Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Realty Talk: A decade of reflection

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Over its 10 year history, Real Estate Talk, or as it is known now Realty Talk, has documented many changes in market conditions and the experts who have provided views and opinions over those years are coming together to share their views with Bushy and Kevin and reflect on their personal journeys and experiences. RealtyTalk is your trusted voice in property investment and Australia’s most popular online property show.  RealtyTalk is brought to you by Realty, Australia’s leading search and social property distribution platform that helps investors like you beat the crowd, giving you the earliest access to property opportunities, listings, and insights. Check out Realty. RealtyTalk is hosted by top property investment expert, author, and founder of KnowHow Property, Bushy Martin. Find out how Bushy’s KnowHow team helps investors unlock freedom with finance and property here, and check out Bushy’s podcast Get Invested.  RealtyTalk is supported by BMT, a company that helps property investors save thousands of dollars each year by maximizing tax deductions from investment properties. Find out more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Realty Talk, the show that brings together the country's most authoritative and respected property experts. Follow us on all the socials and subscribe for updates and exclusive offers. Realty Talk is powered by realty.com.au, connecting buyers, sellers and agents differently. Hello and welcome to the show. One of the momentous show I was last week when Bushy and I caught up and we talked about my reminiscences and reminiscences and his thoughts over the last decade. Well, he's back with me again. Actually, no, sorry.

I'm back with Bushy again. I can't help myself, Bushy. I've just sort of always got to take over. How are you doing? Really good, mate. I'm really excited about the fantastic milestone that you've achieved, mate, and we've got some stellar guests that we're going to talk to on the show today. Yeah, well, in fact, I've just got to mention here

that I'm only sticking around for this show and the next one, um and then it's you know back to you mate flick the chair back but um you'll have to restrain me a bit because i do tend to take over just a bit but uh hey we've got some stellar guests this week in the show we're going to talk to uh tim lawless in just a moment tim of course from core logic and we've actually chosen these three people today because they've been with us for so long um they've been with the show almost for its entire series its entire running um the first one is tim lawless from core logic um always a good contributor bushy isn't he he's a fantastic he's really driven the uh the way data now influences the decisions for everyone in the property

industry so where he's been a pioneer and a real disruptor as far as that goes and really looking forward to having a chat to Margaret Lomas as well, Kevin, given that she was actually on your very first show so many years ago. He was indeed. And I think I caught up with her when she was writing her second book. Just getting back to Tim Lawless for a minute. I first met Tim prior to Cool Logic when he was with PRD, PRD Research, I think it was then. And so it was, yes, quite a few people who went from PRD across to Cool Logic. But yeah, Margaret Lomas, I caught up with her, I think she came to an outside broadcast I was doing at 4BC. That's the first time I'd actually met her.

And she came and she and Reuben, her husband, sat in the caravan with me as we did an outside broadcast. There was absolutely no one there because it was like a land release. And it was really just Reuben, Margaret and myself in this caravan. We were there for two hours. It was great. It was the first time I'd met her. So I look forward to catching up and reminiscing with her as well.

And then we've got Louie Christopher. Yeah, good old Louie from SQM Research. What I love about Louie is he tells it exactly how it is, regardless of what people think. So you certainly don't get it sugar-coated with Louie. And his research is second to none. So he's been very good at picking trends over the years, and I'm sure he'll have some very interesting stuff to share with us today,

Kevin. Indeed he will. And without further ado, we'll go to a quick break. We'll come back and we'll be talking to Tim Lawless. Stick around. Back in a minute. successful property investment is a game of finance do you have the right team and the right game plan realty talk is brought to you by know how property more than mortgage brokers

bushy martin and his team of investment architects set you up with a sustainable strategy structured to lower your costs tax risk and stress while increasing your capacity for growth know how has helped over 1,900 homeowners and investors secure more than $800 million in property wealth. So get set to live more, work less, and live your legacy. Want to know how to invest in your freedom? Visit knowhowproperty.com.au. Welcome back to the show. And as I said in the opening there with Bushy, our first guest is Tim Lawless from CoreLogic. And it's a delight always to talk you. How are you doing, Tim? Really well, thank you, Kevin, and thanks for inviting me on. And Bushy, g'day. How are you, Tim? It's been a little while, I think, since we've had a chat,

probably a few weeks at least, but I can't believe it's been so long. Yeah, well, we've been doing this show for well over a decade, and I think I met you even before you were at CoreLogic, Tim. Yeah, I was just thinking, I mean, I started at RP Data back then, back in 2007, and we'd had a long relationship well before then when I was at Collier's and PID. So, and, yeah, interesting to see how things have evolved, though, from, you know, I don't know, was Zoom even a thing back then? Probably.

I don't think it was. It wasn't. Because in those days, those early days, the show was audio, it wasn't video. So, and that's when Zoom came along and that was brilliant. I wanted to ask you right up front, what are your early memories of some of our times together? but yeah one of the things that occur to you now well i think that the one thing that's always been

a constant is is kevin turner obviously um you've been there uh um through the through the rainy days and the sunny ones as well so yeah absolutely there's been some consistency in in uh in the kevin turner side of things but it's great to see that expanding out now as well but i think more broadly it's always the thing that's always struck me is just you know the show is um it's just so regular and high frequency it's been able to move with the twists and turns in the market you know it's very on trend and that's been the most valuable thing for me just being able to tune in and know exactly what's going on in the marketplace and I think there's I can't think of any examples but there's been so many times where I've tuned in and got to know about something I didn't really

know too much about that was already happening in the market thanks to the fact that there are so many people are joining the program so many experts that have joined uh you know really providing an on the ground um right of the cold face perspective of what's happening in the housing market yeah interesting sorry bushy uh i think i mentioned last week in the show that we've done about 5 000 interviews and going back over some of the early ones there's still some really great lessons in those that are current today too, Tim? Absolutely. And a lot of the anecdotes and the strategies in property don't change. Even though we've seen a lot of change in technology and the market's been through plenty of cycles over this time, I think the fundamentals of

investing and buying and selling really don't change. Sure, there's going to be some different tactics and taking advantage of some of the new technologies and the way we're seeing even a lot more properties moving to online options, for example, than a lot of the virtual tours that have become so, I guess, normal now. At the end of the day, you really want to make sure that you're positioning your property the best you possibly can in the market when you're selling and when you're buying, you're getting the best possible price. And I think just year in, year out that that doesn't really change at all. Well, you've been at the forefront of some major change in terms of the way data is now helping everyone in the property industry

make much better and more informed decisions, Tim. So what else have you seen that's changed in property investment over the last decade? And what do you think has influenced those changes? Well, it's such a good point. I mean, the quality and the depth and the timeliness of the data has been just a fundamental shift over the past 10, 15, even 20 years. I think going back to the early days of RP Data, you know, RP Data was founded by Ray Catlin back in the early to mid 90s. And back then, it was simply a resource used by real estate agents that gave them access to data about what properties were selling for. And you might recall, one of the first big projects we did was we took a photo of every single property around the country essentially guys guys on motor one guy

