Buying property is the biggest investment you'll ever make, Whether you're looking to buy your first house, upgrade to something bigger or thinking about investing in property, knowledge is power. The more you know about it, the better you're going to do from it.
In this episode of The Parenting Couch podcast, we talk to Henny Stier from OH Property Group, who has been a Buyer's Agent in Sydney for many years, and has bought hundreds of houses on behalf of North Shore families. As a North Shore Mum to three boys and long-time member of the Facebook Group, she has been generously sharing her advice and recommendations on our website for the last 10 years.
Questions covered in the interview with Henny Stier
About Henny Stier
Henny Stier is the founder and Principal Buyer at OH Property Group. A respected, straight talking property expert, Henny specialises in the search, analysis, appraisal, negotiation, bidding and purchase of properties across all price ranges throughout Sydney. She also has significant experience in building, renovating and managing properties. Having inspected thousands of properties, Henny is uniquely qualified to spot the best opportunities that others may miss and to give sound advice. Henny regularly appears in the media to discuss various real estate topics and to dispel myths in her typical no-nonsense style. She is a proud mum to three boys.
Visit OH Property's website
Follow OH Property on Facebook
Read testimonials in the North Shore Mums Directory
#theparentingcouch #theparentingcouchpodcast #parenting #northshoremums
Buying property is the biggest investment you'll ever make, Whether you're looking to buy your first house, upgrade to something bigger or thinking about investing in property, knowledge is power. The more you know about it, the better you're going to do from it.
In this episode of The Parenting Couch podcast, we talk to Henny Stier from OH Property Group, who has been a Buyer's Agent in Sydney for many years, and has bought hundreds of houses on behalf of North Shore families. As a North Shore Mum to three boys and long-time member of the Facebook Group, she has been generously sharing her advice and recommendations on our website for the last 10 years.
Questions covered in the interview with Henny Stier
About Henny Stier
Henny Stier is the founder and Principal Buyer at OH Property Group. A respected, straight talking property expert, Henny specialises in the search, analysis, appraisal, negotiation, bidding and purchase of properties across all price ranges throughout Sydney. She also has significant experience in building, renovating and managing properties. Having inspected thousands of properties, Henny is uniquely qualified to spot the best opportunities that others may miss and to give sound advice. Henny regularly appears in the media to discuss various real estate topics and to dispel myths in her typical no-nonsense style. She is a proud mum to three boys.
Visit OH Property's website
Follow OH Property on Facebook
Read testimonials in the North Shore Mums Directory
#theparentingcouch #theparentingcouchpodcast #parenting #northshoremums
Sarah Levett 0:00
Welcome back to another episode of The Parenting Couch. I'm Sarah Levett...
Rachel Chappell 0:13
And I'm Rachel Chappell from North Shore Mums. And today we are talking about property, which I think so many of us are absolutely fascinated by. Whether we're looking to buy our first house or upgrade to something bigger or thinking about investing in property. I guess knowledge is power, and the more you know about it, the better you're going to do from it. So today, I'm very excited that we are joined by a guru when it comes to real estate and property knowledge in Sydney. She's worked for many, many years as a Buyer's Agent, and knows exactly how to buy the right house at the right price. She has been sharing her advice and recommendations in the North Shore Mums website and Facebook group for the last 10 years. And we're so lucky to be joined by her now to share her tips on buying a family home. I'm talking about Henny Stier. She's the co founder of OH Property Group, one of Sydney's most established property buyers agents. She's also a mum to three boys. She's a moderator in our Facebook group, and she's a friend of ours. So Henny, welcome.
Henny Stier 1:22
Thank you so much pleasure to be here.
Rachel Chappell 1:24
So I think let's just go back to basics, because not everyone knows what a buyer's agent is. So what do you do?
Henny Stier 1:32
Sp a Buyer's Agent is a real estate agent, but we don't sell houses. So we only buy them. So that's really the main difference. And we're basically the counterpart to selling agents who sell the houses and the properties.
Rachel Chappell 1:44
Why would someone want to engage in a buyer's agent? What are the benefits? In doing that?
