity mindset you are going to grab, you know, and I get that people starting out. But I mean, I also understand that there's not enough people giving advice. There there's too many. I think buyer's agents just giving people what they say they want, as opposed to really adding value and adding value is really to come in to say, you know what? That, that doesn't necessarily line up with what your long-term objectives are.

Cate Bakos: I love that point. I could name many clients over the years. I've said, I'm sorry, but we're not doing that. I don't want to do that. These are the reasons why I don't believe in that strategy or why you're not ready or why it's not suitable for you. And rather than just take your money, that would be very easy to do. I can give you what you want. I just wouldn't feel good about it. So I don't want to do it. I want you to change your circumstances or think differently about how you're going to do this, or go to someone else who specializes in that and can deliver it for you. And the interesting thing is a large percentage of those people. Remember the advisor that says, I don't believe in this, and I'm not going to take your money and they come back and you can write program

Chris Bates: Them. Absolutely. Over the longer term we, even yesterday, I talked to a client out of buying his place in Canberra and, you know, it's it, wasn't the sitting comfortably within the whole call. I was, you know, I felt like I was on the back foot sort of, you know, giving me a bit of information and he still wouldn't want to start of digest it. And, you know, at the end of it, I think he's still, he wants to do what he wants to do, but I know that, you know, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that I didn't say that, have that conversation. And then you know, that in time that'll sink in whether he buys it or not, but in times it'll sink in and you'll be like, oh, actually that conversation with Cruz actually I'll refer to Chris or I'll, you know, I've got, and then I'll come back to him at some point. And so there's, there's actual, tangible benefit just being, you know, true. And you know, that trusted advisor to people because it always works a longer term fee for you and, and your clients. I mean, just on Raber K hat, what can kind of give our listeners a bit of an understanding of what it is, you know, how long has it been going? You know, why does it matter? Yeah, sweet

Cate Bakos: Pleasure. Rape has been around for 21 years now. So we've got a collective of people who started it out back then. And some of them are still active members. And rebel started as well, a few guys saying let's all get together and and support each other and hold, you know, some industry values. And it grew to a big brand now. And I, I love the brand and it's a collection of people that all contribute on a voluntary basis and there's around 90 of us nationally. And we've got what we call affiliates too. So Ray, but friends who are members as well, who aren't necessarily buyer's agents, they might be offering services that buyer's agents use. And and we all collectively believe in making sure the consumer is protected and that, and Reva members advice and activity is independent. And we've got a number of requirements for anyone who's wanting to join and be a member to make sure they fulfill on that also includes having to two existing members sponsoring their application.

Cate Bakos: So endorsing them coming on board, and they have to be fully lost since they have to have been working in the industry for a certain period of time. If they're full members, we've also got a provisional membership that looks after people that have been doing it for a little while and still wanting that mutual support around them. And we've also got a learner category for people who are new to the industry, and it really is about supporting each other upholding values, getting the word out there for consumers and, and having some really good articles and media releases and information to consumers. When they're looking at, at getting professional help.

Veronica Morgan: The one thing that you didn't mention, Kate, which I'm sure you will, but is about the exclusivity requirement. Do you want to elaborate on that? Yes.

Cate Bakos: We can only type payment from the consumer. So from our client, we don't take any kickbacks or payments from any other source. And the reason why this is an important thing to state is there are people out there who call themselves buyer's agents, or they suggest they give free investment advice. And the reality is that they're working for someone and they're selling stock offer stock lists. So they've got a lineup of properties that they've been tasked to sell, and they might be a diverse lineup, or they might be identical units in a high rise building or whatever they could be. They are pitching that product to the consumer. And a lot of them do it so well, they'll make the consumer feel like it's Tyler advice. When in fact it's not that they're trying to find a buyer to buy their stock and they'll call their services or the buyer's agency services or investment advisor services or whatever they want to name themselves. And the way that they get paid is directly from the developer or the builder. So they're getting their sales commission and it's generally a significantly higher commission than, than regular real estate selling agent would get for an established property.

Veronica Morgan: The more unscrupulous ones will actually double dip.

Cate Bakos: Yes they will. And so where you have, we have an issue out there where consumers don't actually realize they're not getting free advice. They've got an enormous price put onto the top of the existing price, because there's going to be margin there for the developer and for the salesperson. And so they're buying an overvalued asset. That's not necessarily good. And I, I won't be as bold as to say that they're all bad assets. I think a lot of them are, but the point is they're paying an inflated price because the sales commission is wrapped up in that. And I think that it's free and there's so many things that can go wrong here. If the bank disagrees with the price that they paid and feels that it's too high, a price tag, the valuation will come in short and that's, anyone's not made because you might not be prepared for that.

