469 | How Auctions Really Work: The Hybrids, Negotiations & Courageously Uncomfortable Reserve Prices - Chat with Justin Nickerson

We just give you a little bit of an update in terms of what's happening around auction clearance rates around the country .

And Ben Kingsley , chair of Property Investors Council of Australia and a back-to-back winner of the Property Investment Advisor of the Year Award , and both are partners of the multi-award winning Empower Wealth , co-creators of Moor , the Freelife Style Design app , as well as bestselling authors of the Armchair Guide to Property Investing and Make Money Simple Again .

Stay tuned as they bring you the Insiders Guide to Property Finance and Money Management All right folks .

There are some really great property stories that we want to share in there as well , so that's property investment mastery that we're exploring as well .

Ben , we've got a very special guest . We are talking to one of the professionals in the real estate game who is at the top of the mountain when it comes to auctioneering and gives us some incredible insights .

That because the challenge when you talk to an auctioneer , ben , is to try and get them to obviously display their skills in their craft and what they're passionate about from the seller side . But we want to actually hear some of the gold from the buyer side and we're certainly excited to say that that's going to happen today .

But before we get there , I'm going to go to my mindset minute theme today Ben Jim Rowne . I've been listening and watching to a ton of Jim Rowne stuff because my two I reckon my two personal growth heroes are Jim Rowne's Exiglera and their old school . With some incredible wisdom , jim Rowne , the farmer from Idaho , can hear his voice . It's so iconic , right ?

But he's got the saying , ben , that things don't just happen , they happen just .

And I've thought about that , I've used that a lot and I speak about it with my wife because it's kind of just like sometimes it's not this random axe , sometimes things are part of a destiny , part of a bigger plan , a bunch of synchronicities that come along that you think that might look random , but they're not .

So he says it best when he says things don't just happen , they happen just . And so why am I bringing up , ben ? I feel like there's another one that one of our friends , peter Kooleesos , said in this particular lane where you can flip it and spin it . It was at the Pippa Conference 2023, .

You were there , ben , and he said this you don't wait to buy a real estate , you buy a real estate and wait . Ha , let that land . And just shout out to Veronica who put that across my bow , veronica Morgan , that is , but you don't wait to buy a real estate , you buy a real estate and wait .

And so , as I reflected on that for our audience today , ben , sadly , most people won't be financially successful because of the simplicity of that . I think it must be something else , but it is just as simple as that .

We got a reminder recently , listened to the Jan Summers episode , which is my favorite , ben , because of just the significance of my journey around . Everything was sparked through Jan , and it could have been her saying this very thing you don't wait to buy a real estate , you buy a real estate and wait . And that is it , folks .

So yeah , I mean it's just , I get into these Twitter or X feeds and I see all these people that are telling us about the challenges and all of that . You know it's rigged , the system's rigged . There's too much . You know the government needs to do something about it . You know someone else needs to fix my problem .

You're either a real estate owner or you're not .

Next cut to the interview you and I recently had with Justin Alright , Ben , we've got a very special guest today on the Property Couch we are chatting with Justin Nickerson . He is the director of Apollo Auctions , the largest auctioneering business in Australasia , overseeing more than 6,000 auctions in 2022 .

Fresh from speaking at the 25th anniversary of ARIC , which is Australasia's largest real estate conference , and he's formally recognized as the leading auctioneer across Australasia , he brings a refreshing understanding to the modern challenges facing the real estate industry in 2023 .

Justin is the only Australian to win the Australasian Auctioneer of the Year three times in the history of the award . He's also a five-time winner of the REIQ Auctioneer of the Year award , again being the only auctioneer in the state to achieve the distinction . Justin was also the winner of the inaugural Australasian Auctioneering Competition at ARIC in 2018 .

He works hand in hand with some of Australasia's leading real estate businesses on an auctioneering and coaching level . Welcome to the Property Couch Justin .

Before we do get into your professional background , we'd like to start with all of our guests on the podcast , just to get to know them through money back story . So we're interested to know what were the conversations that you had growing up with your parents , perhaps over the dinner table , what you saw around money .

So , like most kids growing up in the , I won't give away my age here , but giving away many years ago I had the Commonwealth Bank SuperSaver account that you sort of put your dollar or two dollars in every week and that kind of taught you that the accumulation of money really and the power of that .

But like most people , I had the chores that resulted in money . I remember one of my chores was weeding the backyard . So if I weeded the backyard I'd get a bit of pocket money to there . So , I think they were very big on the building that basis of if you want something , you have to work towards it .

It doesn't just get handed to you or you just don't go and buy instantly and have that instant gratification reward . So that was a big thing , I guess , a foundational lesson that got sort of taught to me early on and something that we're trying to pass on now .

I've got a three year old daughter and she's just started doing chores now and she feeds the dog and gets a silver coin , or a similar coin , as she calls it , but it's a silver coin and we're trying to teach her . When you get to a certain number of silver coins you can exchange up for a gold coin and so on and so forth .

So we're at the coffee shop this morning , ashley , she pulled out of three silver coins and , much to her disappointment , it didn't result in a gold coin . But that was a good lesson for her this morning . So we'll see what that translates and looks like in 20 or so years time .

You know that will probably spend money for the sake of it , I guess , as you accumulate more money , that it becomes much harder for that delay gratification thing to be in place . It's easy to have delay gratification when you can't afford to buy something . When you can afford to buy it . It's much , much more challenging .

And it's a resource that my wife would no doubt say that I probably struggle with it a little bit , that if I see something I generally want it and want it quickly . So I think , on a big level , big purchases and significant things .

You know that importance of talking through decisions , making sure you really want something before you go and sort of set a plan to achieve it . That's probably consistent through myself and both my siblings as well .

So that was probably the most basic and RK system that I had around it and again that early lesson for me was just around accumulation . You know you have X and then if you work hard and you don't frivolously spend it , you know in eight weeks time X becomes Y and then Y gives you the capacity to build into Z and kind of so on and so forth .

And I think when you're you know you're early twenties or your teens or even earlier than that . That's different to what it looks like when you become , you know , an adult or a responsible adult , but the lesson and the basic premise of it is definitely still the same .

So I didn't worry about it and I actually forgot about it for 18 months or so and then circle back , found it and then realized , you know , by me just not even consciously thinking about it and putting it there , plus the bank , you know , playing their part of their role . It's amazing how what I became what it was .

So that was a really kind of basic , basic lesson of that and I think you know the more that this stuff gets taught earlier on , the better .

Financial literacy is such an important thing for when you come into your particularly a late teen , early adult years , because you know it's the first time you really come into access with money and at that stage you can do a lot with that . But if it takes you a decade to work it out , you're sort of starting behind the eight or a lot of ways .

So that was kind of experience as to how rentals work . And the thing that really struck me was the limited control that you have . You know , you you want to put a picture up on the wall and you kind of feel bad about creating a hole there .

You want to change the floor , the floor plan , the layout , anything substantial , and you either need permission or you can't do it , whereas when you it's your home , you can do as you like . And that was the biggest thing that probably spurred me towards wanting to own rather than rent .

It wasn't so much that I'm not , I'm paying money and it's not going to pay off mortgage or anything . It was more that , hey , if it's my home , I can feel like it's my home and I can do as I as I please with it .

