The Chaser Report - Do Any Real Estate Agents NOT Suck? | Sami Shah

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

Sami Shah is looking for a new place to live and suffering the rental market woes. Email us at [e-mail] if you have a home to offer Sami. Preferably in North Melbourne, three or four bedrooms will do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report. Domite here with wonderful news, which is that Sammy Shah is still with us today. Sammy, now, you're moving house. Yes. What a lovely thing. I know.

So I'm looking for a house in Melbourne to move into. I'm a renter. I am still not a homeowner given my commitment to comedy. writing as my career choices. I will never be a homeowner, most likely. We're looking in the inner north area of Melbourne because obviously I'm a wanker and so... Oh, a comedian moving into the inner north of Melbourne. I know, right.

Are we thinking Fitzroy? Oh, no, no, no. I'm not that bad. No, Northcuit. My daughter goes to scored in Northcate. Northcots where people who, you know, can't afford Fitzroy go because it's Fitzroy-esque. That's a great idea.

Northcott's brilliant. Yeah, yeah. Northcote is a little more, there's still some old Italians and Greeks knocking around in Northcote, Fitzroy. I think the hipsters hunted them down and killed them all. So, Northcote's the next Fitzroy. We all know that. Yeah, absolutely. There's still a little bit of authenticity, which you can pay extra for.

Exactly. So I'm looking for a house in theory. But the thing is, like, I've done this many times now, you know, looking for rental property, moving from one rental to another. The thing that always shocks me is how soul-destroying it is. as an experience. The first part is the inspection. So I don't know, when is the last time you did any of these things?

Because you've been pretty sedentary, right? Fairly, about four and a half years ago. Okay, all right. Pre-COVID. Right, pre-COVID. All right. So the first thing in the inspection, which you just got like 17 houses in three days

and you're just, you know, go in a house-to-house. It's fun when the house is empty and you can kind of imagine or visualize all your stuff there. It's more awkward when there's people living there because it feels kind of like going to a funeral and touching the corpse's clothes and going, oh, this suit will look really good on me as well one day.

So I'm finding that. Particularly if it's a deceased estate when that actually is true. Yeah, true. But like yesterday I went to one and there was a family there. So a mom and her three-year-old child who were in the living room and the husband, the father, who was in the office. and makeshift office kind of doing a Zoom call and there's all of us

tripsing in a route in another place and the mum and the three-year-old child is telling the mom mom who are these strangers in our house and the mom is just going they're going to be moving in when we move out and the little girl is going but I don't get it why do we have to move out

and also awkward situations happening and all I'm thinking as well I'll probably be doing the same thing in a few years anyway. Did it become clear that it was the fault of the economy because I mean they used to as I think every time you would go to a rental property or a, or even for sale, but clearly someone's being forced to leave against their will. I mean, that's not what's happening in my case.

It's not like, oh, we're upgrading. Or we're getting to somewhere. No, you're not. Your dreams are just dying around you and your little child is just going to be disappointed that for some reason, you know, we live in a cardboard box now. Right, yeah. They'll be sleeping in your car. That's basically what the next stage is.

So that's the first step. You do all of that. And then they send you a link to do your application. The amount of information that Nelson Alexander applied at nelsonlexander.com. A.U. is asking for is horrifying. I mean, just everything from pay slips to like just, you know, passport scans to references from colleagues, references from people have lived in tenants. that, you know, homeowners I've lived in whose homes I've lived before.

It's one of the things they now know more about me than the Australian government, then, you know, then Optus, then any of the hackers who basically got any of my data anyway from Optus or Medibank or whoever, Nelson, if you want to really fuck Australians over, just hack the Nelson Alexander database. You'll have stuff that is shockingly private in there.

For what? See, you spend two days doing that. You fill the whole thing out. you submit it and then they send your email going nope you didn't you didn't qualify because someone offered a thousand dollars more than you were a week and so we're going to give it to them and i guess the good news though is that a small suburban real estate agent would have much better protection for your personal data and scans of your driver's license and passports far better than say i don't know a massive uh company like optus you can trust these agents why the

fuck do they need this stuff why can't they just i don't know and look at your driver's license when you turn up and not have any of the details it's And it's basically for the, and the whole argument is always just so we know whether you're a good enough renter or not. But the metrics have changed, right? So I'm self-employed but I earn well because I work my

ass off and I'm self-employed, but you know, it's a gig economy. I'm a gig worker in the gig economy. But compared to me, a nine to five guy who's got a job in a company and has for ages will get preference, even though he's more likely to get fired and will not know what the fuck to do when he gets

fired, whereas I get fired every second week from everything I do, and I'm always able to find something to replace it with. I'm more agile. That's never taken into account. You are, you are... We should mind you to invoice the Chaser team for my appearances on this podcast, yes. You're exactly what this economy needs, which is people with absolutely no stability or certainty, but who are versatile.