Cate Bakos: And sometimes when it's off the plan and it's got a long period between signing the contract and settling it, it can be years. And so she was suddenly facing a situation where you bought something that you thought was worth $500,000. And it comes in at four 20, you've got to find $80,000 differential. And that's 70. If the bank still wants it. So it can cause a lot of stress. And the issue is brand new and off the plan is, is when the valuation is finally done, it's all very dramatic and happens at the very end. And sometimes you've got 14 days to settle. So if the valuation comes in short and you've got 14 days to try and find $80,000, we'll find another lender. That's, anyone's not me. So that's one obvious issue, but the broader issue is the performance of the asset. So if it was recommended to the client, because it helps someone get their sales commission, that's not the same as recommended to the client because it's a superior property and it fits their profile. So if they've invested in this thing and then it underperforms, and five years later, they're looking at the lightest bank, fell thinking, I wasted all of that opportunity. I waited two years for it to be built and I've held it for five years and it's worth what I paid for it, or worth less what a horrible, lost opportunity scenario for that buyer who could have bought a highly performing suitable asset seven years prior. Is there

Chris Bates: Any sort of regulation around the use of the word buyer's agents or advocacy with the individual sort of state based sort of where you can only use it if you are only offer sort of fixed payment or when no kickbacks I guess, or is that literally, they don't want to go anywhere near that sort of conversation?

Cate Bakos: Sadly. No, we're, we're pushing very hard for it, Chris and fortunately regulation varies and regulators, aren't always able to jump onto these things, whether they're under racial still, that just don't understand it, or it's not as big a priorities of the shows that they might be facing. It's a constant battle. And I think that communities out there like Raber, and we've also got pepper out there, we've got picker. I think they're making some really good noise and bringing it to the forefront of consumers. Awareness is really critical, but unfortunately, property investment advice isn't is in a regulated space unless you're talking about a financial product, like self-managed super funds and others. So we, we can only be really overt about independence and, and what we call property advice. Yeah. It's interesting.

Veronica Morgan: You say that Kate, because in new south Wales, our licensing requirements change took quite a long, long time and they made a good show of consulting the industry. And so she got on as vice president of Reba. And I went in Joel capacity as a, sort of as a practitioner, but also as a, as the Rebbe rep and I put forward a submission to the panel, the educational panel that was actually looking at reworking or the licensing requirements. And I was horrified because my pitch has always been buyer's agents actually need to know more than a sales agent. And one of the reasons for those, a number of reasons, but one is because the sales agent is just helping somebody get rid of what potentially was a mistake that they made under their own steam. Whereas a buyer's agent he's actually advising them, hopefully not to, but potentially to make that mistake.

Veronica Morgan: And so if the buyer's agent is completely unaware of the mistakes that can be made with property and let's face it, there's easier to make mistakes than it is to avoid them. Then, then if they're unaware of that, then how can they possibly do their job properly? And there is no training around this. This is all learned on the job by those who are interested and not by those who are not interested. And so, you know, I made this big presentation to them. Yay. Oh really? Oh, you're kidding me. So people actually lose money on property. Oh, this sort of stuff. And I came away and I read the report and recommendations afterwards. It was like one line referring to buyer's agency had completely missed the point that, you know, and then ultimately basically they, they actually just dumbed it all down and said, I know that they just need the same license as sales agents. And in fact, we reduce the amount of specialization as specialized licenses and simplified the whole thing and dumbed it all down. And that says to me very, very clearly that these people, even some academics in there just do not understand the complexities of this market, this industry. Yeah. I

Cate Bakos: Couldn't agree more Veronica. It's absolutely true in down here in Victoria, our full license course is 26 modules. It takes quite a while. I took time off work to do my qualification for, for being able to apply for a full real estate agents license. And one of the modules incorporated buyer's agency, which doesn't say much. I think I spent more time learning about property management, trust accounting, which was interesting, but that's not a critical part of my day-to-day dealings. And I absolutely agree with you. And what it says is getting a good quality buyer's agent really relies on someone having had good quality training from someone who absolutely knows their craft inside out, which really points to an apprenticeship, so to speak. And I look at the people that I've worked with and helped into the industry that I love. And I can honestly hand on heart say the smartest savviest, most capable person who loves property and is great with all of the analysis and the legislation genuinely couldn't do it. We fit training wheels off within two years. Absolutely agree. Yeah.

Chris Bates: Was one of the issues I see, it's a very low volume high costs. It's hard to sort of start out as a buyer's agent because it takes years to sort of get the trust at the consumers already. Don't really trust by that because it's not as prolific out there. You know, it's very hard for us to sort of some clients to convince them, to get a lot of value out of buyer's agents. Because lot of do, we really need it and the cost, and it's also a lot of time to do it well. So you have to charge a high fee. It's really hard for buyer's agents to sort of start, but there's like an explosion of what I see new businesses. Buyers, agents have been doing it for, you know, months, sometimes, and they've gone on just starting their own business and there's really no education out there as well. So besides that apprenticeship option, is there any good options for buyer's agents to sort of get up to speed besides just working under great buyer's agents?

Cate Bakos: I think there are some pathways that, that can get you there, but ultimately you'll still need a bloody good mental, whether that's your boss or someone who is dedicated to your success. And I'm happy to talk about my own pathway because I remember wanting to do it and there's no job admin, no university course, there's no academy. And I, I made that seriously, like a learning academy where you're learning the craft of buyer's agency and all of the risks that that entails and how to, how to understand investment grading and the process. So I was a sales agent for some time, which gave me exposure to the process that vendors go through the negotiating process, the contracts that was great. That was one little bit of Intel that I could pop away in my memory, but I still needed more. And I was a mortgage broker for four and a half years.

