Chapter 1: What unique services does Scott Aggett offer as a property negotiator?
It's The Real Estate Podcast, brought to you by Ray White, the largest real estate and property group in Australasia. And welcome to another episode of The Real Estate Podcast. We're talking to Scott Agate from Hello House. Welcome to The Real Estate Podcast, Scott. Hi, how are you doing? Yeah, not too bad. And you're on the Gold Coast. Yes, the sunny Gold Coast.
You're offering something unique when it comes to someone looking to buy property. You're not a buyer's agent, but rather a property negotiator. And your role is to stand in the shoes of the buyer to negotiate on their behalf once they've identified a property of interest.
So I'm guessing if you follow the logic of this through that it speeds the whole process up for someone with the ability to maybe have a lot of balls in the air, or in this case, a lot of potential houses. So can people that are looking to buy see more of the market as a result and earlier than competing buyers? Yes, they can. And you're correct in terms of how you're breaking down my business.
My role is to work with consumers that have got the ability to find their own home before I effectively stand in their shoes to out negotiate the agent. And I can do that, as you just alluded to, across multiple different properties if they choose to at the same time. And how it works is that I get my clients to set me a target price.
And then I charge them a performance fee based on how much I can save below that number. So I wanted to build Australia's only completely transparent real estate service. And it's effectively competing against what buyers agents do. But in terms of your question there, in terms of how to see more of the market, as you'll know, 40% of property listings are sold off market or pre-market.
So to really see more of the marketplace and have more opportunity than other competing buyers, you've really got to get laser focused in a particular area. You've got to build relationships with agents that are active in that marketplace for the type of property and the price point that you want to sell.
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Chapter 2: How can buyers gain an advantage in the property market?
You've got to stay top of mind with those agents as well to make sure that they create opportunities for you. And then you've got to be ready to take action, right? Like you've got to step in really quickly and see these properties and really commit to the process. Otherwise, you're going to join
The throngs of buyers, certainly in Australia at the moment, I think which are on average taking six months plus to purchase a property. And as you know, in a rising market, that's costing tens of thousands of dollars. And we know that the market is hot at the moment and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon.
And buyers sometimes struggle with making offers that have the ability to make an impression to vendors. It's a real sort of catch-22, this one. So do you have any advice to potential buyers listening to the podcast right now on how to really step up that whole process of putting their best foot forward regarding the offer in this very competitive property market? Absolutely, absolutely.
So there's a few really easy tricks and tips that buyers who are listening today can apply straight away this weekend if they're out negotiating in the property market. And that is to learn to ask direct questions and ideally shut up as soon as you ask them. So you wait and see agent weighs up the response to you.
I'm talking about questions like a lot of people will ask, how many contracts have been issued? What offers have you had? Those questions are pretty weak. You should be asking what will buy the property? What's the highest offer that you've rejected? Try and put the agent under a little bit of pressure.
Ask direct questions because that's going to help you understand where you need to position yourself to make a really strong offer that's attractive to the seller. But the key for this is really understanding the market that you're buying in. So we just discussed previously about getting laser focus to the market. So if you're looking in more than one or two suburbs, you're doing it wrong.
So you need to really laser focus down to what it is that you're trying to buy and know what those properties are going to trade for in the marketplace. And of course, know that those properties even exist in that marketplace.
So once you've got a good grasp on market knowledge, the way to build the ultimate offer is to ask those questions and then feed that back to the agent when you go to make your offer so it's as attractive as possible to the potential seller that you're talking to. The other really key thing for me is you've got to move with speed.
Getting through that DD or due diligence period and getting through the buying process is crucial to cutting out the buyer competition that you've got. One little trick that I use as well is I coach my clients that my first offer is I reckon doing 97% of the lifting, the heavy lifting for me in terms of working out where I need to be positioned and how well I'm going to buy that property.
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Chapter 3: What strategies help buyers stand out in a competitive market?
So that really will reduce the time that it takes to get through that offer process. And a key thing in that situation is you need to control the negotiation as best as you can. And I often use leverage in that situation. So leverage is when you might refer to another property and say, look, great, I'm interested in this one that you've got Mr. and Mrs. Agent at 12 Smith Street.
but I'm a long way down the line on another property locally in the same suburb off market with another agent. They're giving me some pressure to act on that one fast. So I'm gonna give you my best and final offer here, but I just won't be here in two days time.
And I do that the leverage because a lot of buyers will come to me and say, look, I've made an offer and I haven't heard from the agent for five days or seven days.
and what they're doing the agents are taking those offers because they're not strong enough and then they're just using them to condition other buyers to increase and beat your offer so you've got to be really conscious about the time and don't leave that door wide open a little tip there for you as well for your consumers is i often use sms so i'll use sms offers with the agent because it saves me heartache for my buyers time and times money of course
If I text message the offer to the agent, if it's too low, they'll reject it out of hand. And I know that I'm wasting my time on that level and I need to recalibrate where I want to spend or move on to another property. But if it's close enough, they'll ask for it to be put in writing.
And that's when I know they've taken the bait and either the agent has hit a price level where he's told the vendor that should be what market value is, or they're going to use that as a conditioning tool to get the vendor down on price to meet your offer. So that little SMS will go a long way to helping buyers fast track your offer. You talk about the right question.
Some people are just so scared to actually ask about the property price. It's like they feel embarrassed. Yeah. And you'll be shocked how many times I ask agents outright what we'll buy it. And when they've got no guide price or even it's an auction and they'll say to me, oh, we've just knocked back 535. The owner's counted at 550.
That type of dialogue and response, I reckon I get that probably 60% to 70% of the time back from agents, even in this market. So if you just ask those questions, you'll be surprised at the answers that you get back, and then you can formulate your offer strategy to go forward and confidently get through that DD and make sure you don't overpay. And you talk about speed. I mean, speed is...
It's the currency, speed, the speed of the deal of the negotiation is the currency of what you're doing, the end result. And some people are just so slow and you can't afford to be slow in this market. Absolutely. I mean, that's probably the biggest difference between professional property buyers and just the general public.
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