Henny Stier 1:50
I look, the simple answer is probably to level the playing field. You know, buying and selling a home is probably the single biggest purchase and financial investment that you would ever make. So it only makes sense that if the seller is being represented, that the buyer should also be represented, because otherwise who is looking after your best interest doesn't work
Sarah Levett 2:09
In terms of then from a financial position? I mean, obviously, if you engage a broker, the broker gets paid through the banks, and then that trailing commissions. So how does that work, then in engaging someone like you in terms of the cost involved in that,
Henny Stier 2:25
So a pure buyer's agent, which is what I am, we get paid entirely and purely by the buyers. And that way, we are only incentivised to represent the best interests of the buyers. There are people out there who claim to be buyer's agents, but they're actually sprockets and they actually selling basically developers stock, and they're getting a cut from the developer, to sell that stock. So essentially, they're not really representing your best interests, because they're also getting paid by the sellers who are the developers. Whereas if you're looking for a pure buyer's agents, we have a fiduciary obligation to only represent the purchasers because we are remunerated entirely by them.
Sarah Levett 3:06
So if I was looking to buy a property now, and I went to you, what sort of process would we go through for you to buy a house for me? Because I think I know exactly what I want to buy. But how how do you help me buy that house?
Henny Stier 3:18
Yeah, look, we know buyers come to us at different stages of the journey, some call us immediately when they realised that we have to buy a property and we're about to spend, you know, in Sydney standards, millions of dollars. And they realise we actually don't know what we're doing. So if you are going to buy, for example, shares on the stock market, and you're buying, say one or $2 million worth of shares, you wouldn't just you know, Fluke it, you would actually want to get some profit advice about it. So it's really no different to buying a property. And a buyer would come to us sometimes right at the beginning of the search, sometimes they've been looking on their own for six months, a year, some people come to us having looked for two or three years, and they just realise you know what, we must be doing something wrong, because we're just not able to buy a property. So depending on what stage of the journey you're on, we usually start with just a clean slate. Let's talk about the brief, you know, what are your must haves? What are your nice to haves? What are your deal breakers? And then let's try and correlate that with the budget that you have. Does it actually make sense because a lot of people have champagne taste on a beer budget. And the reason why they're not successful is sometimes because they're not realistic and they're looking for that unicorn and he doesn't exist or maybe they've been left behind by the market because prices have gone up so much. So we need to first identify you know, what is the problem that is stopping them from buying a property? Where is the hurdle for them?
Sarah Levett 4:47
Yeah, and I guess you know, in Sydney at the moment the prices are insane like they've gone up so much. Why have they gone up so much in the last few years?
Henny Stier 4:56
Generally speaking, obviously in property as in you know, many other commodities is supply and demand. And during COVID, particularly the last couple of years, it took everybody by surprise, because people thought, you know, lockdown, there's a pandemic, no one's going to buy property, the real estate market is going to crash. This is it. But actually, it had the opposite effect. And therefore a few reasons COVID has made people reassess their homes, when they're spending so much time at home, every niggly problems become, you know, very glaring in the home that they live in. Everybody needs more space, mum and dad now need a home office each. So instead of being a three bedroom home, they now need a five bedroom home, but kids can't go out. So they need space at home, they need a backyard, maybe they might need a pool. So people's life has been changed dramatically because of COVID. There are also people who used to live close to the city in teeny tiny homes, because they need to be close to work and to cut down on that commute time. And during COVID when everybody's working from home, and still now there is no longer that necessity to live so close to work. And you could commute, you could live in the Southern Highlands, you could always, you know, go for that dream life that you've always wanted and leave by the beach or by the bush. So it's forced people to make a lot of changes in terms of how they live in where they live. But in terms of prices being so high, houses are only expensive where people want to live. So if you're actually prepared to live far away from, you know, school and shops and amenities, and your workplace or from lifestyle hubs, like the beach or the bush houses aren't that expensive. It's because people all want to live in the same area. And that pushes up the demand, and the supply can't keep up with the level of demand. But if you're prepared to live, say, you know, one and a half hour or two hour commute away from the city, the prices are not that expensive.
Sarah Levett 6:54
is a true the correlation then between, you know, the inflation of house prices versus interest rates. So obviously, we've had low interest rates for a while now and in that slowly going to start to increase. And will that then bring down like I heard the auction rates were much lower on this weekend just gone. Is that as a result of the interest rates than going up?
Henny Stier 7:14
There's a long and short answer to this. You know, the short answer is, does it have any impact? Probably a little bit. But I think the petering off of the auction result has happened now of over many, many weeks. And that's probably due to the 25-30% price hike we've had through COVID. So people now have gotten to the point where they just can't afford to buy a property. So it's not so much a tiny interest rate hike. It's more about they've been priced out over the last sort of one and a half to two years. Will it continue to affect level of confidence if the interest rate keeps going up? Yes. To some buyers, particularly like first home buyers, people who are really borrowing their max, and they've really leveraged out, every little dollar increase in payment affects them. But there are also many buyers who are not borrowing 80-90%. You know, they're borrowing comfortably only 60%. And some buyers, particularly the luxury end buyers, interest rate hikes won't affect them at all.