Cate Bakos: And I felt that that gave me a lot of Intel. It's still not, they're not the only two pathways I've seen valuers do it. Well, I've seen accountants do really well, but you still need that overall buyer's agency assistance. And if you've come out of a role where, or you've had experience in high level, fast paced customer service, where things can go wrong, all of those things can be helpful, but you still need a mentor or a great boss to help you pull it all together and let's face it. You can have all of those attributes, but hanging a shingle at the front and taking on a license, opening the front door, isn't enough to run a successful business. You actually need to have a business head on your shoulders as well,

Chris Bates: Around mentoring, Adobe mortgage broking. You've got have the first two years, you've got to be signed off by someone. But the problem I say that is that a lot of this, you know, mortgage broker coaches, I guess who can sign off as they could be signing up for hundreds and hundreds of brokers. So it actually getting, you know, someone really guiding them or are they just getting someone to sign off on their sort of annual declaration. So is there any sort of, you know, mentoring obligation for new buyer's agents at all?

Cate Bakos: There's not sadly in Victoria. We absolutely need past when we need experience under someone, but you can circumvent that if you're getting any losses that doesn't require that, and you can get me to recognition, which is a Acacia that's, that's being tackled now and where we're having some success in some of the states that have had a few more applicants going into state, but in terms of getting a good mentor, I mean, we have mentors within Raber for people who, who wants to reach out and have that support. And I've been a mentor. I've absolutely loved it. And it's the most rewarding thing I've, I've helped to raping members now and seeing them grow their confidence and think critically about situations and understanding their nation and pointing them in the right direction for further education and for rounding their skillset. All of that is really exciting for me to do. If someone in the industry who loves, you know, paying it forward, but it's not all that easy to find a mentor. And you've got to make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons. If you've, if you're genuinely wanting to be the best that you can be taking a box, isn't going to do it.

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Chris Bates: Mentioned at the start, that is some wrong questions that people ask and we get it to all the time. You know, what's a great place to buy and or I want to buy this. And what do you think what's some of the questions you think that buyers or people coming to you should be asking you to get a real or other buyers agents to get a real good grasp on whether they should engage you, or

Cate Bakos: I think being open about what you're trying to achieve from the onset and bear in mind in a situation, a market like this buyer's agents, the good ones are really busy. So you've got to start with some really succinct points and it might involve emailing through. Or when you put your online inquiry through, if the buyer's agent asks you to fill out a form to a properly fill out the form, because they'll take the time to look at all of your metrics and background information and loan approval status, everything that they've asked for, show them so that they can have a chat with you about what might work for you. And sometimes the information it's really, it flows really easily. I've I've had clients who have given me the full picture and I've thought, oh, bang, here we go. This particular scenario for you is going to be great.

Cate Bakos: Others. I've looked at them and said, well, you've actually got a lot of options here. A lot of choice. You haven't got any restrictions with the metrics that you've given me. So let's chat about what will make you feel comfortable and confident and proud. And they might have different areas I can think about are different dwelling types. And then taking the time to explain what the, the experience and the results, whether it's rental yield, vacancy rights, top of tenant that can expect work, they're prepared to do. I think the most important thing is that you've got a buyer's agent. Who's asking you specific questions, actively attentively listening, and taking the time to give good advice. If the advice flows too quickly, the alarm bells will be ringing for me.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. There's a difference between advice and a sales pitch. Isn't there. I think a lot of buyers re particularly in the current market, when, when things are tough out there, they reach out to a buyer's agent as being the magic pill. You know, the it's like a last resort I've failed. I can't do it. And so that's one of the reasons they, they hang their hat on that idea of off markets because they think that's the solution. Okay. And then who gets more off markets buyer's agents do. And so it's sort of a natural way of thinking and it's completely, it's, it's logically illogical, if that makes sense. And you know, and a good buyers agent will disabuse them of that notion pretty quickly, but a bad buyer's agent or one doesn't really care or one that's just into the sales pitch. And they've learned how to sell the idea of buyer's agency rather than be a buyer's agent. And I think that's a big distinction that consumers need to be aware of those that sell the concept, sell the value proposition without really the substance behind it. And the, you know, there's, there, there are, you know, that they can go on, do paid courses to learn how to do that. And I've heard the pitch, you know, it's, it's it's empty, but it's very compelling to a buyer that's, you know, that is in pain and hasn't been able to do it under their own steam. And that's a scary thing.

Cate Bakos: Totally agree. And if it comes down to understanding whether you're getting a sales peach, or whether you've got someone sitting on the other side of the desk, who is attentive, able to help you and wants to help you, if you're in doubt or you don't feel that you can tell the difference, understand a bit about some of the past clients have helped. And one question I don't particularly like getting from someone who hasn't really engaged any fed that than an initial inquiry was me is can you give me three names of past clients? So the answer is no, I won't do that because this is just a discovery call. You might not even want to work with me, but I'm not bothering someone to, to chat to you about the kite by experience on prefer that they looked at my gallery Joel, or asked me for some examples of properties that I've helped clients purchase.