So, yes, okay, you've lost the job that you had, but the great thing is, in this economy, you can always find another job with absolutely. no stability or security because the great thing is every single company organization is hiring in this economy. They just want the people that they're hiring to be immediately fireable and have no stability at all, which is why. So a few of us are able to apply for these fucking demeaning rental places because we don't have regular paychecks or details or whatever is. So who are the people who are the people who are getting these things? Who are the people with stable jobs and lives in 2022 who are making heaps of money in this economy with the cost of

living what it is. Who are these tenants who are gazette and also who are these real estate agents to make any judgments? None of them have ever worn a suit that fits well. It's every real estate agent I've seen so far is a man with a suit, two sizes too small for him. No socks. It's a whole thing, but they always wear shoes without, really? No socks. Like at all. They're always driving BMWs, which is the universally acknowledged car of the douchebag. And the W. The WSands for Wanker, I think, isn't it? Bavaria Motor Wanker. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. And And they're literally dusting the cocaine from their nose as they walk up to the inspection. And yet somehow I'm supposed to impress them with my passport photos and my job, like, pay slips and everything.

So anyway, that's what I'm doing right now in my life. And it's not fun. That's why I'm so angry, I think. I've noticed more angry in the last few days than I normally have. Yeah, but it would make anyone angry because they're judging you. There's people who, I mean, full credit to anyone who can afford cocaine in this economy. That's impressive. the amount of disposable income

you must have to feel comfortable spending money on lines in this day and age is pretty magnificent. But no, they're judging you. These people who are clearly terrible human beings, far worse objectively than you say, they should be begging you. They should be saying, oh

Sammy Shah, you know, renowned host of the news weekly podcast, will you please submit an application, sir? We'll knock some money off the rent for you. We'll be glad to have you. But instead, they're judging you and let's be clear from what you said they're finding you wanting oh yeah absolutely like my partner was like oh maybe they'll know who you are like from abc

radio or something i'm like no the only podcast they listen to i wanted andrew tate on them and that's it like i'm not going i'm not in their their circle of influence at all so yeah if you can go on joe rogan though oh you might you might have made it they will show how i love to see you I could have loved to see you on Joe Rogan, Sammy. That would be well worth it. Listen, I would love to go there because the bump it will give my career. I'm more than happy to take. Let's be honest.

The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. I have the same experience all the time, but you're just sort of being asked to sort of defend your existence and what you've done in the whole of your life to date. And yeah, that happens all the time. You apply for anything. These days when I fill out the, you know, the free Wi-Fi form at the shopping center, I feel it's judging me and somehow find it inadequate.

And also they've all got separate companies. So every real estate agent is signed with a different company that collects all your data and the application. Oh, of course. So you have to do the same thing. I've never even heard of Nelson Alexander. Yeah, it's huge in Melbourne. It's the jealous Craig of Lothcotech, I guess. Although jealous Craig is jealous of Northcotech, I don't know.

Yeah, it's one of the big ones. it's i remember one called fitzroy's real estate which struck me as um just get straight to the point where for for people who think who want to live in fitzroy it's all over melbourne i think but it's fitzreys fitzroy's real estate yeah yeah i don't think maybe i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know my apartment used to be 500 now it's going up to 650 and so that's one of the reasons why I'm having to look for a place now. Are you telling me you're in a property that costs sub a thousand dollars a week? You live in Melbourne.