driving a motorbike another guy in the back taking a photo and geotagging it that was revolutionary for its time you know like a decade before google um street view but since then you know we've we've seen companies like core logic and a lot of competitors springing out of the ground as well just adding so much value to that um that base level of data so the government obviously collects all the transactional data but the real value comes in well adding to the timeliness of it adding context from say you know spatial overlays adding aerial imagery adding elevations looking at zoning and town planning and then of course overlaying all the different uh you know ai and machine learning are the most recent examples of how data's quality is being improved and then

estimating the value and so forth you know so i think there's still a long way to go for data quality to still continue to improve but looking back to where it was 10 years ago it's it's absolutely been a significant change in in how we can analyze property markets and along the way we've also seen a lot more methodologies introduced you know 10 years ago we were just starting to move out of the mainstream usage of property data was deriving a median price really simplistic way of looking at the market, all the way through to now where we have hedonic regressions, we have stratified medians, we have repeat sales indices, all really useful for different purposes.

So I think for anybody investing or selling or active in the market in any way, there's been this real improvement of the way we can actually estimate the value of properties and get a bit of a guide for what we should be or shouldn't be paying for a property in the marketplace. Yeah, those early days that you mentioned there, Tim, about how revolutionary what that was, and we're going around taking photographs and so on. I do recall when the internet really started to gather pace, real estate agents lost that power of the information. You know, there was so much information there. And they were the gatekeepers of that. And then

RP Data sort of opened all that up. Because I remember when I first started in real estate, we have to do title searches and things like that just to get information so we could actually do a listing. But the internet has certainly opened it up. And I think full marks to you and your organisation too in the way that you've involved the consumer in keeping that data alive, you know, giving them the opportunity to go in and how have you improved your property.

And that's got to have a real key influence on the value as well, Tim. Yeah, absolutely. I think transparency is really important in housing. And to have the real estate industry empowered to see all that data was certainly a good thing. It helped real estate agents really when they're listing a property to really get the best value and provide a benchmark to the prospective vendor about what a property is going to be listed for. But for a consumer not being able to see the same side of things, I think they were quite disempowered in many ways. And as you say, the Internet and a lot of consumer websites where you can actually get a lot of this information for free. has really empowered the consumer side of things but it's also made their decision making a lot

more complex there's a lot of data to choose from and uh and quite often it can be uh showing different uh different things in the market as well so definitely what my advice to consumers would be find the source that you're confident with and comfortable with and stick to it because you can get a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of information that's out there now it's gone full full uh other other end of the spectrum yeah i totally agree it's the curation and the interpretation of that data that is the real art and skill these days, Tim. But tell us, what have been your top property takeaways

and learnings over the last 10 years or so? Yeah, man, there's so many. Trying to cast my mind back a couple of years ago is hard, to be honest, Bushy. But over the last 10 years, I think the most important thing is to remember that time heals all wounds. Even in some of these extreme housing markets we've seen over the past decade, like the mining town boom,

And then the spectacular crash of mining regions, we're just starting to see some of these regions finally move into a nominal recovery now, like more than nearly 10 years after the peak in those markets. So the market is very cyclical. I think it's probably the most important thing to remember. And a lot of people try to time their purchasing with the cycles of the market, which is notoriously hard. easy in retrospect but uh you know i think for anybody buying to the marketplace of the last 10 years uh if you've bought into the marketplace um on your own time frames and uh you know just working to your own budget chances are if you've held on to that property long enough you've probably done pretty well out of it so probably time is is the most important thing in time in the market rather than trying to time the market is uh is critical i think for anybody looking to

get in um yeah no doubt people who have timed the market well and intentionally done so hats off to them you know you can really make a lot of money doing but buying at the bottom and buying at the top and uh so to warren buffett's words of you know being greedy when others are cautious is probably uh has got a lot to do with it but um there is a bit of risk in that as well so i think most people just simply you're not going to be able to time the market is uh as well as what everybody would like to be able to. The other thing I think over the past 10 years or so is just looking at the different performance of the markets. I was having a look at some of the data just before we came onto the call to see which markets have actually doubled in value

over the past 10 years. Because a lot of people still have this, I guess, this rule of thumb in the back of their mind that they should see their property value double every 10 years. Generally, that's more the exception rather than the norm, at least over the past 10 years. It's only been Sydney and Hobart, where on average, we've seen housing prices rise more than 100% in a 10 year period of time. In fact, look at somewhere like Perth, you can see Perth housing values are only up about 15% over the past 10 years, go to regional WA. And there's still a little bit down on where they were over 10 years. Go to somewhere like a Brisbane, which has generally been a really strong market, but over 10 years, housing values are up about 71%. So yeah, there

is a lot of diversity in the market. And my guess looking forward is a lot of these markets that have underperformed over the past, say, 10 years might be the markets to actually look at over the next 10 years because they generally tend to show very good value and higher yields, much more affordable entry price as well. That does a nice segue into our next question of you, Tim. And I want you to take the crystal ball out now, have a look at the next five to 10 years. You gave us a great example there of what's happened over the last 10 and how that may not happen in the next 10 or it might be totally the reverse what do you think are the big influences over the next decade yeah I think that the biggest one is going to be affordability we know even over the past 10 years

housing affordability has been front and center and you know affordability has become very challenging in markets like Sydney and Melbourne not necessarily in paying down your mortgage that's that's generally been pretty straightforward when I talk about affordability it's more about getting your foot in the door, being able to fund your deposit and your transactional costs. And thanks to very low interest rates, once you're in the market, servicing the mortgage has generally been pretty straightforward for most. In fact, we've typically seen mortgage arrears in Australia over the past 10 years holding well below the 1% mark, which is quite phenomenal. Going forward, I think affordability will still be some focus. We probably will be

moving through a bit of a down phase over the next, say, 12 to 18 months. So affordability will naturally improve through that time. We'll also see higher wages growth as well coming through, which will help to improve people's ability to get into the market. And of course, from a government policy side of things, we are starting to see the government really focusing on improving home ownership. Maybe that's just as we lead into a federal election, but I think there is some serious, and it's there from both sides of the political fence to help more people get into the market. But the underlying issues around housing affordability, there's a lot more to be done rather than just giving people a leg up into the market. On the supply side of things, I wouldn't