Cate Bakos: And then ask me for the context behind it and maybe deciding it buys. I didn't tell me about this particular acquisition story. I mean, obviously there's personal information. They won't divulge, but they might say to you, well, this, these client, I chose this property for them because you know, these were the metrics and this is the background and this is how it went. And this is how long now with me, I think the more you can get a buyer's agent talking about past acquisitions and you know, where it fits in with that particular client's metrics and what they wanted to achieve, that will give you some insight into that person's specialization and maybe their style

Veronica Morgan: Can also ask them for their KPIs.

Cate Bakos: One. Isn't it? Nobody wants a buyer's agent that, you know, has, has a whiteboard out the back with numbers on it

Veronica Morgan: And to run a business, you need one. I mean, I often say this to potential client where I've been, they always say this it's like, we don't know. It sounds bizarre. We're a buyer's agency, but we don't have a metric for how many properties we buy. And in fact, in a way I've almost not, not haven't formalized this, but we're closer to having a metric for how many times we've recommended a client not buy something that is, that is more highly rewarded.

Cate Bakos: Yeah. And you and I, well, all three of us will know. We've, we've told clients that we don't want to see them do something in the past. We don't like that idea. We don't endorse it. We highly recommend they avoid it, or they change their circumstances and get themselves purchased, ready for the right kind of property. Come back later. And the ones that have hated that advice generally don't come back. And the ones that didn't have the advice. And when I went ahead and did it, when we get them back as well, and then we've got to fix up the mess or help them try and financially recover and rebuild from that mistaken property. And that's a horrible way to learn. But unfortunately it's often what we say.

Veronica Morgan: Some people have to, you know, I bumped in and look, I have to say, I will say that Reba membership is no protection. It's not a, it's not a complete guarantee that you're not going to get this. Because one of the things that I think there, anybody looking to use a buyer's agent needs, needs to do is to really say, look, how will you advise me? What, what, how will you tell me, how will you work out? Whether that's a good property or a bad property, whether I should, or shouldn't buy that property, what price I should pay for that property, where I should, my cutoff, how what's your process for advising me on this stuff? Because I bumped into an agent, a buyer's agent the other day, and this is a buyer's agent that I've known and respected. This person has been a buyer's agent for a long time, probably as long as me, maybe even longer.

Veronica Morgan: And they are a member of Reba and a bumped, you, they were just having a bit of a friendly chat. And they said to me, oh, we just missed out on a property last night and I'm quite relieved. And I said, oh, that's the client wanted to do something that you didn't recommend? And they said to me, oh, no, I didn't tell them. I didn't like it. I, I sort of went along with them, mean, how could I tell them that I was relieved given that I, you know, I actually encouraged them. And I looked at this person. I'm like, how can you even say that to me? Like, like that's modifying, I'm glad they didn't buy it as well. But the fact that you just went along with what they wanted to do, as opposed to really just stepping in and guiding them. And even if they do want to do it, that's fine, but they've got their eyes wide open. And if you then regret or then you're happy that they didn't get it, you can then honestly say, look, I'm really relieved for you. I know there's a better one for you. And, and it was just a really interesting exchange. And I, and I think that it just reiterated for me that, that buyers, when they're looking at buyers agents, they really do need to tap into that whole critical thinking side of things and be critical thinkers themselves as to how they're they're, they're assessing the answers. Yeah. I

Chris Bates: Think for me, that's the tangible things through the process, and that's why your client stories are quite powerful. Kay. When you, it's not about the actual individual client, but it's how you guided them and your words, Frontica advise them at certain points. This is what we need to do. Or this is the strategy we're going to employ or know, this is your alternative option. So going through the process, because what I find with clients reviews used agents. A lot of the time, it's not actually the, the final thing securing it. It's about giving them the confidence to maybe look at different locations or to stretch into different type of property or to maybe not even pursue the property they're in love with, which is what you're talking about there, Veronica. So it's sort of those intangibles through the whole process, which is the hard thing with buyers agency, because it's hard to sort of formalize that to new buyers because they want those tangible, how much money are you going to save me? How much time you're going to save me? What's your guaranteed success rate. So, I mean, how do you sort of uncover those intangibles when you haven't gone through a service before?

Cate Bakos: I think if, if the consumer has had a bit of bad luck or they've been looking for a while, that just haven't had success. So they've had a bad experience in the past, you've got to be prepared to talk to your buyer's agent about that. And I had some I chatted to on Friday and I said to them, tell me what you're up to. Sometimes that's my opening question. You know, what are you up to? Oh, you know, I've been looking since October, okay, well, something's already wrong, absolutely. Already wrong. Because if you've been looking in Melbourne since October, that's too long, it means that you're either looking in the wrong locations. You're not handling your negotiating or your agent interaction. Well, or you consistently missing out because you're aiming for things that are outside of your budget. There's a lot of reasons why that brief could be going wrong.