Rachel Chappell 8:17
So when it comes to buying property, what are the big mistakes that you've seen people make?
Henny Stier 8:23
So there's mistakes people make when they're searching, and there's mistakes people make when they're buying. So when they're buying a property? I think a lot of people don't ask enough questions, and they don't ask the right questions. And that's fair enough because you don't know what you don't know. Right? So if you don't know to ask, you know, are there bats roosting in the reserve behind my house once a year, if you don't know that, you're not going to ask that. So you kind of kind of in this position where you you have to know things to ask things. And that's probably the value of having a professional help you in a way you're not really road testing it enough. A lot of people spend more time buying a car than they are buying a house because of the whole open house being half an hour you rush in often you have three or four kids in tow. They're they're crying that they've had enough they're fed up they want to snack they need to go to toilet so you're not really focusing on that actual you know, 30 minute of looking at the house a lot of people test drive a car for longer, you know, they might go back once or twice and test drive the car. So I think people need to road test the home enough. They are relying on vendor provided paths and building report which we absolutely say you should never do. You need to get your own independent person building report. Again, it's like buying a second hand car and relying on the seller to vouch that the car is mechanically sound you would never do that. You would get your own independent assessment.
Rachel 9:48
People sort of think oh, that's gonna cost me $500-600. Is it worth it? Do I have to do that for every single property I'm interested in?
Henny Stier 9:54
Don't be penny wise pound foolish, because if it's $500 for a personal building report. Even if you did 10 building reports and $5,000 at an auction, that's that's one bid. True, you know, even half a bid a lot of 1000. So you really shouldn't skimp on that $500. Even if you'd have to pay for 10 of them, it's money that you cannot afford to skimp on. And I think listening to the wrong advice, or too many well, meaning friends and family can become really confusing. Everyone, when you're looking for property, no, usually the the subject of discussion at dinners and barbecues, and everybody wants to put their two cents worth and, and that's fine. But you need to be able to filter out, you know, which are the really valid advice and you know, everybody's well meaning, but not everybody's giving the best advice. Something that a lot of buyers don't do is they don't think about the exit plan. When you buy this property one day, you're gonna have to sell it, it may be five years, it might be 10 years, it might be 15 years, it might be 20 years, you need to think about how you will exit that property, not just buying into it. But how you would sell it one day, can it sell one day? If you're buying a dud of a property in a lemon of a property? How will you sell it one day when you need to sell it
Unknown Speaker 11:09
As lemons that you talk about? Why would you buy a lemon? Under what circumstances would you go? This house is just kind of going to scrape in? We'll buy it? What what are those kinds of qualities you probably wouldn't advise buying at all.
Henny Stier 11:26
So the first part of the question is... why you would buy a lemon in the first place? And there are two types of buyers who typically, were three types of buyers who typically buy a lemon or what I call sub-par properties. The first group of buyers are fed up buyers, they're buyers who have been looking forever, and they've just had it, they walk in and like I'm buying a house today, and I'm buying it and and they just so fed up, they just take whatever's there that they can get a deal done. The second group of buyers who often buy lemons are rebound buyers, they're probably people who have missed out on two or three auctions. And this is the first one that they can actually win. So they go for it. And it's more at a rebound, then because it was, you know, the ideal home. And then the third group of buyers who often buy lemons are inexperienced buyers, who just really have no idea what they're doing. And they don't even realise that they're buying a lemon. So that's sort of the three groups of people who are prone to buying lemons.
In terms of what constitutes a lemon of a property or what I call a subpar property, there are properties that would have several flaws that are not possible to fix with money or time. For example, if the property is well below street level and gets no sunlight, and is in a bit of a ravine or a ditch, no amount of money or time can fix that problem, you're going to constantly have issues with damp, you're going to constantly have issues with not not enough natural light. So those are things that you cannot fix with money or time. A bad floor plan you can fix you can throw money at it, and you can fix it usually. But there are there are certain elements, you know, and generally it relates to the topography of the property, if it's on a steep slope, if the backyard is significantly raised, you know, there may be significant tree issues that block a lot of light and drop over the leaves. A lot of these things you cannot fix if council won't give you the permission to remove the trees, for example, you could let's say,
Sarah Levett 13:22
Buying on the best street but the worst property I mean, is that still stand to some point, you know, like in the sense of Are you still going? I mean, obviously things like that, that you can't change, still don't matter what street that you're on. But is that still something that stands to be true?