be surprised if we do start to see a lot more focus on town planning, trying to bring in more densities, for example, along the transport spines, especially in the most expensive cities like Sydney and Melbourne, seeing some of those areas densify, not necessarily high rise, although I think there will be a lot of that but a lot more focus on medium rise townhomes that type of thing really just trying to get better usage of a better you know the highest and best use of land along those major infrastructure nodes where people are getting in and out of the cities I think the other thing to look for the next 10 years is going to be the role of technology we've already seen that ramping up over the last few years with a lot more people utilizing things

like virtual tours of homes, using drones a lot more, even using technology to map out the internals of a home, producing floor plans and so forth, using a lot more of that drone photography to provide indications around the position of a property, the roofing materials, the overall layout of a property on the block itself, its orientation. And then even going forward even further from the data side of things, we are expecting there's going to be a lot more focus in things like machine learning and AI, providing an even better focus on estimating values and understanding where housing trends are going and taking those methodologies to the next level,

harnessing all this new computer power and storage ability that we're seeing from the cloud as well yeah tell me uh we've covered really shaken up the way uh we live and work over the last couple of years uh project projecting forward uh are you seeing other other changes and trends in the way we actually uh live and and work and and do do the way we do and what's likely to impact on this as you see moving forward in the way property is going to be bought and sold in the future tim it's been remarkable hasn't it just through covet and how we've really seen that change in in living environments and working environments fast-tracked in many ways we've seen a real improvement in housing affordability because people have been empowered and enabled to move a little bit further

from where they work regional population i think is going to be something original population growth there's going to be something that's at least semi-permanent, as we see more and more employers enabling their staff to work remotely, at least part of the time. I know at CoreLogic, we've formalized our hybrid working policy. We expect staff to be in the office a couple days a week, but they can work remotely the rest of it. And inherently, that's going to be flexible. So for those industry sectors where people can work remotely, obviously it doesn't work for every industry. And I think we are going to see some permanency to people being able to live in the outer fringes of the cities or the regional markets, that probably puts a lot of these

commutable regional areas in a really good position. So if you're within, say, a two-hour commute of one of the major capitals, be it Newcastle or Wollongong or the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney or the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast or Toowoomba and South East Queensland, I think these markets have structurally changed. The demand in these markets has structurally change we will see more people looking for those lifestyle qualities but also the commutability along with the livability um driving demands into these areas the affordability of these a lot of these regions has also you know been diminished because of that higher demand no longer can we say that some a lot of these really popular lifestyle markets provide an affordability

advantage because quite often they're they're on par with some of the blue chip areas of the capital city counterparts now based on those thoughts tim um what do you think the lessons will be here for people who aren't in the market right now but are planning to get in either principal place of residence or maybe start to build a portfolio what do you see those influences how will that impact them yeah it's you know a lot of people talk about it's more and more components of the market are being blocked from access to the market which i don't really agree with you know people's attitudes and preferences on housing is going to have to adapt and not everybody can afford to buy a detached house so that's kind of back to my point a bit

earlier on around densification and different types of housing options I think a lot more first-time buyers for example will be choosing to densify rather than maybe buying into the outer fringes for example especially if they if they need to commute to work every day So buying into a townhome or an apartment and then building up some equity in that initial purchase to then upgrade into a detached home or somewhere closer to the city or closer to the water is sounds like the logical way that people will engage with the marketplace, at least initially in combat affordability constraints. I think also when you look at, say, people engaging with the marketplace, I wouldn't be surprised if we see more and more people buying sight unseen. And this is something that we've obviously seen through COVID. And it's, again, been enabled by technology. People were able to actually physically, sorry, virtually tour a property and get probably just as much detail from a virtual inspection, maybe with somebody there who could be doing their building inspection and the pest inspection on behalf of them, of course. but getting a probably just as good a feel for the quality of the property and the nuances of a property without even being there so i wouldn't be surprised if if we see that even taken to the

next level as we see more and more technologies and enabling people to to inspect the property without having to actually be there um of course we probably will see more foreign buyers coming back into australia as well we're already seeing a trend towards more foreign buying activity still little bit less than what it was pre-COVID, but I wouldn't be surprised as overseas borders reopen and we start to see foreign students returning and migration picking up again, we do start to see some renewed interest from overseas buying as well. And of course, being able to virtually inspect the property is going to go a long way to supporting that. Yeah, brilliant. Now, Kevin has certainly been right at the centre of what's been happening in property over the last 10 years,

But how do you see RealtyTalk helping to enable the future that you're talking about as a trusted voice of property in the days of the next 10 years, Tim? It's exactly the same. Like, I'd be really surprised if you guys could do anything better. So it's just staying on the cutting edge of trends, engaging with all the various experts in the marketplace, be it if they're real estate agents or buyers agents or data experts or economists, policymakers, you've done all that. And I think it's the most important thing is just staying on trends, keeping the marketplace informed about what's happening with property trends and different changes in policy, in technology. You know, I think you guys have done that extraordinarily well. And it's kind of why I try to fix something that isn't broken, if you know what I mean. So, yeah, I'd see it, the trend or the future of real estate talk really emulating the past.

It's really just doing exactly the same things that you're doing. Well, mate, I've got to say we wouldn't be where we are if it wasn't for people like you who've so willingly given us so much wonderful commentary over the years. So, Tim, personally, thank you very much. I appreciate that. And I look forward to us working, you know, even closer with you in the years to come. So, Tim, all the best, mate, and thanks again for your support. Thank you, Kevin. Thanks, Bushy.

And I look forward to this conversation in 10 years' time, eh? Yeah, indeed. We just have less hair in 10 years' time. That's right. Good on you, mate. Thank you. Hey, stay with us because straight after this very short break, Bushy and I will be back with Margaret Lomas. See you then.

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very well for almost my entire real estate career, Margaret Lomas. G'day, Margaret. How are you doing? I'm doing well. And you know, Kevin, I have on my wall at home, a photograph of you and me in the 4BC studios in Brisbane. And I think it was taken, oh my gosh, 20 years ago, possibly more than that. Probably 22, 23 years ago, because we both look really young in it. Yeah. Well, we're both still very young. Bushy, as I mentioned to you at the opening of the show, you know, I've known Margaret for such a long time. And one of the things that I recall, Margaret, was an interview that I did with you and you and Reuben joined me and we were at an outside broadcast in the caravan. Do you remember that? I do remember that. We were the only ones

there. I know. It was the first of a number of outside broadcasts I did. And it was a great one for me to learn on but yeah just just us but we had a good time anyway we had a great time in fact i think you were there for the whole show the whole two hours yeah indeed i didn't have anything else to do that day so it's interesting margaret we were looking back uh just recently yet what's happened over the 500 shows and you were one of the very first guests on the very first show margaret that's right yeah that's correct i was i've been around for a long time now i i guess if you think about it and you go back that far to even when I wrote my first book in 2001 when I thought I was a property expert then but I probably wasn't really. I was only a couple of