Cate Bakos: You might not be responsive enough fast moving enough. But if, if you're having that kind of issue, asking your buyer's agent from magic list of off markets is definitely not the solution. And I had this lovely, but they said to me, how many, how many off markets have you done in the past year? How many would you do as a percentage? How many would you get? Actually, you know what, happy to answer all of this. But once I finished answering these, I'm putting off market discussion right off the table, because I can already tell you now your issue isn't lack of off markets. Your issue is that you don't have a realistic and feasible brief, and I'm going to spend time with you doing that. And it will be the hardest conversation we have in our, in our working life together. This first conversation, you'll feel pretty sensitive about some of the hard truths, but what we're going to do is get you a feasible and realistic brief, where you can hit the ground running in the areas where there's more listings that are appealing. And within your price range, we don't necessarily want an enormous abundance, but we want enough. So that every weekend you having a fruitful experience and you're shortlisting some good properties.

Chris Bates: I think that really, that chance of success of what you're trying to achieve, because people will think it's possible. So it might be a five or 10% chance that something's going to come up in that market, in your budget, that ticks all your boxes, but it's only five or 10% chance until you're waiting for these sort of needle in the haystack. But at the same time, the market's moving. So that chances were dropping potentially by the week. And also your chances of success in other suburbs is also dropping. So if you don't switch strategies early, you know, six months later you go, well, that chances of success is zero. We've given up by then your chances of success in other areas. So I think that's that where it's really powerful. It kind of stops people sort of, you know, looking for this sort of needle. I guess what

Cate Bakos: Market is not the time to do natal in high stack, if it's a static market and it's doing nothing for sure, hangout out white, till that amazing property comes up. I remember a couple of years ago, having a couple from Sydney who wanted to buy a specific type of property in Melbourne's very in the north and beautiful, beautiful area where the average block size wouldn't be more than 300 square meters. So we're talking, you know, super inner city fits right north couch and north they're gorgeous areas, but what they wanted was something massive. And they had a specific character and type of building mind, they had an array of straights. And I just thought, my goodness, this is like once a year, it comes up. So I said to them, I'm not going to be actively sending you a report every week with all the properties I've shortlisted, you'll hear from me when it comes up and I'm telling you now we'll be best friends by the time this is over because it's a once in a year type property. And for them in that particular market, and we say rational and wishlist, that was fun. They understood this could take us while and date, as long as I got the budget. Yes, I had the budget. We just knew that the product was

Veronica Morgan: Really, yeah. It's like that too.

Chris Bates: When that property comes on, a climb is one of those properties. You're talking about a few years ago in the, in the north of Melbourne. And yet I came around and I got so excited. I had a huge budget and I missed it. And so they, they thought they were ready to go, but then they still haven't bought again because they still waiting for that dream. And so, yeah, that's the problem is that even if you've got the budget and there might be someone with a bigger budget and say, could we wait another year for it? So you just got to be very confident you know, can that, can you afford to wait that long? You know, cause that could be your budget could get blown out. If you have to wait another year,

Veronica Morgan: [Inaudible] having a deadline and plan B.

Cate Bakos: Yeah. Then it's not a bad idea in a market like this. That's. Yeah.

Chris Bates: So what about some of the conflicts that, you know, I say with, with buyer's agency where, you know, there's certain brackets of briefs, so having two clients or competing budgets, you could have a conflict where you have property management in house. I think that's another one, which a little bit concerning cards. People have potential buyers, agents to encourage you to buy an investment rather than a home. And what are some of these sort of conflicts that you think it's important for you to have those discussions with real estate? How buyer's agent,

Cate Bakos: That's a great question. You asked Chris because we, that anyone enjoying conflict or wanting to capitalize on it, it can strike often and a buyer's agents, worst nightmare side from something going wrong is getting a phone call about a property that you already representing a pine client on from another pine client. And you've got to have really robust systems to get around that. And that means being very, very clear at the onset, what the bounds of your exclusivity is to each client. And if that means you dish out a number of suburbs, I've seen some buyer's agents limit the number of suburbs that they'll offer to a client. You've got to have really clear process boundaries and everything is fine until someone's situation slightly changes. They were all excited. I've had a budgeting Christ. Well now they might be bumping into someone that's not a great outcome.

Cate Bakos: And you've got to be prepared to tell them what they don't want to hear, which is really excited for you. And I'll accommodate it where I can, but the other client in this boundary, they get priority and everybody handles it differently, but it's never a nice conversation. That's for sure. And again, property management, that that could be a risk of conflict for some, I think it's a risk of having your attention pulled this way and that I don't want to do it. And it doesn't mean that people who, who do offer it, don't do it really well and have a great enhanced value add. But, you know, with every, every offering there's always a consideration. And another one is the percentage model of same flat fee versus percentage fee and clients asking about the perverse incentive associated with that. And again, I've seen buyer's agent activity around capping or clustering, the percentage model Faye, where they might say, well, between this and this it's a set fee and there are ways to, to A's your client's minds. And, and B I think transparency is the key. You've just got to put it out there. And if there's, anytime we starting to feel ill, this is not comfortable. Just talk about it and, and, you know, make sure that you've got direct dialogue going with your clients so that everyone's on the same page, but then there are conflicts often, you know,

Veronica Morgan: Vendor advisory is another one. Well,

Cate Bakos: Yeah. And what about your favorite real estate agent? You know, if we've all got real estate agents, we like I've got real estate agents, I've had a wan, we throw our coffee with, does that mean that I'll be different as a negotiator we SIM versus someone else? It's something that you've just got to be really cognizant of?