When I first came out of school , I was doing business degree and working for the AFL and I spent a bit of time in central and North Queensland and we moved to .

I moved to Mackay and I was pretty young I was probably on the 18 or 19 to live in Mackay for a period of time and the rental prices in Mackay at that stage were really really high because they had the mining boom , people coming in , fly , fly , fly , fly workers coming in and out , so the rentals were quite expensive Whereas the property prices hadn't quite

caught up yet . So purely from a financial point of view it just made better sense to to buy something rather than rent it .

And , thankfully , a bit of support for my parents , which I was very lucky to have and I understand and appreciate not everyone has that , but I was certainly lucky enough to have that manage to buy a property time to pretty well on the side of a boom , made a , made a bit of money out of it , thought , how easy is this ?

You know you just buy a house and it goes up a lot of value and then you sell it and you have more money which I can . I had to build back on the second one . So it was a repeat story that one , but that was my first thing and then even that sort of sparked a bit of a love affair or curiosity around real estate .

You know how a real estate agent does their job , how the negotiation process unfolds , the positioning of a buyer , positioning of a seller , you know all that . And then it's kind of sparked a curiosity that probably still lives to this day so funny how things work and fates sort of intertwined .

It sounds like you had a look , like you had a smoke on your face there , so is there something interesting there ?

So I bought a property back , like moved back to wartime so home for me was in the North side of Brisbane bought a property back here when I came back after selling the one in Mackay and it was , you know , it's up over the North side of Brisbane it had a bit of a water glimpse .

So that kind of really grabbed me and I've always , even to today , like a view is really important to me in terms of property decisions , I mean in terms of PPRs , but having something to look at , whether it be a water , ocean , city , hinterland , something that's that's a really important thing to me .

And this , this property , had a view of the water which kind of really grabbed me in . The problem was I had to buy for Savlo owner , which can either work out really well or really badly , and for me it turned out to be the second one . She just refused basically to negotiate . The price was the price .

I was emotionally invested and had very little kind of self control or negotiation skills at that point in time . So I accepted her price she wouldn't allow me to build a pest , which I also accepted . Yeah . So all these , lessons that you know you learn later on .

But also , you know , when you do make big decisions you've got to really be careful and think through it and try and fight that emotional brain as much as you can .

On the second one , do you what's your , what's your worldview on real estate as a place to park your income and hold properties in in perpetuity ? Because a lot of your peers see as it is something that I'll get to next year , whereas but they're at the coal face of the greatest show in our view on in the investment landscape .

So do you what's your sort of 10 , 20 year view of property , separate to your ability to earn an income from property ?

That's always been , for me , the biggest . The biggest thing it's drew me to properly , rather than shares or things that are you can't physically touch them and certainly have no impact . So for me , it's things like you know , property or businesses .

You know you can have an impact upon those kinds of things , the things where I feel like there's some semblance of control .

But also I can touch it and feel it and that's why , for me , crypto like I might understand that crypto would be a four out of 100 or 400,000 , it's very limited , but that's always been the thing that I really struggled with is I can't . I can't touch it and feel it . Therefore , I don't feel connected to it .

So I think property for most people should be a really central or integral part of your strategy , and it's also one of the rare things that you can , you can invest into and enjoy the benefit of it while you do it , and particularly probably recently , now that you know our family's starting to grow and probably more on the let's enjoy it side of it than a

pure great financial decision . But I think the two can coexist and run run side by side , and I think the ability of what property can do for a variety of purposes and means is really unmatched by pretty much any other investment and people . Again , this this is the semblance of understanding is so important .

I think the other thing that's always run sort of be ran home to me from my own mindset is that if I'm in , like you said , I'm at the cop being an oxy . I'm at the cold face of negotiating all the time . You know we effectively negotiate from living with buyers and sellers .

And if you are someone who's at the cold face and you're an agent and you've never been bored or sold , it's important you have that experience , because lived experience is the best experience for you to be able to pass on , pass advice on . So for me , if property wasn't a big part of my life yet I made my living from it I'd feel fraudulent .

So it's important for me to keep relevant for my own experiences , to be able to sort of represent that in the job that I do .

So tell us that little , that little journey to to obviously then becoming one of Australia's preeminent auctioneers .

So came to the junction after a couple of years in North Queensland to sort of decide what I wanted to do . What I knew I wanted to do , like like a lot of people , is I wanted to wear nice clothes . I wanted to play an important role in whatever that role looked like and at some point drive a nice car or live in a nice house .

And honestly , if you want to do those things and you don't have a degree behind you , 99 times out of 100 , the answer tends to be real estate , rightly or wrongly . So we we joke that real estate a lot of times is a second chance occupation . It's usually the occupation you do when your first occupation hasn't exactly gone to , gone to plan .

I think there's very few people unless you're a generational real estate agent that come through year 10 or year 11 and say I cannot wait to graduate so I can get out there and start selling form sixes .

I came back , decided you know , whatever my boots were , I became an agent for three years , which was really important for me as a grounding for what I do now , because it gives you not only a fun , a foundational understanding of buying and selling property , but , most importantly , it gives you an insight as to how agents think .

And our client base as auctioneers is agents , not the general public the general public , maybe , who pays us and who we come into contact with , but our repeat client basis , agents , that's who our relationships are with .

So for me to be the best in my role , I need to understand how an agent thinks , what pressures they under , how do they feel about this , how they feel about that , and that's become . That was a really valuable thing After that kind of three years of being an agent . I'd seen auctions , I'd seen auctioneers .

I thought that's the sort of path I really want to kind of pursue and go down . I was fortunate enough to come in , come into contact with a really good auctioneer at the time , a guy called Jason Andrew who was my sort of first mentor .

He ran an auctioneering course that was kind of a thinly veiled recruitment recruitment course but did its job and at the end of that made the decision to join become a full-time auctioneer .

So it was interesting because you mentioned my parents and I bring this up to my parents a lot but they actually wrote me a letter telling me not to , or not telling me not to , expressing their concern that my three years of investment as an agent and the skills were going to go to waste on space and going to be starting again , which was a fair point at

the time . And look , in the first six months or a year of my career they'll probably be right . But then , like everything , if you work at it for hard enough , for long enough , you know you'll eventually sort of turn in your favor and that's kind of what transpired .

Mum and Dad writing you a letter to say are you sure do you want to put it into reverse and go back to that ? That requires some resolve . What did you lean on ? Clearly , there was this guy who's probably trained you that you could act as a mentor . But in some of those sort of dark mental moments , how did you navigate that ?

Like , we talk about visible role models all the time , One of the challenges our occupation has is a lack of female representation , and I always come back to the fact that we don't have enough visible female role models as auctioneers to then inspire the next generation to sort of keep going and coming through .

Like I think if you look at them till is there a great example right Female soccer in Australia or female football , depending on what you call . It is gonna be a really good shape for the next decade , because now there's a visible role model or a team of visible role models to say I wanna be like that person .

So , for me , jason played a really important role , literally teaching me , but also guiding me , just by who he was and his presence . You know , I'm a dad . I've always got your best interests at heart . They weren't the best for you , and the best for me at that stage they were probably right , probably was not to deviate off the path that I had .

