Boothy Bites - Interview with Pete Wargent from Buyers Buyers

This episode was originally published on our YouTube channel, dated October 7, 2021.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X8G24g7dS0&t=370s

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In this episode, Chris talks with Pete Wargent of Buyers Buyers about the market status of the time, as well as the innovations and research that Buyer Buyers conduct in order to give great guidance and advise. 

Transcript:

Chris Booth
Good morning, Pete. This is Pete Wargent from Buyers Buyers, and I'm privileged to have Pete on them on a little catch up this morning and to talk about property for the living clients. But so welcome, Pete. How are you going? All right.

Pete Wargent
Pleasure to be on. Thanks, Chris. Yeah. Oh, well, here.

Chris Booth
It's still and still doing a bit of summertime in England. Yeah. Enjoying it.

Pete Wargent
Yeah. So it would be nice to get back into Australia sometime this millennium. But at the moment, the home quarantine still seems to be a few weeks away. So yeah, been enjoying the European summer. I can't complain.

Chris Booth
Yeah, very nice. And recently I saw you do property research in the Algarve and I heard property research in Crete next. I mean, you know, it's tough when you're at the top of your game, you know, today, really, I'm looking to get a bit of insight, a bit more sort of locally in Australia. So, yeah, look, we've just been through a pretty tough winter season with property.

Chris Booth
What's what's your feeling and thoughts about what we've just gone through recently.

Pete Wargent
Yeah, so we do a lot of market research, we've got a lot of property out there that we collate and then report, and also as property buyers, agents, we sell an awful lot of stuff just at the coalface. So we get a bit like you guys with mortgage brokers, you tend to get an early read on some of the trends in the market.

Pete Wargent
So notably at this time of year, you would be seeing Australia coming into the spring selling season and that has kind of happened to some degree, particularly in Brisbane, but in Sydney and Melbourne for obvious reasons. That hasn't really taken off. The total transaction numbers are well down in Victoria. You can't even get to open homes in most cases.

Pete Wargent
Sydney kind of holding up but on lower volumes. But I guess with the dynamic really at the moment is we've got this big wall of pent up demand and when we do get to what the reopening, which feels like probably mid-October, then we will see a rush, I think between mid October and the end of the year. And I have a feeling this year the housing market will run all the way through to the weekend before Christmas.

Pete Wargent
So we're going to get a very compressed selling season this year.

Chris Booth
From a property perspective. You know, I believe, you know, we've seen some really, really big increases in values of properties over the last 12, 18 months. Can this continue in the in the coming months? Is there that much demand?

Pete Wargent
Well, yes. I mean, in the short term, yes, I think it's obviously in the medium term, you know, price growth at that rate is not sustainable. But the real dynamic at the moment, it's just a dearth of stock. And that's that's not just in Sydney. I mean, that's really right away around the country. And people have been somewhat reticent to list new properties.

Pete Wargent
But it just, you know, the old cliche in the market, mobiles and services like the it's putting an awful lot of pressure on on the market. I mean, if you look at total listings for this time of year, we're down well more than 25% on the five year average. So the stock levels are very low and even the oldest stock is selling.

Pete Wargent
So I think price gains will continue for the rest of this year. What happens in the new Year? You never quite know election year. Maybe there might be some regulatory intervention or maybe, you know, with the property market and the the international borders reopening, it could be a change in sentiment. But at the moment, there's a lot of demand there.

Pete Wargent
And just not that many properties on the market.

Chris Booth
Yeah, I mean, look, so it lydiard we're seeing the same and we've got lot of pre-approval in place right now. People are sort of queuing up a lot of first home buyers as well, looking at that sort of, you know, 1 million plus properties too. So there's a lot of demand and aspirational home buyers. And also we're seeing quite a lot of expats as well.

Chris Booth
I saw your article just earlier about the expert side of things, and we're seeing a lot of returning Australians coming to buy premium homes locally here. So I mean that's a lot of the old home stuff from an investment sort of lens. You know, I'm not not suggesting that we will hold you to this peak, but you know, what would some of the top picks be right now and sort of a little bit of why?

Pete Wargent
Well, yeah, it depends on budget, really. And to a certain degree, personal circumstances. I think a very common situation for us. So we have clients who are, for example, based in Sydney or Melbourne, they've seen the value of their own home go up and they they think, well, might be a good time to buy an investment property. And the client itself, if that's the case, then it makes sense.

