Rich Harvey

But fundamentally, it's having deep and wide networks with a huge range of sales agents.

We've got over 15,000 agents on our database.

So we're able to access those properties very, very easily for our clients.

I think buyers will come to hopefully a fairly quick realisation of what their money will buy in a particular area, Craig.

If you've got a budget of $2 million and suddenly you realise everything you want's going for $2.2 or $2.3, you're going to have to adjust your expectations and perhaps you need to think about getting a three-bedroom instead of a four-bedroom.

perhaps it won't be fully renovated like you first thought.

So I think you're going to get a pretty quick sense of where the market's at if you're doing the kind of deep research and extensive research that I was talking about.

But where should you compromise or how do you compromise?

It might be that you, as I say, adjust the bedroom, you adjust the internal size of the property.

And it could also mean looking at surrounding suburbs.

It may mean that you, instead of buying in your absolutely pinnacle suburb that you actually can't afford, look at a suburb one or two spaces away and think, this is a stepping stone to getting to where I want to

be.

If you wanted to live at Freshwater Beach, which is one of the most searched suburbs in Australia, then perhaps you need to live at Manly Vale or North Manly for a while and just consider the outskirts, other areas there.

I also think you might need to flex on the construction of the property itself.

Instead of it being a beautiful double brick, concrete slab type property, it might be a brick veneer and you could add value.

But the most important thing is getting the location right first.

As I always say to my clients, you can't move the house once you've bought it.

Once you've got that block of dirt,

You're stuck with it, right?

So be very, very careful about being happy about the location and then adding value to that property over time or even down the track, do a knockdown rebuild.