They rightfully pointed out that I'd done the hard yards , in that I sort of started to come into a little bit of success while I was trying to steer off this .

The thing that I kept coming back to , though , was that it's funny around public speaking , because I didn't like public speaking at school even coming out of school was unnatural , or a foreign public speaker never did debating never did anything of that . In fact , I didn't really enjoy it .

What I loved , though , is negotiation , and that's what kept drawing me in is that if you're an auctioneer yeah , we do auctions and we call a lot , you know , absolutely , and the call is important , but what's really important to our role is negotiation .

The most fulfilling auctions are not the ones where you have lots of bidding and they sell past reserve and you knock it down and you look like a hero . The ones that they're really fulfilling are the ones where you're in a back room for 30 minutes , 40 minutes , 50 minutes , helping an agent drag a deal across the line between a seller and a buyer .

That's actually the most rewarding ones . And that's what I just kept coming back to was I feel like I can be good at this and I feel like if I keep working out , I'll get the opportunity to do this a lot , which exactly kind of what's manifested itself now . So , yeah , it took a lot of hard work . The swagger thing , I'd argue .

I probably still don't have swagger . I think it's . I have confidence in what I do , but confidence , you know , for me it comes after skill , not before . So it took a long time to get that confidence , but I definitely think you need to . You need there's two things you need to be as a good auctioneer .

One is you need to be able to count , like that's a basic skill , like if you can't add up , auctioneering is probably just not for you . And the other one is your right price . You identify . You're gonna be quick on your feet .

If you can have a quick wit or a quick ability to think on your feet and respond , then you can just about learn everything else other than counting . And that's probably the attribute that I've always had , even if it was buried deep beneath at that stage .

I've always , I guess , been pretty quick in my mind to be able to respond to things or to think on my feet , and as I become an auctioneer and growing , that served me kind of really well and become , I guess , one of my hallmarks .

What I found interesting is what you just said is is a , and it's really refreshing is that a , an auctioneer , is remunerated from getting the deal done and moving on to the next one . And yet you , you , you said that you get most joy by sticking around and making that negotiation happen .

So I guess that's probably for anyone who's listening to this cause we most of our audiences from the buy side , but there are some listing agents that listen to us , I think .

I think there's some some success leave includes there , you , you , you are in the battlefield enjoying the craft of the negotiation , and then you let the scoreboard take care of itself later , which is , which is nice , cause I guess it could be easy for an auctioneer to get caught up in .

I've got my nine o'clock one , I've got my 12 , 31 , I've got my three and just keep moving , and it's a results based business . So that's nice and refreshing .

That's the actual , really integral part , Cause that results in them getting paid . They feel good about it . They feel good about it , they , they re-engage us .

The second thing is that you , you know , if you looked at the Saturday so last Saturday , for example , I had 15 auctions on Saturday If I sat down in the morning and thought about the factor of 15 auctions , that becomes overpowering . And also you start thinking about I'm not going to make it here , I'll be late to this one .

You know my , my thought process always around , that is that I'm present at the auction from the moment that I'm driving to it to the moment I leave for it . That auction is the one that's the most important one .

The next one will be there when I get to the next one , Cause if I go into an auction thinking about my next auction , that happens after that one and I've got a 28 minute travel time to that and it's , you know , that's going to influence the way I behave in terms of treating buyers , treating sellers , the speed of my call , those kinds of things .

So you just have to be present for the one that's right there and let the next one be present when it's time for that one to present itself .

So credit to you in terms of becoming , you know , a mastery of your craft in a smaller market to be able to do that . I want to sort of dig into a couple of things I want to talk about . Who are your customers Like ? Who's the audience that you're most focused in on when you're doing an auction ?

So if you can explain that to our community , that would be great . And then I'd love to know about what are the advantages in terms of taking a property to auction as opposed to a private treaty sale .

The first thing is it teaches you to negotiate , because if I just went out the front and yelled out numbers and didn't negotiate , I'd have a very short shelf life and we wouldn't sell much . The second thing is it actually influences the type of auctioneer that you are .

So you'll find auctioneers out of particularly out of Queensland who generally have less speed to them but better pattern commentary because they're used to less bids . Coming In centres where they get a lot of bidding all the time .

Auctioneers become reliant on that and when they need , when they go to an auction where there's not a lot of bidding , they kind of get caught a little bit Like my bids aren't coming , what do I do ? Whereas we come from a place where you don't have heaps and heaps of bidding .

So therefore you can kind of you're probably more versatile in the way that you adjust to your style . So it's interesting where you start . We see a lot of hallmarks of auctioneers , particularly in auctioneering competitions , have their style based on the environment they come out of , in terms of who our customer is . Our customer , undoubtedly is agents .

So it's again , it's a weird environment that we have . The person that pays us is not always our customer . So quite often , or most of the time , the vendor will pay us through the agency , but the vendor will pay us directly from the source . But our customer is agents . So it's not that we pitch directly to the living rooms to get them to employ us .

We pitch to agents to go to living rooms to get them to employ us . So our marketing , our strategy , our social media is really geared towards agents . We do have some clients that direct us sorry , request us directly . So they'll go to an agency that we don't particularly work for or with and say , look , I really want this person , this guy .

So I don't care who you usually use , I don't want them . I want this person because I've seen them and that's probably having more and more since auctions have become more widespread in 2021 . And I think the thing we say to vendors is who handles your auction is pretty important in the scheme of things .

Firstly , their ability to negotiate , but also secondly , purely as an auctioneer . The average closing bid on an auction is $2,500 . So if you choose incorrectly as an auctioneer , you choose the wrong one , and they can't get one more bid for you because they're either not that committed or not that skillful . That's cost you $2,500 at least , at least straightaway .

So I think the depth of research we put around it to say , hey , I don't care who you usually use , this is the person I want because they're gonna be the best representation of all my property In terms of the biggest advantages Can I just jump in ?

But in other cases , some of the larger agencies also have their own in-house auctioneers as well .

So you can see from Justin's commentary that he is one of those specialists who come in and works with different agents and that's why his community and his value community is obviously being signed up by that selling agent who's using an external auctioneer , such as yourself , to be able to do that work .

Last week , as I mentioned , so last week I did 41 auctions across the week . That's 41 different scenarios where I had to deliver a property description , an introduction , negotiate , field , bidding , you know , and then the rest of the week was spent delivering training sessions around auctions how they work this way . You should do that .

This is what happens when a buyer asks you this question . This is what happens when a seller pushes back on this . My whole week and my whole existence extrapolator , over 10 years has been around auctions .

So I think when the choice comes down to it , you know , I think it's very difficult for a seller to say to someone what they want , but when it comes down to it , would you rather have someone who specializes and does it for a living , or someone who's done one auction the last month , like there's a specialist and then there's someone who does it ?

Or do you go to your GP and he says oh yeah , and I do some dentistry on the side . I did it in , I did a filling last month , so I'll do another one for you next week . It's a bit cheaper , you know like you go to the dentist every single time . So I just think that's you know . And obviously I'm biased .

It's unquestionable that I'm biased in this situation . But we devote our life to auctions and I would struggle to see how someone can perform as well if they haven't done the same when it comes to advantages for auction . Look , how long do you have , ben . I think you know my fundamental belief is two things .