Chris Bates: Well, that's right. It's actually having these conversations up front. I mean, I've seen or referred a great buyer's agents that use percentages model, but if that is a, you shouldn't be ruling them out as an option because they use that model, but you should be having the conversation with them and just getting rid of that sort of concern that if it is a big thing that you're worried about and say, look, can we just go off that flat fee around that number? And I'm sure those were great buyer's agents would be willing to do that. It's just having these, having these conflict sort of discussions upfront rather than letting them sit there through the whole process. And at the end still, we aren't concerned of whether that actually impacted what they actually recommended to.

Veronica Morgan: I dunno, you know, with the percentage thing, we, we don't want to talk about this too much, but of course I have charged a flat fee. I always find it interesting that those that use a percentage model, but then say, oh, but I'll cap it. And it's like, well, why don't you just charge a bloody fixed fee then? You know? And the very fact that they'll only do it, if the potential, if the buyer actually asks, you know, I think that's actually a bit of a sign that they're not that upfront. You know what I mean? Like, so personally, I just think either it's other one or the other two, you know, like just anyway, that's a side issue. It's not that important. What other questions? Cause I know Chris, you're the one where most of the questions here obviously me being a buyer's agent as well, and obviously being a member of rebar, I'm taking a bit of a, more of a backseat today,

Chris Bates: The sort of the scalability of buyer's agency. I mean, this is something that I get concerned with. So, you know, when we're referring to buyer's agents and where we've probably had maybe 30 or 40, I'd probably recommend it over the country, but I'm very nervous referring to big sort of buyer's agencies. What do you think about the scalability of buyers agency? Yeah,

Cate Bakos: I think this is a good one to talk about, and you've got to be really confident with the person who is looking after you and the same goes for property management teams, where you make the founder fantastic BDM and they're dazzling and you know, really salesy and switched on and they give you heaps of confidence. And then they say your property manager will be in touch with you. You've got to be prepared to ask who your person will be before you're signing on the dotted line because it's, it's such an enormous amount of experience that they have to bring to the table and, and the trust is sky high or it needs to be. And of course, I always remind myself, you know, with every single brief I've got to earn that trust, but you've got to earn it pretty quickly because you're starting on day one, looking at properties and making recommendations and you know, discussing things.

Cate Bakos: And so I think the most important thing is that you have confidence in the person that you're getting advice and assistance from. You can have a really good, honest chat with them. So if you're feeling like they're defensive or they're not giving you the time of day, or they're not wanting to have that open and honest conversation, they might not be the right fit for you. So first and foremost, big firms have some amazing people in them. And I'm a big believer though. It it's the person that you're dealing with, not the firm itself. There's

Veronica Morgan: Another aspect to this though. And that is really in truly, there's only a very small percentage of property that is really worth buying, particularly for dealing with investors. And often the bigger buyer's agencies are very investor focused and the more buyer's agents you've got on, the more mows you've got to feed, then the more property you've got to buy. And the minute you get over a sort of a critical point. There's not enough property out there to buy that fits a criteria of investment grade or even B a and B grade. You know, you, you have to in order to keep those doors open and that scalable model, you've actually got to start buying crap to, to keep the cashflow. So for me, when I, when I see, you know, I think that here, that question is buyer's agency really scalable. That is for me.

Veronica Morgan: And I've made this personal choice in my own business, of course, that I know the good days will only ever be a very bespoke boutique business because of that exact reason. If I want to scale that's where home buyer academy comes into it, we can scale education for first home buyers, you know, because they can't generally afford buyer's agency. And, you know, Megan and I can scale that service and that education, that information, but as a buyer's agency, you know, unless you're going to have a lot of, lot of locations so that you can, you know, take out or extend that idea of buying only A's and B's in all locations, you know, but if they're in one location and there's a lot of buyer's agents, that's that, I think that's a real warning sign look,

Cate Bakos: Stock shortage is always a warning sign, especially when you've got lots of hungry people, I'm handpicking. So specific types of stock and fighting for it. The risk that you have is that process. We pushed up for that, that element of property, or you'll start saying some average acquisitions, you know, average quality, and think it's very important to factor in time into a search. If you have a few misses, like I said earlier, 25% success rate at auction, that means I'm not getting them first time round or only one out of full. And it means that I'm with the client for longer and having to sift harder and move faster for forgetting properties with less competition on them. And that comes at a price because my client journey time is much longer in a market like this.