Henny Stier 13:40
It is if you have the capacity to throw money to fix it, right? So if you're the worst house on the best street, if the house just happens to be really old and derelict and a bit of a grandma house, and you can fix that up quickly, kitchen bathroom, and you know, make it nice, then yes, certainly you would add a lot of value. The problem is a lot of the houses where you're the worst house and the best street, there are other components that make it the worst house, it could be the position on the street, it might be on a street where there's a big dip, and you're right at the bottom of the dip. And then you can't fix that. And also now with the cost of construction being so high and all the supplies and materials, you know, being really expensive. It's a false economy to think that you can buy the worst house on the best street and somehow you know, make them lots out of it because you might be better off just putting in that money that you want to spend in construction into actually just buying a better property to begin with.
Sarah Levett 14:39
And is that issue due to COVID, like because I was just saying before we started recording friends of mine ran into some you know issues in and around a bank and builders market but that was before COVID. So his attic just exacerbated what was going on prior to COVID
Henny Stier 14:55
Yeah, it's to do with supply chain you know so even just ordering windows. As you know, many window companies, you have like a 14-16 week turnaround time just to buy windows. So you have to be really organised, even appliances. Like just to buy a fridge, you have to wait for six months, you know, and timber steel up, you know, all the things that are fundamental to constructing a property. There's just such a long wait time for it. So and also the builders are in such demand that the prices, you know, have to keep up with the level of demand from people who now want to make their three bedroom homes into five bedroom homes.
Rachel Chappell 15:32
Yeah, I mean, we were looking at putting on an extra bedroom in our house. And I got a quote probably six months ago, but I'm sure that's gone up like 20 grand.
So let's talk about what properties we should avoid when you when when should you actually walk away? Asbestos. Is that still around? Are there many houses on the north shore that have asbestos? And if you find out the one you're interested in, has it? Is it okay to buy it? Or what's the situation?
Henny Stier 16:04
So I wrote an article for North Shore Mums, specifically about fibro home. So if anyone's interested in this topic, you can just do a search for fibro homes on North Shore Mums, but I think a lot of people don't quite understand the issue around asbestos. So the main problem with asbestos that people want to be careful about is loose fill asbestos, which are basically the fluffy stuff that they put in insulation in your roof. If it has that, chances are the house probably can't be sold because it has to be demolished. Anyway, that's a government requirement. Right. So that is less of a concern these days, because it's quite heavily regulated around there. But they're also obviously asbestos, in terms of fibro homes, where the whole house interior, and the exterior shell of the home is made of asbestos fiber particles. So that you have to be concerned about because you can't nail into those homes. So if you bought a fibro home, you probably don't want to be nailing into the walls to hang up a painting, for example. Or if your child kicks into the wall accidentally and dents it with a toy, you'd probably want to fix that up because it releases particles into the air, so that you have to be careful about, but there are also a lot of asbestos in areas that are of less of a concern. And that's typically under the eaves. So that's outside your house, under the roof sort of area. And that's less of a problem. And it's very common, I would say 80% of the homes that I see actually have that. And that's not a problem if it's left intact, and you don't touch it. So, you know, asbestos on the eaves doesn't bother me. If you are buying an older home, it's very likely that there are asbestos under the tiles in the laundry, or in the bathroom, which you cannot see when you're buying. So therefore you might unknowingly be buying a house with asbestos and you'll really only find out when you are renovating that kitchen that that bathroom, but the easiest Fibro to spot are the Fibro homes because the entire house is made of you know, asbestos sheets.
Rachel Chappell 18:14
Yeah, I know that when we did our bathroom, they had to, you know, get it checked when they were ripping everything out that there was no asbestos.
Henny Stier 18:23
Yeah, the tricky thing with asbestos is you cannot visually tell for sure, until you actually take the sample and test it in a lab. The way I usually check with an agent is, you know, look, is this wall internal wall asbestos? Usually, if they know it's not, they're jumping up and down saying no, no, no, no, no, it's not. If they say, Oh, we're not sure, then you kind of have to assume that it is, you know, because that's really the safest way is to assume because no one is going to let you go into a house that's for sale, and take a sample and send it to a lab that's just not realistic. Person building inspector could probably tell you with pretty accurate sort of certainty that it might or might not be asbestos, and that's why it's important to get your own independent person building inspection.