Firstly , it's that not every property should go to auction . It should be . You should understand as a listing agent or a seller . You should understand both methods of sale and have it explained to you and then choose the one that you think is most appropriate .

The second thing is that you either give the buyers a day they can buy the property on or a price they can buy for . So there's been , since the market has really kicked on , you know , through probably early parts of COVID and beyond , we've had a rise when we call the hybrids .

So the hybrids are the ones that sit in the middle , which is kind of like the for sale contact agent , price per negotiation , like they're no price marketing strategies but they're not actually auctions . And I always say , look , we ask a cheeky question , that's can you be half pregnant ? And you can't . You're either pregnant or you're not pregnant .

And I just think it's those , the hybrids , the ones that sit in the middle of the ones , that probably should go one direction or the other . We either say to the buyers hey , look , if you pay X amount you can buy it . Or we say to the buyers if you come along with this day and you're the high speeder , she and my seller agrees you can buy it .

So we're giving them something to work for . But the biggest advantage I think with auction is twofold . Number one , it's that it changes because there's no price . It changes the thought process of buyers . So , rather than it being price and logic based , it's no . Price is emotion based .

So buyers think emotionally first and justify it with logic , not the other way around , which is so important because emotion is the primary driver in real estate transactions . The second part is that it maximizes competition .

Face to face competition is the strongest way of getting elicting the best price out , so that no price marketing strategy puts them into to a face to face competitive environment .

And we say to sellers all the time an agent's job is really simple it's to find and retain a buyer who's emotionally engaged on a property and then placed in a situation where they're in competition . That's it . So that should be our strategy we're geared towards and the benefit from a buyer is transparency .

You can see who you're up against and make decisions accordingly .

So I'm sitting here going how's that logistically possible ? I think you know there's what 12 hours of sunlight in a day , but you're not working all 12 hours , so it's probably eight prime hours a day and you've got travel and you want to be engaged and you negotiate , because that's the fun stuff you love .

Can you give us a little hint and understanding on how does that logistically work 15 auctions in a day for you ?

So traditionally , depending on travel times , we're kind of hourly with our auctions . If we're in the same suburb , occasion will be a little bit shorter than that , but most of the time it's sort of on the hour . So if you work through and go eight , nine , 10 , 11 , 12 , one , two , three , four , five , six , that's 11 spots that you have already .

We had then out to 6.30 so we could get pick up another spot , which is 12 , we have one with three in there . So 15 is probably an unusually high one , but Saturday's traditionally usually is 12 . That's kind of the number that's most common . Back in the heady days of 2021 , when the market was just on fire , two things happened .

Number one is that auctions were really fast . So what slows you down in an auction's negotiation ? That's the bit that takes time . The auctions themselves are really more than sort of 10 or 12 minutes of bidding , so they're actually really fast . So 2021 , a lot of the time , who were doing auctions even tighter than that .

We were sort of fitting into getting to 18 or 19 auctions on a Saturday because there was so much frenzy and activity that they were really fast . So you get in , there'd be no negotiation , you'd sell it , you'd get in the car , you'd go to your next one and off you went .

We're now in a period again where negotiations come back to the fore , so we're having to slow the auctions down , lead more time between them . But yeah , it's always a balancing act between maximizing your value on a Saturday but also making sure that you're not running late to an auction , which is not a good look .

Chances are it's not your peak conversational state with your wife on a Saturday night .

I think she knew what she was in for when we first met , so that was the case , but funny because in 2021 , I remember saying multiple times in my life I'd come home on a Saturday and I'd be less tired than I usually would , because it's just energized when you have a lot of bidding and it's frenzied and it's past reserves and it's that's actually really

what's draining is negotiation . That's mentally draining . So I could have , if I have seven auctions , for example , on a day , and there's six of them , I'd date negotiations for a long period of time . That's more draining than 15 auctions where they fly past reserve unquestionably . So that's the bit that really sort of gets you .

So 2021 was kind of a funny one that you'd sort of come home and be energized . I do remember , though , a couple of times I'd go to sleep and I'd be thinking I was calling an auction , like I'd be doing terms and conditions in my sleep and , like you know , it's just in my head because you've done it so many times that day .

It was a really fun , really fun time .

I mean , having done so many auctions , people's tactics around their approach to bidding , Because you know , I remember what you said earlier . You know , in most cases , as a buyer , you're fighting that emotional feeling is what you said . That is true .

If you've got an emotional attachment to the property , your job is to get that emotion into a higher price for your client . Take us through reserve price setting for auctions and then , ultimately , some of the bidding strategies that you see out there . Yeah , Reserve , sets .

Reserve prices in a lot of states don't mean a lot , because you're still going to seek your seller's approval , irrespective of where you get to , whether you're above it , below it or at it , as it may be . Look out , advice around reserves to sellers is always the fact that , look , most sellers will set an aspirational reserve .

What you need to be is courageously uncomfortable with your reserve , to set it at a figure that you're not over the moon that you would sell it for , but you would sell it at that because that just allows that if we have a momentum-based auction , we can get the property on the market quickly and allow that momentum to carry it away .

We don't prematurely call things on the market either . We will call it on the market when it's appropriate to , and it's best strategy to , not the moment we hit a reserve . There's a very clear distinction around that . What a lot of sellers will do is they'll think , oh , we're setting a really high reserve , we can always come down on the day .

What they're doing is deferring their decision-making to the day . The problem with doing that is that what can happen is you have an auction , you have some competitive bidding , you pull up at the level that the reserve probably should have been , but it's not because it's aspirational . You go inside and speak to the owner .

You spend 15 minutes getting the reserve down to the level that it should have been initially . You walk back outside and it's like trying to jumpstart a car the energy's gone out of it . You may start again , but if it does , it's probably not going to run at full capacity and you lost that momentum which is most important to critical auction .

There's a large degree of trust when it comes to reserve sets . The seller has to trust the agent and the agent has to trust us that the communication lines are going to stay open and we'll use it as a strategy , not just to basically hey , they've set a reserve million dollars , we've got two million dollars , let's just sell it and pack up and go home .

of every thousand dollars over . It's a lot of money to the seller and not so much to the agent once they get to their core price . I think for you I'd imagine there's a lot of demonstrating hey , we called it here , but we got this . We called it here but we got this , just to give them that confidence .

Our reserve was significantly , significantly lower than that . The agent had come to me early in the auction . He'd checked with the owner . The owner had said , yet called on me to ready , he'd let me know that , but we didn't need to .

There was no need to prematurely call on the market in that instance , because calling on the market is a tool to elect more bidding . No use using that tool prematurely , like keeping your back pocket until you need it . You need to .

That's how you demonstrate that the great thing about that seller was that the seller originally wanted to set his reserve at 7 , but we explained the benefit of setting it at a much lower level . He was in sales and he understood it and he said , yep , well , I trust you guys . I trust you're going to come and talk to me .

I trust that you're saying the right thing . You won't call on prematurely . So let's set it at the low level , which he did , and it played out perfectly . So if he'd set a reserve of eight , for example , that auction would have pulled up , would have had to stop converse and unquestionably would have sold it for less . So , yeah , it is about trust .

