Frances Cook

And now we're hitting that crunchy point where people just have to live their lives and they have to make a decision and people are now having to make some quite tough decisions.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

I mean, you may have been being tongue in cheek, but you're actually spot on.

What you're doing, I mean, most of the value in any property you buy is in the land.

That's why apartments are cheaper.

That's why townhouses are cheaper.

And that's why a standalone home is more expensive.

So much of it comes down to the square footage of land under the house.

And then the property that you've got on top of that

is quite minor in terms of what it adds to it.

That's why location is so important.

That's why the type of property you get is so important.

It basically comes down to the value of the land and then a little bit extra on top for the house.

And so there are absolutely people who buy houses thinking in the future, when I go to retire, I could sell this to a developer and you could fit three townhouses on here.

That's absolutely a strategy for some people.

Oh, 100%.

If you are a first-time buyer right now and you're feeling secure in your job and you've been saving diligently and you've got that house deposit, the silver lining here is that if someone is trying to buy now, they're actually doing quite well.

It is absolutely a buyer's market.

They have a lot more time with these longer average days to sell.

So that is giving them a bit more time to do their research,