Rachel Chappell 19:06
So what about termites? If you've done your pest inspection, and there's termite damage in the house, do you just walk away? Or is it treatable?
Henny Stier 19:16
It is so common in many different parts of Sydney, where it's very leafy and a lot of bush to have passed termite damage. And I come across that probably, you know, at least I would say 25-30% of every pest and building inspection that I do that there is some past termite damage. So there are a few ways we look at that. The first thing is we look at the age of the termite damage, if it was fairly fresh, fairly recent, or it's something that happened 20 years ago, or even was it pre-existing before the current owners even what the home. So I would ask for the owner to supply me with the personal building inspection report when they bought the house because that allows me to cross check that information whether or not this is a threat fairly new termite damage, or it was a pre existing termite damage from a very long time ago. I'm looking also for whether or not the vendor tries to cover up anything, sometimes they have hatches, and they put locks on it. And they don't want to let your person building inspector go through carefully. And that's a really big red flag. If I see that happening, I also look at whether or not the house is double brick, or a timber house because termites don't eat bricks. So if your house is entirely constructed of double bricks, I'm not worried about the house falling down, because the bricks are still you no sound, but I do look at whether or not the termites are in the roof. Because termites need to get up, they have to crawl up the walls to get to the roof. So if there's termite damage in the roof, that's a very significant sign that there might be termite damage damage in the walls. And obviously, you cannot see inside walls and again, you can't rip out the walls before you buy the home. So you need to ask a lot of questions. You know, I'm looking at sub floor if there's been any timber that has been replaced, have they done any renovation? Do they have any photos? Were they aware of any termite damage? Have they been doing pest treatment on a regular basis, I would like to see the last three to five plus treatment report that was done on the property, again, is to check about the recency of problems, there's a lot of questions that you need to ask. And a lot of us unfortunately, don't know what to ask. And either they get freaked out and walk away. Or they're not freaked out enough in the buyer not realising that actually, it could be a very possibly problem. If the termite damage is all inside the walls, and you can't see it. But it's quite possible that if a termite damage is significant, that the the timber that's supporting the structure could fail. And I don't mean like the whole house crumbling down. But certainly, structurally, it could affect the foundation of the house if one side, for example, has been eaten through and the other side hasn't, for example,
Sarah Levett 22:02
It can be huge and so costly as well to repair. That brings us to a really big, I guess, problem. And the reason why engaging someone like yourself, is a great idea is because of the experiences that we have all had negative experiences with real estate agents, and how do we trust them and I are renowned for the job is sales, and they are renowned for taking us for a ride and telling us our time, there's no term I thought we were just and it's so hard when you're emotionally driven, not to get and you know, these people are so good at what they do. And I've certainly met more than a fool of the Bs, and they are straight shooters, that's for sure. Like I've had some good experiences, but certainly some where you it's so hard not to get hooked into that though, because you want to believe them, your emotions are involved. So how do you navigate that crap?
Henny Stier 22:59
Yeah, look, I think, you know, a lot of real estate agents do the right thing, you know, and they're honourable in how they treat the purchases. Obviously, their job is to represent the seller. So their job is to make the place look good. And to sell it for the highest price. So you can't blame them for not pointing out every single flaw in the property. It's called buyer beware, right. That's why, at the very beginning, we talked about levelling the playing field, this is exactly where that comes in. Because you need someone on your side, to ask the hard questions, and not to just take the sales line and run with it. And this is where again, we talk about not asking the right questions, and how do you know what to ask if you've never bought a property before or if you've never bought a house and you lived in an apartment before, you don't know what you don't know. And this is where I think having a professional help you and not just a Buyer's Agent. But I said having a good person, building inspector, all of these things, is really important because it is the single biggest purchase of your life and you don't want to wing it.
Unknown Speaker 24:02
Unfortunately, if you're buying a house, it is an emotional decision, isn't it? You know, you might fall in love with something and go, I can just imagine the kids growing up here and all that, you know, that pest report said something about too much. We're just not really you know, you can get carried away. Whereas if you've got, you know, like a buyer's agent that's knows the questions to ask can actually look at it in a rational way. And no, no, no, no, this is not it may look great on the surface, but it's got all these flaws. You don't want to do it, you almost need is like, you know, the emotional side and the rational side, but you don't really have the rational side necessarily, do you have your own house that you're buying?