So much of it's about trust when it comes to bidding strategies . I could do this for an hour talk about bidding strategies , but we actually just released a video on our website around . It's a five or six minute video around different bidding strategies . You're having to share if that's a value to your listeners .

It talks about what we see in the top five tips to bidding and winning an auction . I know people are not inclined to take my advice but because they think I work for the seller , which I absolutely do but I also say I'm not compensated on the outcome , so I've got no skin in this game that I desperately need to buy and buy it to get paid .

I just see buyers from time to time make common mistakes or common good strategy players to actually secure properties . The first one that we say that's so important is have a strategy . If you go in without a strategy you'll just get swallowed up and you'll go kind of what happened and it'll all be a horrible experience for you .

This is a really big deal when you buy a property , like in the terms of the most stressful things in your life , I think the number one is probably the death of someone close to you or a family member , then it's probably having a child , then it's probably getting married or getting divorced and then below that it's buying a home or selling a home .

So the terms of stressful environments , it's right up there . Don't leave it to chance . It's not a strategy . And seeing back and waiting is not a strategy . It's like trying to win the lotto without buying a ticket . It can't work . It just cannot work , so don't do it .

One of my favorite statistics around this is that 68% of times the opening bidder buys the property . So wholly and solely my place in the first bid , you put yourself in the majority chance to buy it , rather than minority , because that buys usually either the most aggressive , the most confident , or they're acting like it .

So don't be afraid to start the bidding , because what happens is two things . One is that you get your nerves out because you've done the unknown . Now You've placed your opening bid , you're often , often , going . The second thing is your best chance of buying that property for as cheap as possible is by limiting your competition .

So by bidding you intimidate your competition and they may then get frightened and back off . If you wait , all you do is give them a free swing to get comfortable and confident , which is going to push the price up . So that's the starting spot . We talked about three figures . You go into an auction , there should be three figures in your mind .

The first one is your dream figure . So that's the price that you don't think you'll buy for there . But you'll be over the moon if you're bored of that number , and that might be the number that you start off at to get things going .

The next number is the fair number , so that's where , based upon research , recent sales valuations , whatever else it might be , that's the number that you think it would likely sell for . And then the last one is the absolute , which is your number , where , if it goes a dollar more than that , you are tapped out .

And then , as soon as you have those three numbers , just build your strategy inside of those three numbers and execute there . And if it goes beyond your absolute , then that's what happens , like , but at least you've tried . If you go in and go , what is going to wait and wait and wait , and wait and wait and wait what ?

all traditionally happened is you'll wait for the perfect time . It'll never happen . You'll hand your paddle back at the end of the auction and kind of go what happened ?

So if you were to do nothing else , just bid quickly , and it doesn't have to be ginormous amounts , it doesn't have to be , you know , huge increments . But bidding quickly does two things . Number one , it gives the impression that you're not going to stop . You just not even phased about what's going on .

You're bidding quickly which can send an impression to everyone else like , hey , they just want this , they're not going to stop . The second thing it does is it pushes the decisions onto the other party . So everyone's stressed at auctions . You know , agents are stressed , sellers are stressed , buyers are stressed .

Even when I was bidding in auction , I feel like I've been around more auctions the most I was stressed bidding in an auction . So someone that does it for the first time or doesn't want to be seven years , of course the stress levels are going to be high .

The person who's under the least amount of stress , or the buyer who's under the least amount of stress during an auction is the highest bidder , because they're already in front . So everyone else has to do something else to change that positioning . So spend as much time in the least stressful position as you can and put the stress back on everyone else .

So what that looks like is that if you get into a bidding war with somebody else , you know they're talking about oh , should we bid , Should we not be ? You're talking at the same time with your partner or , internally , you know , if they bid , I'm going to bid . And they go okay , 50 , bank 50 . The decision's back on them again .

They're like , oh gee , should we bid , Should we not bid ? And you're talking about the same time Should we not bid ? Okay , we'll go one more , 50 , bank , 50 . Back onto them again . So the decision just continually puts back on their shoulders and that stress can become overpowering . Where they feel like , A , he's not stopping .

B you know we're sick of this stress and having to decide every time . We'll just tap out , or they'll do what you want as a buyer , which is they'll weaken their number . Oh well , we'll go 10 . That's like putting a big bit of blood in front of a great white right , Like if someone goes 10 , you know you should just be on that straightaway .

Like just chew that up and stick with your 50 , you know 50 , and then they're just like , oh well , yeah , this is never going to end , and then they might just bow out . So , yeah , the best advice would be quickly . That's the biggest one .

I want to know those sideward looks . I want to know when they're getting close to their upper limit . I'm actually using that as a strategic advantage to try and get inside their head , which ordinarily I can't . So , hey , listen , as a buyer's agent , I love to stand at the front .

I love to stand on one of the auctioneer's shoulders so I can actually see what you see . How do you feel about buyers and their positions and their preferred positions ? Is that annoying to you ?

You want to be watching those triggers . So , as an auctioneer , I'm watching them for various things . A big one for me is that if we're starting to go and I can see someone starting to fidget with their paddle , or they look for their paddle , that's an indication they're likely to bid again . There's the one where they put the brochure up to cover their mouth .

Like the American Gridiron coach , they put it up to cover their conversation . As soon as you're having any conversation , the game's over . I know that you're talking about whether you're going to re-engage or not . I know you're not putting it up there to say , gee , this auctioneer is bloody good , isn't he ?

I know that the conversation is around your bidding strategy . So I want to get as much . As an auctioneer , I want as much of that data as I can . As a buyer , you should be trying to do that as well , so I positioned .

If it was me , and when we said we did this position , I said we'd line aside on a side where you can look back across the whole crowd to see what's going on . Elevation is always good as a buyer as well , because elevation gives you a better bird's eye view of everything and also it just allows you to evaluate the situation all the way throughout .

So look , I think from your perspective as a buyer's agent , you've got invested interest where you want to secure it for your client . Any advantage you can have inside the scope of the law you should be taking that . Yeah , absolutely .

So if we pivot to memorable auctions , justin two that I want to flag with you the largest we talked about before we recorded , so it'd be nice to talk to that for our audience . So the largest price you've received and the most bizarre or interesting auction that you've experienced .

That probably was in Southport , a McMillan court , not a traditionally amazing auction where huge bidding war broke out , so on and so forth . What we had is really one party , that it was a negotiation to sort of get them to the right position . It took some time but it got there eventually . So that was very rewarding .

From that , it was also rewarding because our company , one of our team , had broken the record about three weeks before , four weeks before 24 million , so to be able to sort of nick it back you know , the record back gave me a lot of firepower and ammunition to be able to fire back at him . So that was probably personally rewarding the craziest auction .

I reckon we had one about three or four weeks ago Now . It was a property interest me and the owner bravely decided to run a no reserve auction . And it had been some years since I've done a no reserve auction . I didn't feel at the start of my career but it's been some years because it's a big leap of faith to do that .

You know you kind of go straight to the worst case scenario , which is that it could be selling my property for a dollar or a thousand dollars . But we've got to say the market always catches you . So this property interest me had been destroyed by squatters . And I say destroyed . It was destroyed .

It might have been the worst home that I've ever been in in terms of its condition internally . Walls ripped out . Like we caught an open plan because you could . There wasn't a wall so you could literally see the whole house from from there . There was no back door . So you know Breeze is easily coming through because there's no back door .