steps ahead of other people really but back then there really wasn't anyone writing about property investing. Jan Summers had released a book called Real Estate Investing I think or something I can't remember the title but it was really more about the physical process of visiting a property looking for the right things in that property and it was more about the way we would buy a house I guess to live in and maybe that house down the street to invest in when we're ready to do so and I remember at the time thinking there's just so much more people need to know about investing in property, including what happens with your tax and where is the best place to buy? Is down the road or next door or the block behind you really the right thing for you as an investor? What

happens long term and how do you set yourself up for that long term future by knowing more about how to buy property? And that was the motivation behind writing that first book. And I guess i'm still here so eight books later and bushy um we are going to talk to margaret about the last 10 years uh and also projecting forward for the next 10 years but i might just go off script for a little while if we could because i i think something that margaret has talked about before we came on air demonstrates a wonderful point and that is that no matter how long we're in this business we're never too old to learn and and I think Margaret your book your latest book which is what I'd like to pick up on now is a classic example of that how after all these years you've

written a book now and I want you to tell us what it's about because I think many many people are going to be interested in this but you learned so much from writing this book oh wow it was such a journey for me. We, as you know, I've got quite a lot of property and I guess a natural next step for me and certainly many other property investors was to think about whether I wanted to take some of those ones that I had on bigger blocks and develop them into more than one unit, be it two, three or four. And I did have a corner block down in South Australia that I knew lent itself to fall when I bought it. I didn't buy it for that reason, but I knew that that could have been a possible outcome down the track. But I knew nothing about developing. I know a lot about property investing,

but I didn't know anything about property developing. But one of my regular guests on my show, Peter Kalizos, he runs a property development course at TAFE in South Australia. And so I asked him whether he would be interested in co-writing the book with me, but making it like a diary of my journey as a developer myself I just thought there's no better way to learn something than to do it and to have someone guide you but to go through all the trials and tribulations so we agreed to do that about four years ago thinking we'd be 12 months in the book the idea was that I would start my development and I would diarise it so every couple of days I'd write up what we'd been through and what we were doing and then Peter would

summarise with well this is how you should be doing it all and these are your steps. He has these 10 steps for developing the property and I was going to undertake the 10 steps. Well little did we know that every single problem that could have come up and every barrier we could have faced we did face during our journey. It took me four years to get the development finalised which in itself is a fabulous lesson for anyone wanting to take it on because that means money is tied up you're paying interest on debt if you've got debt to do this it means that you know you've got no income coming in while you're spending all of this time on the development and I learned so much about developing councils surveying you know I didn't really even know what a contour was

I mean I sort of did but the relevance of a contour on a plan I wouldn't have been able to read a plan and I certainly didn't understand many town plans to the degree that you need to to be a small developer and we got through it all finished the book and it's it's like a thriller novel to read well it's interesting yeah it just reinforces the point that while development can look very easy on paper it's certainly not for the faint-hearted and if someone's as experienced and as expert as you has still had those roller coaster rides over that four year period it's certainly a warning notice for others who are thinking this is going to be easy particularly in the current environment where the construction industry is really in turmoil and things are

taking a lot longer than they normally are so i can't wait to get my hands on it and have a good read yeah interestingly enough i think we summed it all up by saying everything that could go wrong did go wrong, even a pandemic. And hopefully other people don't have to develop a property through a pandemic. But we've learned now that you just can't know. Everything can go wrong and probably will. Actually, a question for you, Margaret, knowing what you know now, roll back the clock four years, would you have done it? I think so, because for me, there's an element of timing in that although it took forever the timing ended up being good because we had that property boom in both of the areas that I was developing let me give you an example the New

South Wales development which is a house with dual key for holiday letting and it's also a lesson in whether you should holiday let and a granny flat behind it so it's essentially potentially three permanent rentals or three holiday rentals. The bank had said it was going to value at 1.1 million as at the time it was finished. And that's what I was in for when I thought of, and it was a block I'd owned with an old shack for 20 years. So when you take into account what I'd paid for it originally and what the loan was at, and then the cost to build, then I was in for the 1.1. We couldn't make any mistakes on that. There was going to be no equity that I gained out of that.

I had to do it because the old shack needed to be gone and I wanted to improve the cash flow on it. But about six months after it was finished, the bank revalued it at $2 million. And that was not because I'd had such a fabulous house, although it is a fabulous house, it's because of the boom. The boom gave us an extra $800,000 just in that, probably in that last year of the development.

similar in the South Australian, not to such a great degree. The bank said we'd have a $350,000 house and then they valued it at $430,000 at the end. So we got equity that we didn't expect. I would do it again, but I think the process would be shorter because part of the problem, and this is clearly outlined in the book, is that I'm a busy person and it was actually a bad time for me to take on developing so it took me longer because weeks would go by where I was so busy I wouldn't do do anything or follow up and then I'd follow up and find out there was a problem and then I'd have to deal with that problem so we probably could have compressed it into two years if I'd been less busy and if there was a more appropriate time in my life to be doing that

development fascinating what's the book called Margaret it's called Diary of a Small Property developer okay and you can get it from from the shop on my website destiny.com.au or from amazon amazon also has it and it's in um kindle you know the whole ebook thing okay destiny.com.au hey margaret let's get down to the nitty-gritty of what we wanted to talk to you about but that was fascinating so thank you for sharing that with us um uh the last 10 years what what have you noticed? Wow, a lot's changed and some things have stayed the same as well. I think the things that I've seen changing is that it's been 10 years of a very low interest rate environment. And when we first began helping people to buy property, we were helping people to buy property

in an 8% interest rate environment. And so the capacity for a property to deliver a positive cash flow was very limited and if you needed a positive cash flow the focus was very much on getting a property in an area with a high relative rent return while it wasn't getting that because it was a one industry town so you know still plenty of opportunity for growth but a property that also had high on paper depreciation because both that higher rent and the on paper depreciation would plug up that hole for you so that the 8% you were paying, you could come pretty close to covering. Of course, today, with such low interest rates, you'd be struggling to get a property that didn't give you at least an even cash flow unless it was in a big city and at a very high price with

an extremely low relative rent. So that's the first thing that's changed, I think. You're Getting a good cash flow on your property is far easier than it ever was 10 years ago and 20 years ago. I think the other thing is that people are definitely more informed than they were. When I first started to help people to buy property, nobody knew anything about buying investment property except that you'd find a house and buy it. Pretty much that was it. People didn't understand that there's a whole economic component behind the decisions that you make that can be the difference between buying a property that does well over time and buy one that's a lemon for you and that economic component is split up into many areas that need a lot of research. I think people