Pete Wargent
They get some diversification and might be look somewhere else. Now there's been an interesting dynamic over the past 18 months because of the pandemic and there's been a sort of race for space, if you like, and a shift away from the higher density sort of CBD and inner city markets and people are looking for more space. So the markets that have been where the biggest price growth has been saying places like the northern New South Wales coast and Byron, Mornington Peninsula, even Central Coast, New South Wales south coast, the coastal markets have been extremely strong over the past 18 months.

Pete Wargent
I think depending on your budget today, I mean some of the markets that people might start to look at now, I think places like the Gold Coast where the rental market is becoming extremely tight and maybe Adelaide will come onto the radar. I think one of the things that's definitely a feature of the market at the moment is people are definitely looking at detached houses, much more so than units and apartments.

Pete Wargent
I think it's probably a function of people seeking more space and they just where the price growth is and that's where investors have shifted to.

Chris Booth
Yeah, perfect. And you know, where, where would you go if you look, you're supporting the court, you know buyers buyers offer, you know, the buyers agency service for existing properties. You know, what sort of research can a client expect to get from, you know, your, your website, your research in support of making a decision about maybe where to where to purchase a property and what those dynamics are?

Pete Wargent
Yeah. So there's a few things there. I mean, if you just want some free market research, those check out a website that buyers buyers the condo they you so there's a whole free property tools so if you want to do for example an area by area analysis or a suburb report or even if you want to get a valuation of a specific property, all of those those are there for free.

Pete Wargent
If you want some guidance from us. We do have a product called We plan, which is essentially a ten year property plan where we we actually collate. I got a pointer on your current situation. We took a bit about what your goals are, what you hope to achieve, and then we help people to map out the next steps in the process.

Pete Wargent
So if you want some professional guidance, we do actually have a property strategist that can help with that. But by the same token, if you want to do your own research, there's plenty of free those. You can use that.

Chris Booth
So yeah, it really and I like that. I think, you know, certainly reaching out to people who are professionals in that field and have got that local knowledge is important. But certainly if you're buying for investment purposes, definitely do your research and reach out to people. And then I suppose, you know, we've seen a lot of innovation in the lending industry recently, you know, with changes the way that we now we can actually process loan documents, you know, with DocuSign and technology becoming more integral with some of the product providers there, what are some of the innovations that we're seeing in the in the property services industry right now?

Pete Wargent
Yeah, well, very similar in terms of things like digital signatures with contracts. And I think that that is the direction the industry is moving in historically, and particularly in New South Wales. I remember standing in those big 50 page contract and initially every page, which thankfully we started to move away from that to where I say part of our IP is that is a buyer's agent portal where you can actually upload scanned documents and sign documents digitally.

Pete Wargent
So that is one improvement. I think particularly at the moment, it's very difficult for a lot of home buyers to actually get physically get the properties and inspect them. So I mean, obviously we have border closures in Victoria. I think I'll even get to open homes. So there's a few different things that are happening there. One is that there's a lot of auctions happening now online by Zoom and other online tools.

Pete Wargent
So that is that has been a change. But I think these days, even if you can't inspect the property, it's actually quite easy for a buyer's agent. They walk you through, you know, they can take you through all this time or WhatsApp and, you know, they I guess it's not quite the same as being there in person, but it is definitely the next best thing.

Pete Wargent
But yeah, there's a lot happening. I say in the projects space and a lot of it relates to buyer's agency, things like there's much more data available now at market research. And yeah, I think particularly for investors, a lot of investors don't need to actually travel to inspect the property and they can buy. So I've done the same with the help of the buyer's agent.

Chris Booth
Yeah, definitely. Certainly having that trusted professional circle to support that process is important. You know, get your finances in place, then reach out to professionals to search and things. But look, thanks very much for your updated. I look forward to the summer time, especially coming out of COVID on the 18th. Enjoy your property research in Great and we'll try checking out and find out if there's any top tips to purchase in Greece or in the Algarve.

Chris Booth
I'll be interested to find out. And yeah, where would people sort of reach out to find Pete Wharton and buyers by staying.

Pete Wargent
At this place is just that our website by is by com but I use the bank to look forward to catch you up again so.

Chris Booth
Thank you Pete Wargent.