So they launched with a no reserve auction . They called it Queensland's worst house and no reserve auction Really brilliant marketing strategy that the agent and the agency put into place . We were met on the day with 161 registered bidders for this auction . So 161 registered bidders couldn't park within a kilometer of the home . Like there was no car parks .

Every news , every news crew was there A few hundred people , they'd run a sausage sizzle for the local lions .

And the funny thing was the under bidder was the $1 bidder , so he started a dollar and he was out at four , nine , four and a half basically . So , but it was just it was crazy Like sea of people , bids coming in , bids coming in from all angles , like TV cameras in the way , like it was just a real kind of circus and bizarre auction .

And it's funny because you know you do that auction and it's such a , you know , adrenaline rush and it's it's going . Then you drive to your next one an hour later . And then that one , there was 10 people there and one bidder and so they would get over life right , Like you know . And funny , that one at Macmillan , macmillan court , $24.8 million .

The one I did after that was a unit at the back of Ashmore for $420,000 . Got paid the same . So I started to do my job equally as well at both of them . But yeah , just part of the quirk of being an auctioneer , I suppose .

It's not like you've got your typical buyer , I mean , are they ? Is there any nuances that that people wouldn't understand that you have to deal with bidders ? It sounds like you only had one or two right that 24.8? .

The first one is is that the there's much more secrecy around the kind of higher end stuff . So quite often if we talk to media , which we do a lot , we've got to be a little more careful around what we disclose .

We very rarely , if heaven , will , disclose who the buyer was that's not a place to do that who the seller was , like all those circumstances there . You know you'll get the campaign reports and you'll recognize a few names in there looking at what a property like you know and but you just , you just have to sort of put in the vault .

So , whereas in the lower end properties , no one really kind of cares who the seller of the buyer is really and what your time . The biggest difference , though , as we've found , is that with traditional auctions , most people stop bidding because they run out of money .

So the underbidder will stop because they just simply can't afford it or their approval is to a certain number With higher end auctions and high net worth individuals , is the underbidder's traditionally stopped because they don't want it enough , and that's a really small difference , but it's a really large when it when it comes to engaging with people .

So when someone is out because they can't afford it , they're out and there's no nuance to that . Like we buy this , we can't afford to settle , like that's a pretty . When someone is out because they don't want it enough , it's then trying to appeal to the fact that , hey , you might be able to find another one . Here's the unique selling points of it .

Here's what drew you in the first place . Those kinds of things . There's a bit more subtlety to that . So that's probably the biggest difference . But we , we maintain look , we get , we get paid the same . It's the same with the 8am auction versus the 6 30pm auction .

The vendor who's paying me at 8am is , you know , paying me the same as the vendor at 6 30 . So I'm going to have the same energy , mindset , approach , focus , determination for all of them . I can't just think , oh , I had a big day .

So I'll just take it a little bit easier on this one , because they're paying the same as what someone was first up in the morning .

Take us through when , when an auction is passed in , that's ultimately where you've got to keep tension on the sale through your underbitter , and obviously the person who is the highest bidder gets the opportunity , the first opportunity , to say no , right , so their job is to slow down their decisions and know as much as possible to cool off and hopefully bring the

underbitter into a rational mindset that says no , I don't really need it as much . So take us through that art form in terms of how quickly you need to try and move to get the , to get the highest bidder to a no , because that's the legal obligation you need to do versus .

Obviously you know trying to keep that underbitter interested so you can keep the price moving higher .

In Queensland it's open slather for every party to throw whatever they like in it . Whether they be high speed or under bidder , subject to sale person , everyone gets equal rights at that point in time . So I guess it probably makes it a little bit simpler , particularly in those states that do have it is you sort of can really paint to the buyer .

Your window is now . You either buy it or you walk away and don't look back because you're in that window . Now why would you want to sacrifice that window and then try and buy it ?

And that's why in every state we we try and pause auctions to make a negotiation happen rather than pass them in and make one happen behind closed doors , because it also protects the seller with the contract terms . So in Queensland you can negotiate with any registered bidder for two business days after the auction , but the buyers aren't obliged to do that .

So if you're a savvy buyer in Queensland , if you were negotiating during auction and it passes in , if you're smart , you'll walk up and say how am I going to continue negotiation ? But I want to cool him off period in the contract now and you can legally do that . So yeah , in New South Wales it's a little bit different because of that positioning .

What we say is we've already revealed in most of the time the negotiation , that number that will buy the property to the highest bidder . They've already declined that .

Go and have that conversation again because it's an official one , and just understand that if their answer is anything other than yes , their first ride is over and then we can take it out to the masses . So yeah , it's funny , we'd call auctions in Coolinganna and the border of Coolinganna and Tweed Head .

So we'll do bigger events where three of them are Queensland , two of them are New South Wales . You're sort of oscillating between one vendor bid , multiple vendor bids , no rights to negotiate first rights to negotiate price guides no price guides . I think the day we all have national legislation will be a big win for everybody , I reckon .

Obviously , there was a way that you had to pivot through COVID . Now everyone can come back on site . What role do you think online bidding platforms are going to play in a non-pandemic way going forward ?

Do you think that the art of trying to get people on site is always going to be the preferred method , or do you think that more and more auctions will go online ?

We had handled a plastic paddle , like taking away the damage to the planet , like those things are pretty basic right , like that's kind of original , kind of 1960s , 1970s operations . So the pandemic definitely brought us kicking and screaming into the 21st century . I think the biggest direction now is the provision of choice .

So in a world where we can choose how we do most things . So if you want to go , if you're not going to Woolies , you order online and Woolies you get them to come to you . Like 10 years ago that would have been a novel concept . You know to do that . You don't want to go down to the restaurant ?

That's okay , you order , you bring it to the restaurant , we'll come to you . So we've got to . I think we've got to be more versatile around that and acknowledge to buyers and say , okay , we're going to try and work with you around the way that you want to consume this auction , either as a buyer or as a spectator . So on-site auctions are great .

Everyone always says about the auction . On-site is great . It's the emotional buyer . But there's drawbacks to on-site auctions . On-site auctions you open the weather conditions wind , rain , extreme sun You're open to neighborhood disputes . So the neighbor next door who decides to it's the appropriate time to clean his Harley or get his chainsaw out .

That happens more times than you'd think . The dog behind the little yappy dog who doesn't like the fact there's 40 people in the backyard and the other one starts barking all the way through the auction , which creates doubt and the mind of the buyers . And I don't know what you're dealing with that every day .

There's all these factors that come into play when you're not in a controlled environment . In-room auctions give you control , but you lose the neighbors attending Neighbors aren't going to give their car a drive to an RSL to go watch it . And then you've got the pure online auctions , which some people have adopted .

Pure online auctions give you total control , but we preach auctions are about engaging the community in transparency , and it probably runs away from those two things . So I think the best solution is provision of choice .

So if we want to do this auction on-site , or in-rooms for that matter , that's great , but we're also going to stream it and we're going to distribute that link out to the neighbors and to the people so that if they feel like , hey , you know what , I don't really want to walk down the street today and watch it , I'm just going to sit on my couch and watch

the auction they can still have the same experience to do that . And the buyer doesn't want to be present because they don't trust themselves emotionally or they feel like they're in a stressful environment , that they can watch it and then bid over the telephone . So they're not penalized for not being there , but they can still participate .