know that now and people are definitely more informed and they're asking a lot more questions. I think the other thing that's happened recently and certainly over the last 10 years is that people are busier than they used to be and that means that they want people to do everything for them which is fine except it's also a trap and a big risk because if you're not going to be involved in the journey that you take to invest in property you'll never learn anything and you're putting yourself at far greater risk of the spruikers taking advantage of you and you know just selling you a property that's good for them because of the commissions but not appropriate for your personal financial circumstances. I think probably you know the last couple of things that

have changed is that the country feels like it's become smaller in that there are more borderless investors. People are happier to invest outside of their own state and they certainly weren't 10 years ago. It was difficult to get anyone to realise that the best property for them might not be in the state where they live and certainly not in the suburb that they live in. And the last thing is that there's been, as you would know, some legislative changes that have impacted when you're buying property so the biggest one being the change to depreciation and that plant and equipment prior to 10 years ago if you bought a property you could get a second-hand value on everything inside that property and that helped you with that cash flow now you can't get that

unless you buy the item yourself as new and I think that hasn't hurt anyone yet because we do have those low interest rates and cash flow is easier to get but once interest rates start going up we'll notice that the benefits we used to get from that immediate deduction from those that plant and equipment um that's gone and and it's it's going to hurt a little bit i think yeah very good points so if you look back on the last decade then uh margaret what have been your top property takeaways and learnings over this time oh gosh there's just so many it's difficult and i know you don't have a couple of hours on the show but I think as I said people prefer to have things done for them but there's still so many spruikers out there whose first desire is to make a

commission from those people and I think most viewers of this show would be shocked to find that some of the biggest names that you might know in property investing as property investment advisors or buyers agents don't find the right property for you they will have either contact with a developer who develops property in a specific area that might be okay but not necessarily okay for you or they might be just a single buyers agent who can only work in one area at a time and basically is negotiating as many purchases in that one area as they can and getting as many clients to buy those properties. And the problem with this is that everybody is different. So there's no such thing as the right investment property. It's the right investment property for

you. Some properties will grow sooner rather than later. Some properties will have a low cash flow. Some will have a high cash flow. And some people are closer to retirement than others. And you have to think about all of those things before you invest in anything, particularly property. And you have to know where to buy according to your personal circumstances. So I think the big takeaway that I have gotten from the last 10 years is that the majority of people still don't understand that. And that's why they're still getting caught by the spruikers and still paying too much for properties that were never right for them in the first place and then being disappointed in the outcome. It hasn't turned out well for them. I think the other good thing that I've

learned over the years from observing areas that do very well and why is that families are definitely the big anchor to growth over time. So we get two kinds of growth. We get growth in property that comes from that emotion that comes in a boom. And we're seeing that at the moment. and we've just come through that in Sydney and Melbourne fear of missing out a lot of emotion goes into that we get a very short sharp boom and then we get plateauing Sydney between 2003 and 2010 barely grew it grew by eight percent over that whole time whereas other cities grew very well Adelaide for example did a very good amount of growth during that time so that's the emotional growth and then if you're an investor with a little bit of time on your side we get that

organic growth that comes from families and the thing about organic growth is it occurs year in year out over time and over time it adds up to be better than that short boom growth so what families do is when they find an area that they like they they move in and because they have children who are in school for 12 years, they stay there for 12 to 20 years, depending on how many children they have. And because they stay there, if it is an area that's got a lot of amenity, that offers good lifestyle opportunity, gives you reasonable commute to work, these days that's not as crucial. But if it's an area like that, they stay there and they don't move out, which automatically puts pressure on prices

because other people want to move in but there's no housing available for those people. So that family demographic is probably the most critical driver of growth. Fascinating, fascinating. Hey, Margaret, we spoke to Tim Lawless earlier in the show and we talked to him about innovations and what's happened and how that's changing our lifestyle.

He talked a lot about technical innovations but I'm wondering about lifestyle innovations and how you see that shaping the way property investment is going to be in the future in terms of, you know, let's have a look at what COVID has done. And you just touched on the fact that travelling to work is now no longer as important because we can be very remote. What impacts do you see that happening over the next decade?

You know, I want to bring up something that might be a little bit, you know, controversial in its thought process. But I know everybody's saying, well, COVID's changed it and now we're all looking for lifestyle but if you go back over the last 60 years you'll actually see a pattern that occurs and that pattern is that the parents move out to the suburbs because that's where they can get the cheaper housing and there's some lifestyle offered by moving in the suburbs and then the children all want to move back and live in the cities because they don't want to they're sick of living out where there's nothing and they all move back into the cities

and then their children hate living in the cities so they move out to the suburbs and then their children hate living in the suburbs so they move back into the cities so it's actually been quite cyclic over a long time where we see the demand shifting between lifestyle choices and tree changes and then back to inner city urban living and Canada has a very good example of a period of time in the 70s where urban living became the thing and there was a huge amount of urban living high-rise apartments that were created similar to some of the developments that are happening happening in and around green square and mascot in sydney where it's not just an apartment block it's a community that is developed with a shopping center on the ground floor and park lands and

pools and gyms then that originally began in in in canada in the 70s and we saw them hugely popular and then by the time we got to the late 90s early 2000s they had huge vacancy in them and people didn't want to live in them anymore because they wanted to go back out into the into the suburbs and into the the more country areas so we do see this as a cycle anyway and I think COVID has just exacerbated that this time around whereas people now don't feel that they need to commute as much and they're looking for that lifestyle. I think we're going to go back to where we were. I think people will get back into the cities.

I think people will go back to wanting to go to work again. A lot of people I know have said, oh, you know, I'm sick of staying home. I want to get on a train and go to work. And I think we will go back to that again. That might be a bit of a controversial thought, but we need to keep in mind that this cycle exists and therefore if we're thinking of a long-term property investment, don't buy what's right for today buy what will be right for tomorrow yeah brilliantly said so

so drilling down into that and a great insight by the way in terms of that cyclic nature what do you think this means for property owners and those planning to buy a home or an investment property over the next 10 years then look there's a lot of things that people do need to think about but the fundamentals don't ever change let's not forget that so the fundamentals are of course as as I said already, those families and that family demographic. If you don't get the best growth in property from buying in an area rich in families, you won't get a lemon either. So it's a sure thing to me to buy in those areas where we have those families, where we have a council who is interested in providing amenity, where we don't have too much new land. That's always a bit of a risk factor

over time because people would often rather build their own home than buy another property or someone else's property so we we're also talking about areas where we don't have an abundance of new land to be released and we you can work that out by talking to the council what their planned future releases are but if we think about that the the family demographic on top of that we've got some really basic demographics that are very easy to identify so or basic factors so we need to have either jobs or jobs accessible. So if there's no jobs in the area, and the Central Coast is a good example, we don't have a lot of jobs in the area,

but 60% of the workforce commute to Sydney for their job. Of course, at the moment, they're probably only commuting half the time, but there's jobs accessible to the Central Coast, which explains the Central Coast's very good growth over recent times. Plus we have that lifestyle amenity. So we need the jobs, we need the population to be growing and I like a population growing faster