Chris Bates: Yeah. I mean, one of the issues I've seen with those bigger buyers agencies, a lot of not even getting master feed, they're getting, you know, if they don't buy they're on commission only. And so the buyer's agent who is using the brand too, and getting given leads from that brand basically has to buy, they're not getting any income that month. And so that's one of the sort of issues I see, sort of playing out. I think you're right, Kate, who I am signing up to this mortgage broker, that's got buyer's agency, who's the actual buyer's agent. I'm going to be working for an RA the best possible option for me compared to all these other ice agents in the market. And I think don't fall for the sort of the person branding out the front because you actually deal with the person who's doing your actual work, sort of an issue there as well that I sort of sometimes say is that Moise brokers, for example, the getting in-house buys agents buying all over sort of Melbourne or Sydney, et cetera, what are some of the risks or the challenges of that model as well,

Veronica Morgan: By the way? Sorry. So I'm like, what? Yeah, well,

Cate Bakos: There's lots of challenges in a big business full stop and you know, you, you get more diversification with your advisors and hopefully the advice isn't diverse, but it depends on the training and the amount of time they're spending together. And you've also got to look at individual experience in areas as well, because there's no buyer's agent around that could just wake up saying I'm going to cover all of these suburbs and do it really well. You've got to learn those suburbs. And my suburb repertoire grew from a much smaller base, you know, 11 years ago to what, what it is now. And you've got to know the streets and know what they feel like to walk on, not just drive through. And that, that takes a lot of time. I've really prided myself on that. And the suburbs I'll say no to because I don't work in those suburbs. So I think the risk with borderless is if someone isn't truly intimate with an area, could they be picking the best straights and understanding what that demographic in that market particularly wants and responds to? Because if, if they're not nailing it, then you might find that someone with a more intimate knowledge could have done a better job. Yeah.

Chris Bates: And that's, that's basically what we in our start to say. I say am always broke, is for example, one hot entering with one buyer's agent because, you know, that's all the effort they've gone to, to build a network or they get even worse. They get a phone call from developer and then they start referring on it or they start to bring buyers agency in house. And so it's a formalized partnership where it's under the same brand and they just start channeling, channeling all their clients to one buyer's agent in a certain city. And that person's never going to be the best buyer's agent in all the areas of that city. And so I think he's going to be careful how you meet that buyer's agent and just be careful that, you know, basically find your own avenues where you're doing your own research. So if you've got a property Dumbo forest coat, yes

Cate Bakos: I have. And it relates to your questions earlier about off markets and understanding the background to an off market. So any anybody can get off market activity and off market opportunity. It's not just restricted to buyer's agents. You've got to be able to decipher whether it's a one or just an opportunistic one. So for the questions that, that you'd be asking, it should be, you know, how many a buyer's agent fields and actually goes and inspects because you need to know how critical they are. And you've also got to be prepared to understand a bit more about off markets and why they're not the holy grail when it comes to buyers agency.

Chris Bates: Have you got like a particular story that you could share or someone's done that around with markets that has ended up with a bad result? I guess?

Cate Bakos: No, because I, I tend not to, like, I wouldn't let anyone care to resolve it. I, I know that some people will know a lot about them. Yeah. Has people come to me because they've latched onto an off market and they're having a really hard time pulling it together and actually, you know, getting the vendor to agree and sign the contract. And so by the time they come to me, it's a little bit of a spiderweb and I then have to step in and introduce myself and work through what's gone wrong. And invariably, they've got confused between the concept off-market and pre-market and agents very, very good at selling off markets of saying the text that gets scattered out to all of these desperate pies saying I've got enough market. All they're doing is showcasing a property. That's already signed up to go to auction.

Cate Bakos: And before the board's even up before the photographers. So they're running people's three for two reasons. One is to get a guide evaluate because people will start throwing offers at them. And the other one is sometimes it's to try and entice the vendor to go with them. So they might do it without actually having an exclusive listing more often than not it's to really help them with processing and to say if a really crazy, you know, Powerball style offer tumbles out. Because if someone wants to help the vendor win palpable by making an sanely stupid offer, well, job done. I will take that commission. Thanks very much because it's just a real anomaly results for the property.

Veronica Morgan: Great example is happened last Saturday, right off market slash pre market in Sydney. And so we had a client lined up to go through the first time we could get access to the property. It's just been fully renovated, beautiful terrorists, go through. It's swarming with buyers that I'd seen it at an auction the week before. I just [inaudible]. My client likes it. We download a contract in the afternoon. And so start talking to them about our process and they know the process because we have gone to auction for them before and not bought. So they know the process. So we were all gearing up to, to get kick that off. We get a call from the agent the very same afternoon within, it would be within two hours of the inspection saying someone's coming in with a, an offer on a contract with a 66 w and so in new south Wales, that means it's unconditional.

Veronica Morgan: And in order to be doing, to be able to do that, they've got to either have their lawyer on hand or their lawyer potentially. So, and that's fine. You can do that. We can do that too, but there's no way on earth without actually physically inspecting this property. You could know a hundred percent. You want to go for it before you even go through the door. I mean, I guess maybe it's small percentage, no building and pest inspection. No, no due diligence checks nothing. And we're ready to buy today. That's it one inspection. And so I said to my clients, well, look, you know, we've got to do a placeholder if we want to get into this, but there's no way in a million years that I could, I could recommend you do the same thing. And they do have a lawyer friend is a lawyer.