So for me , it just comes back to choice . Let's give everyone as much choice as we can . We're now living a world of choice . Let's not be the archaic ones that aren't giving anyone choice .

Your wife pulled and I know it's a recent lived experience for you , so we're excited about this but your wife pulls you aside . She says this is the property . Whatever you do , I know you're a legend in your field , mate , I know you've got all this , but whatever you do , do not miss it . Do not miss this property , and you have to buy it at auction .

Talk us through . You've told us that you'd have a strategy and you'd bid quickly , so tell us a couple of other things that you're going to do to make sure that you don't disappoint your wife and miss this property .

So pride comes before a fall , so don't let pride get in the way of you buying a property , and it happens all the time . So that can be ego , that can be lack of understanding , that can be wanting to win at all costs . We say that there's kind of two objectives , right .

So this , putting myself in that scenario , I've got two objectives walking to that auction . Primary objective buy the property . Secondary objective try and buy it for as cheaply as possible , Try and save as much money as I can . Never let the secondary objective overtake the first one , and we see this with buyers a lot .

They'll walk in more paralyzed by the thought of , oh , I don't want to pay too much , than realizing that I actually got into the first thing , which is buy it . Now , whether they like it or not , and whether I liked it or not and this is certainly my lived experience whether I like it or not , the seller has the asset that I want .

So we talk about negotiations in real estate . So negotiations in real estate will be called a partially fixed negotiation . So what I mean by that is , one side is fixed in what they're offering . The other side is variable or partial . So most negotiations are totally variable or negotiations .

So this party changes what they're offering and you go backwards and forwards In a negotiation between a seller and a buyer . What the seller has doesn't change . That stays consistent . So I've got to understand and recognize that if I want to buy it , they have what I want .

Therefore , the owners is on me to satisfy them , not the other way around , Because they've already satisfied me by providing the property that I want . I've got to satisfy them when it comes to price .

Now , yes , I'm going to try and work with them and yes , I'm going to try I'm going to try Australia to try and discover what their lowest price is , all that kind of stuff . But the owners is on me to satisfy them Because if nothing changes , they continue to hold the asset that I wanted . This is exactly what happened in our negotiation .

So we came into the auction . So if you want me to step straight into it now , you've got another leading question . But we came into an auction , we had a plan around figures that we would go to .

We'd done our ducks in a row with the bank , we hadn't had a huge amount of involvement throughout the campaign with the agents and probably , if I had my time again , we may have pushed harder to make an offer prior to the auction , Because I think offers prior to auction as a buyer are really valuable .

Most buyers want to keep their cards close to their chest . I'm not going to tell the agent anything , Because if I show I'm keen , that'll be used against me . It's actually the opposite . So if you can make an offer A , it puts you in one A position for communication to run through you . Secondly , the benefit of an offer is twofold .

Number one is you might buy it Great . Number two is it may help the seller understand the market more , and the frustration we have a lot is that every buyer wants the seller to understand the market and be realistic and reasonable , but most of them don't want to play their part in doing that . So I had a friend of mine .

I was on the phone once to a mate of mine . I was complaining about the traffic , which is like a lived experience every day for me . So I was complaining about the traffic between the Gold Coast and Brisbane . I said , oh , this traffic so bad . He said , aren't you in your car ? I said yeah , and he said well , you are the traffic .

I was like actually that's a really good point . So this is what buyers have got to think is their job as the buyer is to get the seller to understand the market . You're the market , so you need to show them the market or else they're not going to understand it because you haven't played your part in helping you understand it .

You can't sit back and hold your cards close to the chest and then blame them for not understanding the market when you haven't done your part in there . So how much time again . I probably would have made an offer prior to auction . So good learning experience to sort of do for next time for that . But we came into the auction ready to go .

I was going to start the bidding but someone beat me to the punch in starting it . So obviously , listen to our video and took the advice on board . But then I employed the bidding quickly strategy . So they bid , we bid . They then dropped out Someone else . Bid , we bid , they bid , we bid .

And then I could see that they were having long family discussions around every bid . So I just sort of said to my wife , like when is it going to keep going to a number ? You're good , yeah , we're fine . And we just did that . We ended up pulling a fair bit short of our number . We're at paused . We subsequently increased our offer during the auction .

Wasn't enough to buy it . We then negotiated for a brief period , for a few days after the auction , but couldn't hit upon a number that appeased the sellers and therefore they exercised their rights to rent it out , which is entirely their rights . Like I don't have any will towards them , If I was my property , I want to get as much as I can .

If I didn't hit that number , I'd exercise my plan B , Though they had the asset that we wanted the owners on us to appease them to get to the number . We didn't want to do that or couldn't do that . Therefore they retain the asset and that's fine . So yeah , that's where I said I don't know where your definition of success is . We were the highest bidder .

We were probably successful in some of the strategies we deployed , but not ultimately successful in that it's going to be our home . So there you go .

Funny , my broker actually emailed me this morning and said hey , you want to keep this thing open and you know you always where there's life there's hope , right . So just keep it open . You never know , you never know .

But yeah , we're probably now more passive than what we were , so we'll probably sit and wait and they've put a tenant in for at least six to 12 months , so that'll probably defer a decision where they come back to the market at that point in time and whether we're still there and ready to go at that point in time . So , yeah , to be continued .

So we'll see what the next , the sequel , is in the trilogy .

You didn't feel like you know , coming back to your point before , I didn't need it that much . You know what I mean . Like you had a ceiling in terms of what that looked like , so . So I think you know , from my point of view , that's . That's the way .

As you get more settled in property and you go through this journey of decades like Bruce and I have , that's the type of buy you can become . Like I'm not looking to move .

But I tell you what if one of those really great properties up the road comes up for sale , I'm going to , I'm just going to do a little bit of you know paperwork and and see what the numbers sort of suggest .

So we were looking , but you know , ultimately we might be in a position because any principal place of residence at home , I've got to tell you that's , that's a , that's a lovely asset to own , you know , from a capital gains point of view and also from a tax point of view as well . Right , it's a great way to create wealth .

It also comes off the back of that , and you know we've learned that from some of the best agencies in New , and I say you know they just keep going back to their high new , high net worth individuals and they just they just buy these assets for 10 million 12 and they just know that in 10 , 15 years time they're going to be selling them for 20 or 25 ,

you know some of the easiest passive money they're ever going to make . So I think you know there's some logic in . You know that idea of always being open minded , which sounds like you are , justin . So you know , to be continued , as you say .

Like for me it's if you can afford to do it and you like it within reason , then do it and don't get paralyzed on there . I don't have a typically around negotiation . If I've , from being involved and exposed to so many negotiations it's taught me anything it's don't get so hell bent that you have to win a negotiation . You know win , win is fine .

Like , if you have a win in the seller feels good about it , then that's OK too . You don't need to leave the other person negotiation demoralized and you know bitter like that that's actually probably rarely a good long term strategy towards things . So you know , wherever possible , be as open and sure as possible .