than the national average growth as well. That usually means your growth is going to come a little bit sooner. We need those lifestyle amenities in the schools as well because if people don't have a school that they can send their children to, they will move and if they don't get what they need on the weekends, they'll move. So you need the restaurants and you need the sporting facilities

for the kids and families are very child-centred these days remember in my day I raised five children and the children were you know got what they needed but they certainly weren't pushed forward these days everything is about the kid so you think about those areas that satisfy things that kids need dance schools sporting clubs all sorts of they have all the big indoor gyms for kids there's a lot of stuff like that these days that you need to think about so those fundamentals for the next 10 years won't change you will definitely need those but I think when you think about the kind of property you need to buy there are some things that people are now looking for that they didn't in the past and it's interesting because the big gourmet kitchens aren't

as popular anymore and space for that big gourmet kitchen because you don't need a big gourmet kitchen to cook HelloFresh or to get Uber Eats, which is pretty much what many young families subsist on these days. So the big kitchen is being given over for better workspaces. So rather than the desk shoved up in the corner of the dining room that you used to make do with for doing that little bit of work you had to do after work, people now want the fully resourced home office and a big space for that and if it's a mum and a dad both working or a you know dad and a dad or a mum and a mum both working then you need those big spaces for two people or even two of them so if I was buying a house I would definitely be looking for houses that can lend

itself to that sort of thing. Backyards people used to say you know the more land the more valuable the house that's not so much the case anymore because there's no difference in value really between a 650 square meter block and an 800 square meter block unless you can subdivide the 800 square meter one if you can't subdivide it then the kids don't use the backyards the way we used to and they and all they represent to busy parents is extra work on the weekends having to mow the grass and, you know, keep your backyards good as well. So I think I'd think about that too, you know, more house, less yard and certainly close to all of those amenities.

Wonderful. Margaret, you've been such an important part of this show for, you know, the whole time I've been doing it. I just want to thank you, but I also would love to ask you, what do you see as the future for all this show, Realty Talk, and others like it I mean how can we is there anything we can do to change or do we need to make any changes no look I don't think so I think it's really important for shows like yours and mine to be careful about who we have on as well and you always are and so am I you know there's no

coincidence behind the fact that I only have a small number of people who I get to come on my show. It's because I want people who legitimately can educate others on how to buy well rather than people with an agenda. I can remember one of the TV stations having a couple of property shows on and they would just parade a series of developers and property spruikers through as their guests. And all it does is confuse people about the legitimacy of the information that they're getting. So I think what you're doing at the moment is the right thing. Continuing to want to provide education to people, to want to be able to be sure that people aren't getting stuck with bad property and from time to time even exposing the scams. You and I have had frequent times where

we've talked about the kinds of scams that people get caught up in and how to avoid getting caught up in those scams and the questions to ask to make sure that you're protected. And I think shows like yours go a long way toward helping people to be protected. Margaret, thank you so much. Yeah, Margaret, thank you so much for your support over the years too.

And, you know, this is not the end of the journey. We're going to hopefully get a lot more years left in us yet, but thank you so much. You have to wonder that, don't you? You and I are just getting really old now, Kevin. How much longer can we do this? Oh, well, see, the thing about it, I spoke to Bushy about this, is that I really enjoy it.

So it kind of keeps me young. Yes. You know, I get up in the morning and I knew I was going to interview you and a couple of other people, and that really gets me pumped. I really enjoy that. Well, you know, Kevin, Tuesday nights for me is my dancing night. So I do four hours on a Tuesday night. I do hip-hop, tap and jazz with a group of fairly, you know,

when I say young, certainly younger than me. I'm 62 soon. And when I'm there, I often say to my dance teacher, who's 30, how much longer is it okay for me to do this and not look silly? And he went, you just keep coming and keep doing what you're doing. That's right. Exactly. Yeah.

Brilliantly done. Look, I want to thank both of you. As a listener and now being actually involved in the show, you've both made very significant contributions to the industry in educating and guiding property investors and property professionals. And yourself, Margaret, you've done a fantastic job but lifting the professionalism of property players generally. So really, we thank you for your long-term support for the show

and for joining us on Realty Talk today. Thank you for having me, and it's always a pleasure. Thanks, Bushy, and thank you, Margaret. We'll look forward to talking to you again soon. Stay with us. We've got lots more to come. Louis Christopher is going to be along after the break. Stay with us.

Successful property investment is a game of finance. Do you have the right team and the right game plan? Realty Talk is brought to you by KnowHow Property. More than mortgage brokers, Bushy Martin and his team of investment architects set you up with a sustainable strategy structured to lower your costs, tax, risk and stress while increasing your capacity for growth. Know How has helped over 1,900 homeowners and investors secure more than $800 million in property wealth. So get set to live more, work less, and live your legacy. Want to know how to invest in your freedom? Visit knowhowproperty.com.au.

Welcome back. And we're delighted in this part of the show to welcome another one of our very regular guests over the last decade. Louis Christopher from SQM Research. G'day, Louis. How are you doing? G'day, Kevin. Nice to see you once again. Yeah, mate.

And they said it wouldn't last. But you've been with us almost since day one, Louis, and giving some tremendous insight into market statistics. I've always admired. I mean, so many people now talk of yours, your reports are like benchmarks for where the industry is headed. So, Bushy, one of the things I've spoken to Louis about over the years too is his ability to pick up on trends nice and early,

and that's one of the things I think data gives us. Hey, Louis, can I just ask you before we launch into this, what are some of your early recollections about you and I working together over the years? Do you remember when your first interview was? And I think it was sometime circa 2010. And one of the things I recall, and I think it's a great credit to you, Kevin, is that I've been somewhat cautious in terms of who I do interviews with. As you're well aware, I like to try and, as best I can, call a spade a spade with the markets coming up, where it's going down.