Veronica Morgan: And so they could have done it. But I just said, I can't recommend that if you choose to do that, then fine, I'll help you do it. But I couldn't recommend that really. And I think that we should be able to make an awful conditional and move forward on Monday, if that, if your offer's good enough. So we made one offer. There was a number of people fighting for these, but there were the people that had actually bought it. So they went ahead. They had to put more than $500,000 on top of their offer, which was more than a million dollars. What the guide was more than million over the guide. And only in Sydney now, you know, maybe they had done, maybe they had anticipated that they were going to love that property. Maybe they had done all their due diligence before actually setting foot in the place. But I somehow doubted a bit, no building inspection had been done. I know that for a fact. So there's a good example of somebody who's just bolted into an off-market slash pre-market and you know, paid big, big money for it.

Cate Bakos: Yeah. If you're, if you've got the budget and well, if you've got the author that takes an early pre market off the market, when the vendor didn't need to sell it quickly, you've got a really big, clear that you probably dropped cross.

Veronica Morgan: Yep. And that no due diligence whatsoever, scary, none really just modifying.

Chris Bates: You also need to be certain, that's what you really want. And you're already emotional cause you just haven't even slept on it. Right. So I mean, if you've been in the market for a long time and you really know, but I mean, I know you both probably have seen lots of properties that have been renovated are actually some of the worst building and pest reports. So something freshly painted and looking amazing. Isn't a guarantee that there's no issues. Exactly. Yeah.

Cate Bakos: Sometimes it it's a higher chance that there will be issues

Chris Bates: Thanks so much for today. Kate, you know, obviously it's a massive conversation about selecting a boss license rave is a great starting point, but it's all about doing your due diligence, asking the right questions and you know, making sure that they're the perfect person for you, not just the easy option. Yeah.

Cate Bakos: I'm really appreciate the opportunity to come on the show. And I've got so many incredible colleagues around the country do give each other's names out and refer each other, which is a wonderful thing to say because they're respecting specialization and, and, and knowing what a good character match might be for that particular client. But all I can say is that there's a lot of information on our site about choosing a buyer's agent about understanding all types of facets to the exercise of interviewing buyer's agents. So yeah, I've appreciated the opportunity

Veronica Morgan: And we will put the link in the show notes as well.

Chris Bates: That's a good point around bars agents referring to other buyer's agents. Absolutely. I think that's a real good sign because that's what buyer's agents are referred to her. Now. I don't want to do that area. Why don't you use so-and-so and I go, you already know them and or can you introduce me to this other buyer's agent you're working? And I think that sort of collective knowing where your patches and w and then referring out is a, is a good sign. That your top action. Absolutely. Okay. My pleasure.

Veronica Morgan: We want to make you a better elephant rider. And this week's elephant rider training is

Chris Bates: I think just following on from Kate's discussion around buyer's agency and good ones. I mean, we're very selective on who we referred to, but what we really want to say is they've been doing it a long time, obviously, you know, five to 10 years, hopefully they're the business owner. I think that's really important. They know what they're good at the patch they're at. They're not a big business. I prefer to the smaller ones that has, I think, is a very personalized service. And, you know, that's amazing. Or if you've got all those ingredients, local knowledge got real focus on a certain patch, you've been doing it a long time. You've got strong advising sort of Tennessee's and think yourself as a trusted advisor there for me, the most important things, because then you're going to get the local knowledge, the local relationships. And then it's all about then, you know, getting, being really working with the buyer's agent, having a good brief, I say a lot of it is how you work with the buyer's agents as well to get a better result. So it's always about sort of getting that super local specialist buyer's agent, hence why it's impossible for us to partner with one buyer's agent. We refer to lots of them in each city, not just one buyer's agent per city or per area, for example.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah, totally agree. And I think that it's important that it's a partnership, you know, sometimes people would come to me and they'll say, oh, well, what happens if I find the property? And I'm like, well, we're not in competition with each other. You and I are linking arms, and we're trying to get you where you want to be. And so it's not a race. It's not trying to prove that we know better than you or anything like that. Or we can get it faster, or we can find the off market that you can't find this there's none of that sort of magical thinking around it. It is literally that together, we are going to help you move forward and in a really safe and protected way. And I know that you are definitely a, I'm an advocate for using buyer's agents. And I know that you encounter a lot of people that resist when you look at those sheer numbers of 70,000 sales agents in the country, maybe a thousand buyers agents in the country, not even 10% of those actually are Reba members.

Veronica Morgan: And that sort of says something it's no surprise. I guess that's still the majority of people will actually go and not be represented. And I think the advantage that you gain is not so much, oh, good. I've got a buyer's agent, that's my secret weapon. And I'm going to win this property because of that. And I've given many examples in the past where my clients don't buy the property because they've got a buyer's agent and that's the secret weapon. You won't buy Dodd. As long as you got a good crew, good experienced buyers' agent with all that local knowledge and great critical thinking, you won't buy a dad. And even with you overpay for a great asset that, yes, you don't want to do that. But that actually is not the main objective here. The main objective is buying the right asset and working out the point at which it is overpaying.

Chris Bates: Yeah, exactly. And by overpaying may mean you get that property rather than waiting three, six months or having to swap suburbs or whatever it is. So yeah, the price you pay is not nowhere near as much as important as the asset you buy. And there's always a limit to that conversation.

Chris BatesJune 14, 2021

Episodes

Episode 180 | Are buyers agents worth the cost? | Cate Bakos, REBAA