Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Realty Talk Vault: Cost of Free Advice

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

We bring you another classic Realty Talk episode from the vault, which was originally published on March 1, 2022, but is still just as relevant today. When it comes to opinions on property it seems like everyone’s an expert - but who can you trust? Lloyd Edge from Aus Property Professionals questions the true cost of free property advice.   RealtyTalk is part of the Property Hub podcast channel, your home for property investment insights, inspiration, and stories from Australia’s top property experts, investors, leaders, and analysts. Subscribe now to get every RealtyTalk episode delivered to you each week for free, and also get full access to Get Invested, the leading podcast for Australians who want to unlock their full ‘self, health, and wealth’ potential and get inspired by the stories of investors, founders, and entrepreneurs. Subscribe to RealtyTalk on the Property Hub channel: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Email Property Hub is a collaboration between Bushy Martin from KnowHow Property, Kevin Turner from Realty, Andrew Montesi from Apiro Marketing and Apiro Media, and Australia’s largest independent podcast network DM Media.  Business and partnership enquiries: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi and welcome. Now it's fair to say that since the advent of the COVID catalyst, the last couple of years in property has been the most turbulent in decades. And when faced with tough and uncertain decisions, many Aussies have understandably fallen victim to a number of age-old property mistakes. So what are these mistakes and how can you avoid them? Well, to discuss this, we're doing a two-part Realty Talk special on common property mistakes with Lloyd Edge, the Managing Director of Oz Property Professionals Buyers Agency and the author of his bestselling book, Positively Geared. So welcome back to Realty Talk, Lloyd. Hi, Bushy. How are you going? Good to be here.

Yeah, always good to have a chat, mate. Now, Lloyd, let's start where just about everyone starts in property. Should you trust your family and friends when it comes to property advice? Well, the thing about family and friends is they're always very well-meaning, and particularly when you're speaking to them on the weekend, maybe at that family barbecue and things like that. But the thing is, number one, have they got a property portfolio themselves? How much experience have they got in property is, I think, very important.

I think it's really important to take independent advice as well. So rather than just taking advice from family and friends, really go and seek some advice from independent professionals and talk to them about what your goals, what your plans are, and then they can give you some wider hints of what the market's doing and what you should be doing.

Because family and friends are likely to be, you know, a little bit of a downer there. They might be looking out for your best interest, but telling you that you shouldn't be buying here, you shouldn't be buying there, that might happen to you. And that can scare you a little bit, may or may not be the right thing to be saying to you.

Yeah, well, just on that, how do you know if the advice from your family and friends is sound or not? Yeah, well, I think, like I said before, you just need to work out whether they've actually had that sort of success. So if you've got someone in your family who's got a portfolio of 10 properties and they've got a lot of experience there, then you can probably be pretty confident that you've got someone there who is giving you good advice. So not all advice from friends and family is bad advice. You just need to be careful about that.

But someone who's never bought a property before but says that, you know, my friend's cousin bought a property and, you know, things didn't go so well and the tenants are going away and they put holes in the wall and they never fixed it and all sorts of things. So you shouldn't buy a property because of that. That's probably the sort of advice that you probably want to go and get a second opinion on maybe from someone else. Yeah, totally agree. Now, while we're on the subject of free advice, how do you know if you can trust a professional who's giving you free advice? I think the most important thing is there's not such thing as free advice so you should really be going and paying for some advice so for example if you're buying a property that's off the plan and or you're buying something direct from a builder or a developer and there

may not necessarily be anything wrong with that but if you're not actually paying an independent fee for some advice on that but you're being told to buy a particular property or particular a project and being told it's in a great area and being given all these glossy brochures it may not necessarily be the the right property for you and there may be some uh some kickbacks some commissions uh built into that that you're not really aware of or that aren't being disclosed so that's that's different to uh going and um by you know buying a property where you might be seeking some independent advice from a property strategist a property advisor perhaps a buyer's agent well you pay them a fee and they can advise you on a property and maybe source you a property

independently of of those sort of new off the plan type properties yeah totally agree there's there's that old saying there's no such thing as a free lunch certainly rings rings true there lord lord what things should you be aware of when trusting a professional land i think um a track record is very important so uh when you're seeking advice like whenever i seek advice i like to say that they've actually done um what i'm trying to do um done it themselves so that uh you've got someone to look up to so that i think that's very important i wouldn't go and get my car fixed from a mechanic who's never fixed a car before for example so uh you know going and getting advice from a professional uh who's never bought a property themselves is probably not the best

thing to do but also checking that they've got a license and they're qualified for what you're trying to get advice on so that may not just be about acquiring a property it might be about using a mortgage broker for example now they need to have financial services license and things like that so you need to check those sort of things make sure that they're accredited to be able to provide the sort of advice that you're that you're acquiring things like that so just doing some of those background checks are really important rather than just going in and seeking advice based on you know someone's recommendation or based on a website or something yeah totally agree and I think in the the property advice space it's certainly I'm a big fan of PIPA the

property investment professionals of Australia they've got a fairly rigid accreditation process that really sorts the the sheep from the goats in relation to who's who's really able to give you independent and transparent property advice. So for those that aren't aware of PIPA, check it out. There's a great listing of accredited professionals across all streams there. Excellent. Well, look, I really appreciate your insights on this, Lloyd, and we look forward to delving more into this in part two of our Common Property Mistakes feature. So thanks for your time on the show today. Great. Thanks so much. Thanks, Lloyd. Well, Lloyd's provided us with further evidence of what I like to call the law of the inverse investment, which states that the louder

and stronger a person's opinion on investment, the less likely they are to own any, and the less reliable they are with their opinions. And this tends to echo the old saying that wise people only talk when they have something to say, whereas fools talk because they have to say something. So if you want to avoid the property mistakes of the masses, grab yourself a copy of Lloyd's book, Positively Geared, which you can find at auspropertyprofessionals.com.au forward slash Positively Geared.