and generally I remember first speaking with you, just checking you out to be sure that you see the world in the same light too. And that's one thing that I've really enjoyed over the time is being not afraid to call it straight, whether it's up, whether it's down. And I think we're all on the same page of what's important for investors nowadays is to find out exactly what's going on,

the good the bad and the ugly and i think that's what has happened uh with your program over the years just calling it straight that's so important and and i've always had a strong belief as i know both bushy and yourself have that uh it's really important to have a transparent market so people can make better investment decisions and it's better for the industry as well yeah i can i can say as both a listener of the show for many years and enjoying your conversations and then more recently having the privilege to host louis that what what i love about what you do is that you're often happy to say what many in the industry won't and you call a spade a spade we hear the truth directly from you not not the the spin or the or the sensationalism that we see from many

other commentators and uh that that's the thing that i've enjoyed the most but tell me uh louie over that last 10 years of the show a bit more that the show's been operating what has changed in property investment during that period and what has influenced those changes as you've seen it yes enough of the good words let's get into the loathing look uh what's changed for property investors over the years Well, there's certainly been more information being able to be provided. I think when I first got involved in the industry, actually way back in 2000, really the only providers of information at the time were the real estate institutes and maybe one or two small providers such as RP Data, it was known at the time, which they would just focus on Queensland only. home price guide which i originally worked for which was only focusing on new south wales so i

think what's changed for investors and all home buyers and home sellers is a peripheralation of information over that time it's definitely advanced it's increased but sadly with that it's it's become quite confusing because there are ourselves providing data there is core logic providing data there is domain providing data then there's a whole bunch of smaller outfits now that are on the scene they're providing their take on the market and so it's become i think a little bit confusing uh for investors um in terms of what what is actually going on so that's one of the challenges for investors but that said those who do their research and understand the market get some experience at it there are some great opportunities i think overall too the market

has become more efficient in a similar way that the stock market has become i think gone are the days where sellers can can convince someone to pay 20 over and above the market um and i think the days are also gone where buyers think they can get a bargain 20 below the market the market is the market and with the additional information out there a lot more buyers and sellers do understand where things are at right now yeah extremely well said yeah i it's a really important point i was just making a note there about what you said about that ability for people to buy under market because that's still a goal i mean many people look at off-market sales there's an opportunity to get in early and maybe get get a bargain but it goes back to that earlier point

louis that you made about the amount of information that's available it's it's it can it's a plus and a minus because it can be too much information that makes it really difficult to make a decision absolutely there can be too much and it can be very much conflicting information yeah i mean you know without us going a lot into say auction clearance rates i mean as you know we have our own auction clearance rate series out there yeah core logic has their own auction clearance rate series so does domain and and all three of us are saying different things about the market it's the ability of everyone to collect the same similar data i mean if everyone was collecting the same data the results would be the same true kevin but i would also argue that

methodologies are quite different yeah yeah that's right yeah and and those different differing methodologies can give quite different takes on the market and louis what have been your top takeaways over the last decade in terms of the market um oh i think in terms of outperforming areas uh over the past decade sydney would have to be up there in terms of an outperforming area tasmania has also been an outperforming state where investors have done well over the past 10 years or certainly since 2015. The market being more sensitive to interest rate movements is definitely something that we need to consider as well as increased intervention in the marketplace in the form of say the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority who from about 2014

have been interested in trying to restrict credit where they think that things are getting too bubbly or loosen access to credit when they think it's more safe to enter into the waters. So I think they are some of the takes. The market overall being more sensitive to these big macro moves as opposed to what's happening locally, I think we've seen that. Of course, your individual regional townships, they've been up until COVID more sensitive to what's happening to those local economies. But since COVID, have been swept up in those macro movements.

And this is one factor I'm keeping a strong eye on in terms of what's going on with regional Australia. the regional Australian housing markets. I see grand opportunities and I see grand risks that have historically been very volatile. We all know that nearly all boats have gone up with COVID and I just have some concerns that subsequent to COVID, many of these boats will go back down again. Yeah, that's a very good point.

Well, it's a great segue into starting to look into the future then, Louis. What do you think are going to be the likely impacts of some of these trends you're seeing on the property industry and property values over the next five to 10 years? The number one key trend to watch for is housing formation, the number of occupiers per dwelling. Normally and historically, it's been a fairly stable number over 100 years. we have a gradual downtrend to less people per dwelling. All of a sudden COVID's come along and we've seen a dramatic decline in the number of people per dwelling

because people have been looking to live with less people. They've been looking to live in regional Australia to get away from lockdowns, to get away from COVID. Could we now see a reversal of that with the general view out there now that COVID's largely behind us and nothing to be greatly fearful of? And especially with the dramatic rise in rents, could that encourage, entice, force people back to living

with each other again? And as a result of that, what will that mean for the performance of, say, freestanding houses versus units? what will it mean for the performance of regional housing versus capital city housing prices these are some of the big demographic waves that have occurred in such a short space of time and i do think that there will be some type of reversal but what i can't tell you is the magnitude of that reversal maybe it's already starting to reverse now and maybe what we will also see is a grand opportunity for the regionals that if we don't see complete reversal where more

and more people say you know what i i like living in regional australia i'm going to stick it out i'm going to make it work and i'm going to help grow this local town which i dearly love i think we will see an element of that but over the short term as mentioned before i think there There are risks, and the risks are that given the huge jump in housing prices in many regional Australian townships, even just a slight change or downturn in demand could see a quick fall in those prices, and homebuyers of today need to be wary of that, and there are precedents in all this.

Consider the town of Karratha. Of course, a grand mining town, if there ever was one, on the North West Shelf. Yeah. Karratha housing prices back in 2002 were circa $200,000. In 2011, they were effectively a million dollars. And then in 2016, they fell back to $300,000. Okay, you wouldn't want to be on the wrong end of that downturn.

And the problem is, is those type of massive swings could happen in other regional townships, given the boom in demand we had due to COVID. That is the risk. Now, I'm not saying it's playing out right now. I couldn't point to a regional township right now where we're seeing a sudden collapse in demand. Not seeing it yet. I'm just concerned about it. And I think homebuyers right now need to be cautious of these big movements that happen in regional Australia. That is such a good point.

you make sorry bushy um you make there louis and i wanted to dig a little deeper into that if i could because you know based on what you've just said and i think it's a key message out of the show based on what you've just said how how should we be preparing for that well you know what what should we be looking out for the leading indicators that will tell you having a having a chat with agents on the ground that you can trust that will help you know just just watching the listings So I first noticed a downturn starting to occur in Karratha when there was a sudden surge in listings, when rental vacancy rates started to pick up. You see it in the rental market first in these regional townships because it represents, you know, the rental market represents really the forefront of the market in terms of what actual accommodation demand's going on. Is accommodation demand increasing or is it decreasing?

You normally see it in the rental stats first. Yeah, I think in the mining towns we noticed that very much when the mining companies started to build their own accommodation, which took the need off for private accommodation, you know, the rental market. Yes. Yeah, so that was a bit of an indicator, I guess. That's an indicator, but when they did that, the demand for rental accommodation had already peaked.