See, everything you're saying. That's why you're in Sydney. Times 1.5 or double for Sydney. I mean, yeah, you can barely get out of the airport here without giving $1,000 to a real estate agent. It's just, it's just the cost of new business. And then, you know what our real estate agent started doing is getting us to self-inspect. this is the new thing for the vast amounts of money for the vast amounts of money that's paid to them

instead of sending some gober to go around and check that we haven't complete trashed the place they now expect us to walk around and spend three hours photographing everything and the last time we did this admittedly during COVID it did make a degree of sense we didn't want some snotty-nosed 20 year old intern you know walking around the house but yes they rejected the photos last time

because they weren't detailed enough what are they doing with these photos Did you send your macro lens, Sony DSLR camera then for the detail? I'm thinking of directing a short film just to show that the house is in decent condition. No, look, it is terrible. And then you send them an email and would you possibly fix the toilet that's, you know, been leaking for how long? And you can't even get a reply, but goodness me, if you don't submit your beautifully curated, you know, amazing quality photos, you'll get a reply within five seconds. it's tempting to, I don't know, maybe I should, we should actually just sort of trash the place a bit and see at what point they'll bother to throw us out.

I mean, my last, like just subtly. My last place that I lived in before, in the current one, which I'm also vacating. So I had done that thing where I hammered a picture into the wall, and then there was a tiny hole there. Oh, how dare you? And I filled it in, and I put the paint, and I did all of that, and I sanded it down. But I didn't sand it down enough, so there's still a mild bar. which honestly I don't know how they found because it is not noticeable from the eye from the naked eye from any angle clearly this is something that they are have superpowered like daredevil like senses for and they threatened me to charge me a thousand dollars to repaint the entire wall oh my god so I just did it myself see that's the one thing they're good at that's their skill and maintaining the house themselves actually organizing tradies to come up and fix it that's broken no absolutely impossible Far too incompetent to do that.

But yes, finding a micro thing in the inspection report 100%. So what will happen, Sammy, with absolute certainty, what will have happened is at the moment you vacated that place and someone else moved in, they will have hung a fucking picture in the exact same spot and put a nail on the same place and the whole cycle will repeat itself. So here's what I'm thinking, right?

Now, the Chaser has a much larger listenership than my own podcast News Weekly. Yeah. And your relationship, because of the size alone, will have a varied professional range. Maybe there is someone in your audience who, when not listening to Andrew Tate podcasts and cross-fitting, does take a break and listen to Chaser.

I don't know why their overlap exists, but it does. Let's see theoretically it does. And they are therefore a real estate agent in the city of Melbourne. Reach out to me, tell me how to get better with my applications. I need the advice, be a good person for five minutes in your life and save a renter who needs a place to rent. So, Sammy, your strategy for finding a place to live, the most fundamental human need of shelter, your strategy is to hope that someone listening to this podcast is, A, a Melbourne real estate agent with access to property in, say, Northcad, and B, a good human being.

Do you know how few agents are likely to be a good human being in the first? First place, let alone ones who might listen to this podcast. It seems completely impossible. Why don't you just ask, why don't you just ask if anyone listening to the podcast, let's go for a real, how Mary, if anyone listening to this podcast has a rental property that they own in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, like the nice bit, not the completely wanky bit and not the way out bit, the bit the happy bedroom, which is North Kent. Yes, three or four bedrooms, so quite a large place.

And you're willing to sell it for, I don't know, $50 a way to rent it for. $50 a week to a guy who used to be on ABC Radio Melbourne and, you know, it was an excellent broadcaster known throughout the city of Melbourne and is now one of the city's leading podcasters and anti-Katari activists. I mean, why not ask? You never know, someone might give you a place for free. All right, let's put that question out there. Isn't this more likely than finding an ethical real estate agent who will actually help you?

That's a very good point. All right, fine. That's the question then. will you host me and my family for free in your home indefinitely and if you will then you will get a shout out to the next time I'm on the Chesa podcast that's all we can offer by the way you can be interviewed for the Chaser podcast yeah you're very welcome to to be interviewed someone actually does this you can have whatever you want from us you can have Lachlan Lachlan the producer you can essentially have him oh yeah that's true actually

we can just give him to them yeah why not necessarily on a permanent basis but But certainly for a few years, in the last podcast we recorded, I mean, we did condemn slavery in broadcast. That's true. We can't sell a Loughlin into slavehood, but we can certainly rent him. Yeah, that's right. We're not saying you can have him for free. You can take his passport.

That's okay. But there is a... We've already got his passport. No, that's, yeah, mandatory. That's chase a, like, terms and conditions. That's, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah. All right. Wish you mind, can you ask Charles to return mine, please? I'd like my passport back as well. Just as soon as you finish building the chaser stadium, Sammy, it all will be refunded. Thanks for joining us once again. Subscribe to Sammy's podcast news weekly to weekly with an A. Our gears from Road, we're part of the Acast Creator Network.

We'll catch you next time. Bye.