Be as open and transparent as you can Explain your reasoning and if it just doesn't work , it doesn't work . But yeah , I think when you said this story before about you know my wife saying we've got to have this home . It's actually the opposite price . I'm more likely to be one to come home .

You'll never have that equal playing ground in terms of when you're , when you've got an emotional attachment to an asset . It's just just the way it's going to be .

Congratulations on your , the business and the , the relationships that you've built to get yourself in the position that you're in and I guess , from our perspective , thanks for coming on and sharing some of the inside is insights to what it is to be on at the peak of the mountain for your craft and to get some insights for our , for our people on the buyer

side , to have a have a view of what that looks like . But I personally think that you're probably in one of the one of the best lanes of real estate in my view , because you get to , you get to do something that you love across a whole cross section of property types and building relationships .

So you don't necessarily have to be in the lounge rooms and doing the listing , presentations and some of the the big prospecting challenges that come to the agents of that level . You just get to prospect to and build relationships with agents and then and then turn up on game day on Saturday .

So I think that's it's a real position I'm sure you're really grateful to be in . But , on behalf of everyone here on the property catch , thanks for sharing your insights .

But for our listeners , you got a very rare little insight there into what , what is going on on that side of the fence , so you can arm yourself better when you're bidding against a skilled auctioneer like Justin Ben .

So , yeah , you've really got an insider's view there on the art of auctioning and how that plays out , and and from both sides of the fence . So I found that to be a wonderful insight and I'll certainly be listening again . You know , even like you and I , we're students of life , we're students of property . We're not .

You know we're , we're striving for mastery , but we will never get there . Anyone who's always knows that , and so that's just another piece of knowledge that we'll be able to bring . You know , I directly learned something about . You know that the final bidder doesn't have the first right of refusal in Queensland . I did not know that .

So you know , there's an example of an , you know , of a learning listen from just talking to Justin today .

So , justin , thanks for joining us today and I think our hopefully our audience got a huge benefit from your insights as we sort of wind down , ben , but it's auction season is going to really peak again as we come out into the new year , so it's good for people to marinate on those thoughts and percolate on them over the Christmas New Year breaks , that they

can get themselves prepped if they need to buy an auction . Hey , my life hack today , ben , is I actually want to crowdsource something from our audience so we might put , we might put some social content out on our platforms .

But one of the frustrations I've always had with podcasts is I'm driving , I'm walking , I'm somewhere where it's not convenient , but someone drops a truth bomb or some nugget of wisdom .

I mean , imagine you've just listened to our episode right now and Justin just said something that was just like an aha epiphany for you and you go oh , how am I actually going to capture that . I'm just driving at the moment or I'm just not convenient to write it down . Well , I was recently listening to no Secret to Our Own and it's been .

Morgan Housel is one of my favorite people to have a speak into my life right now and he was being interviewed on the Tim Ferriss podcast because he's got his new book out the same as ever . And he made this suggestion and it was so stupidly simple . I just went oh , why don't I think of that ? So I want to share it with the audience .

And it was simple as this Once you're listening to a podcast and someone says something that you all you do is screenshot it at the point that they said it , ben . So if they did it on ours , and something that Justin said at the 27 minute 13 , second mark , to screenshot it at that point automatically goes into your photos .

And then when you're in a position where you can actually go down because I do carry a journal , it's a Jim Rowne journal , ben I'll show everyone it's the Jim Rowne journal and I write and this is for people who are watching on YouTube any great idea I have , I just write it down .

So what I can actually do is then I can go back to the screenshot rewind when I'm sitting down , listen to it again , write it down and then I preserve that thought that can easily be lost in the cloud of stuff going on in the day . So it was so painfully simple and obvious and I was kicking myself thinking why didn't I think of it before ?

Some people might have already been doing that , ben , for those of you who have the same a-ha as me , hopefully that helps . But here's what I want to crowd source , ben , what do you do ? What are people who are listening to us do when they have a podcast in their ears and it's not convenient for them to be able to write it down or jot down the note ?

What do you actually do to say that I'd love to share those in upcoming podcasts ? Given , we are a podcast Ben , we are talking to a podcast community who love a podcast , so we really want to share . So what's your hack ? Folks around capturing the insights that you get on podcasts when it's not convenient ? So hopefully- .

I mean , on Audible there's a thing called a clip and that clip will be 15 seconds and you can write your notes on that . So you do have time to just stop and take that piece .

But you're right , I haven't seen I know there's been a recent upgrade to podcasts on Apple , but I haven't sort of done a deep dive in terms of some of the new features Bookmarkers , don't they ?

So even though so what we are seeing definitely at the moment is an increase in volume , so increase in supply and that and what ?

Obviously what we've been talking about a lot is how much of that supply is being absorbed , because at the moment that's going to determine price movements in the short term over the next three to six months in terms of how much buyer demand is in there .

And at the moment we know that that absorption has been there , so that buyer demand is there and it's meeting that supply side . But there's certainly markets like Sydney and Melbourne , canberra , hobart where that sort of buyer demand is starting to now be challenged , so that can potentially represent further buying opportunities in the medium term .

But that's just an indication of that . So we're seeing auction clearance rates in those markets being a bit challenged , certainly Sydney and Melbourne .

I don't really care too much about the auction clearance rates in Brisbane or Adelaide or other markets like Canberra and Perth , because they're just not materially significant , so they don't have any sort of great reliability around where their sort of activity is in the market . Just a one to be aware of .

We'll do , obviously , a big property outlook update in February next year , but it's very clear that some of those markets are starting to lose a bit of their momentum .

Now , if I'm also a buyer and I'm thinking about Christmas market and some of those properties aren't selling during Christmas , those sellers , those vendors there's going to be a few of those vendors who are going to be out there who are going to say I just want to see the back end of that .

So I think that for the first time in probably as long as I can think of Bryce , where there's going to be some good buying opportunities over Christmas , new Year , because people I think vendors expectations are going to be lowered .

So if you're thinking about buying over this next period of time , you can't do this in Adelaide , you can't do this in Perth they are still red hot markets and Brisbane is also red hot markets . So you can't do those in those markets .

But in the other markets you can have a look at what's been hanging around on the market and look at the land content , look at reliable and durable and those types of properties you want to Bryce's point on Peter Kallises point , you just want to buy , hold and wait in terms of how those particular markets play out .

So that's the emerging story in terms of what's happening from a price trend point of view . And the other large story that came out this week Bryce was . On Sunday the Paloche , a government up in Queensland , you know sort of she's decided to boost the first homeowner's grant . So it's now $30,000 if you're buying or building a new property .

Not , it's not existing property . But there's been a lot of debate around how that helps the market . It just raises prices for everyone else . Yeah , that's potentially true , but ultimately we're still a strong believer that we love to see people get into property .

So there's a counterbalance to that and they're arguing with the mining royalty taxes increases they're able to do this for first home buyers in the Queensland market . And who would have guessed Bryce were coming into an election year next year for and you know that government is in a little bit of trouble .

So I think you know they're trying to buy some boats with a policy like this .

But , mate , last week , next week , as you said , is the penultimate episode before we go into summer series and we've got a ripper . We're talking about what money means to people and it's we've got some really awesome insights to share , so we want to make sure people stick around for that . But , mate , until next week .

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