Okay, right. And so, you know, there were these just dramatic falls in rents. And it fed through into housing prices for the local area about six months afterwards. And I think we'll see a similar thing in some of these regional townships. townships. Now, I think there'll be areas which will not be necessarily affected. Maybe coastal regional areas, I think they'll probably hold up better. Now, we're talking overall about this short-term massive wave in terms of the demographic. I think long-term, there are grand opportunities for regional Australia. We need, we need as a

country to invest into our regional townships there's too much reliance on our economic welfare for the big capital cities and i think long before the three of us long after the three of us actually leave this planet we will see these regional townships grow and prosper just like what happened in the united states throughout the 19th century in the 20th century it'll happen here Australia well it has to it has to and there will be great opportunities over the long long term you just need to watch out for the short term that's all yeah very good point I've heard a number of commentators talk about the some of the driving criteria that will separate the winners from the losers in regional hubs have been around the critical mass of population in that location

the diversity of employment and industries and strong and growing incomes that can continue to support increasing prices where the committed infrastructure and their technology there technology actually enables people to live and work in in more rural locations what's what's your rate of all of that willie absolutely spot on i think without wi-fi um the internet being able to reach into regional australia and remember and we still have it today uh there are there are massive black spots in regional australia in terms of internet but a number of the key townships now have it and that's helped tremendously when remember back when we were growing up in regional australia my goodness many regional townships didn't have television you know we're coming a

long way and um we've we've having um good internet now in many regional townships this will help the local population stay and not be as trans transient they'll stick around um because they see grand opportunity within these townships and growing populations so uh definitely this this has helped and I think we will out of this I think one thing that there is a permanent change as a result of COVID is the working from home now I know that there are many employers who want to see their workforce come back into the office as an employer I'm asking my employees to come back into the office but not not full-time not five days a week I'm asking them to come back three days a week uh and then two days working from home now that can work for someone who wants to

work remotely it can it can still work um so i think uh i think that permanent change is going to help these regional locations that's a good insight louis as we would have expected anyway mate but um we've come to the end of our time together but thank you so much for for firstly your support for our show over the years louis and it's always great talking to you mate i appreciate it and all the best for you with your reports through sqm of course oh thank you so much i feel like we've only just uh uh touched the iceberg today we should yeah i know so much but remember louis we're going to be talking to you in the future this is not the end of the story my friend no absolutely i know you can bring a lot to the table yeah and uh and obviously we should have a

good chat about interest rates on another session for your audience yep okay well let's make that the next one uh we can lock that in for sure louis good on you mate thank you thank you bushy thank you kevin thanks for your time and uh that's where we're going to come to the end of the show stick around louis and i sorry not louis louis louis got to go but bushy and i are going to stick around and just give you a summary on some of the key points out of this week's show stick around back in just a minute. Successful property investment is a game of finance. Do you have the right team and the right game plan? Realty Talk is brought to you by KnowHow Property. More than mortgage brokers, Bushy Martin and his team of investment architects set you up with a sustainable strategy

structured to lower your costs, tax, risk and stress while increasing your capacity for growth. Know How has helped over 1,900 homeowners and investors secure more than $800 million in property wealth. So get set to live more, work less, and live your legacy. Want to know how to invest in your freedom? Visit knowhowproperty.com.au. Well, how good was that today, Bushy? That was a pretty good show. That was absolutely awesome, mate.

couldn't have had brought on board a better bunch of guests to celebrate the 500th show mate yeah well we we kicked it off with Tim of course and the thing that struck me about our conversation with Tim was he dispelled that that myth about the property values doubling every he said 10 years but I used to think it was seven years and you've since come out with some research that supports that view as well bushy yes well you know i've done some detailed research uh over the last 30 years kevin uh property doubles on average every 15 years so where i think the real lesson there is that that the real opportunity and the real results come from property if you hold on to it long term that also means that uh if you're doing that then you're not so worried about when you're

getting when you get out because if you go through a full cycle then you're going to get the full benefits anyway. I've always held a view that the Brisbane market is probably more stable than most markets in Australia, certainly Sydney and Melbourne. And I used to say that property values in Brisbane generally did double every seven years. But Tim pointed out when we spoke to him that over the last decade, it's been a 70% growth. So while it's certainly slowed down, brisbane is still one of those markets where you can almost not guarantee but be very sure that the property market just generally rises quite nicely totally agree it doesn't have the peaks and troughs of new south and victoria and adelaide's quite similar there's more incremental

organic and gradual growth over time and and for those investors who don't like roller coaster rides they're good places to stick your money yeah and then of course we caught up with margaret at Lomas and wasn't that interesting to hear about her new book. That was a total break away from what she's normally done. And you know, what impressed me was that she was willing to say that she made so many mistakes along the way. And boy, can't we learn from other people's mistakes, Bushy? That's the best learnings you'll ever get. Totally, mate. And unfortunately, a lot of investors make a mistake and then throw their hands up in the air and walk away, lose money and never return but the the ones who are truly successful like margaret continues to be

is always open to learning opportunities and it was really good to her hear her talk about the whole development experience because as you and i both know property development isn't for the faint-hearted kevin and if someone like margaret who's had years of experience and leading expertise to have some challenges there, then it's a fair warning for the listeners to make sure that they're really surrounding themselves with really good people and have the time to keep an eye on it. I think that was one of the key things I picked up from Margaret

was that she's very busy and if she had more time, she may have been able to condense the time it took to actually get that development done. Yeah, another interesting point was she said the importance of family in looking at looking at areas too and then of course we we caught up with louis christopher and oh louis never pulls his punches that's what i love about listening to louis just says it the way it is yeah i love it i thought his conversation around uh you know what's going to happen uh with regional hubs moving forward was very interesting too mate there's been a fair

bit of conjecture both ways around regions continuing to go ahead versus the boomerang effect of people coming back to the cities. I think in the middle ground there, there will be regional areas, as Louise commented, that will continue to do very well. They need a fair bit of diversity of employment and industry to support a bit of a critical mass and population. And of course, there needs to be strong and growing incomes with the technology underneath to support all that so the ones that have that infrastructure or it's committed will do well those that don't have that level of support in conjunction with the lifestyle exercise may have some challenges ahead yeah well mate that's it that's a wrap um this is the second in our series as we celebrate 500

episodes we can do one more and next week we've got simon presley from propertyology joining us he's going to be with us for the whole show so it'll be the three-man show next week and we're going to um he's done a great job he's presented some wonderful graphics about the last decade and where we're going in future and you know for all those people who said you know property values can't continue to rise the way they've been going well we're going to really put that under the microscope give give it a good test next week it'll be a show not to miss kevin uh always enjoy simon's analysis he not only comes up with really good fun facts and and proper projections but it's always quantified on really solid information so where that'll be a show to make

sure you don't miss out on yep we'll do indeed and we'll be back with you again next week this is real estate well used to be real estate talk it's now called realty talk and bushy martin is the main anchor but I've had the pleasure of working with Bushy over the last couple of weeks and look forward to next week sorry mate you can't get me out of the chair it's pretty hard so anyway thanks for being with us and we look forward to catching up with you again next week thanks Bushy see you mate thanks Kevin miss something in this week's show or want to catch up on past shows do it anytime at realty.com.au where we connect buyers sellers and agents differently.