Henny Stier 24:38
It's adding a layer of objectivity, right? And yes, we're basically like a sounding board and a sanity check as well. But also because it's really scary to repurpose and building reports. The job of the person building inspector is to take a magnifying glass and find every single flaw in the property so it could completely freak you out as a buyer to read 50 pages of all the issues in the house. But if you're a buyer's agent and I read these reports, you know, on a daily basis, and I've read 1000s of them, it's very quick for me to tell you, no, no, no, this is actually not a bad one. This is a bad one, the one you're reading is actually not bad. And I'll tell you why. You know, so I think a lot of people miss out on a property because they're overly conservative, which is, it's not a bad thing to be conservative. But if you're overly conservative, and you don't understand the risk, you know, carefully enough and accurately enough, you end up missing out on a property.
Rachel Chappell 25:36
Yep. So when it comes down to that final bid, you know, you've found the house that ticks all the boxes, it's got a good report, and you're ready to put an offer in? How do you do that? How do you know you're not offering too much? How do you know, you know, like, you don't offer too much, but then you don't want to miss out? How do you find that balance of actually, you know, securing the property at the right price.
Henny Stier 26:00
Firstly, you have to understand what the property is worth. And there's actually a science to it is not just randomly, oh, well agency's price guide is this. So if I just offered 10% more, I should get it. A lot of buyers were doing that at the peak of the market, yellow well, all the agents under quote, if they say this, they really want 10% more. So I'll just offer 10% more, and that's the market price. And that's no longer really the case, particularly in, you know, transitioning market, because if you did it that way, you could very well overpay. So you need to understand what the property's worth. And there are, obviously some people use those online reports, or the broker might provide a report, but they're really computerised report, and they're not very accurate. So they're not completely useless. But you need to really take it with a grain of salt, because really the most important comparables are the ones that are the most recent sales for that, you know, that are comparable to that property. And you need to figure out, what are the homes that are comparable to it, you know, what are they selling for? What were they got it at? And what did they sell for in the end? Do they sell at auction? Do they sell private treaty, you know, and you have to be really objective and really put an objective lens when you assess it because you can't go looking at it and go, Oh, well, this house is definitely better or that house is definitely you know worse because of XYZ, you have to really be quite subjective about it, you look at land size, you look at aspect, you look at position, you look at the configuration of the home, you look at the construction of the home, to make sure that you're comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges. Because sometimes it's very difficult, you know, if you're comparing a four bedroom timber cottage against, you know, a four bedroom, double brick house, they're not comparable by construction standard. So you need to be able to weigh these things appropriately, so that you understand the true value of the home. And also buyers have to understand that a lot of homes have what we call an emotional premium. Some homes will fetch above what the property is worth on paper, because it presents beautifully. And people just fall in love when they go there. And that's what we call the emotional premium. So there is a science to it. But there's also an art to it in understanding whether or not this is the type of property that is likely to have a lot of demand or not. Because there are some properties that will appeal to 90% of buyers, and those that will only appeal to 50% of buyers. And they have to be priced accordingly.
Sarah Levett 28:24
A guy often throw this statement around and could be completely no validity to it. But in Sydney, obviously we're one of the most expensive cities in the world now. And so I understand on an extreme level, you can overpay but realistically if you're gonna be there for the for the long haul, you know the saying say it's your family home and you're gonna raise your kids that are that is overpaying? Is that really a huge problem?
Henny Stier 28:50
I guess it depends on how much that money, you know means to you, and how much you know whether or not you think you know, overpaying by $100,000 or $200,000. Would that money make a difference in your life, right. And there are certainly lots of people who really love a home or have that emotional connection to a home or perhaps the parents live one street away, you know, and they want to be close to the grandparents. And they're prepared to pay and overpay in order to secure that property because it has some extra benefits to them over and above what it offers everyone else. But for a lot of people, buying a property is when you make your money, not when you sell. If you buy well, that is when you make your money because a lot of people think oh, well we know when we sell, we just have to get a really good agent and you know, that's how we make our money. No, because you have to buy the right property in the first place. And I'm not opposed to paying a fair price for a property and being really competitive if it's a really, really good, you know, a plus great property because I would rather pay a premium for a plus grade property than get an absolute bargain for a lemon property. So I think it's you know, that the concept of overpaying really relates to the quality of the property to begin with, because I think it's a lot harder to overpay for an A plus grade property than it is to overpay for a lemon. Because if you overpay for a lemon, it's very hard to make that up. If you pay for a plus grade property, you probably could add value, you know, you know easily over time, or it's a type of property that when you want to sell, the demand for it will be high. And therefore other buyers are also likely to pay a premium for it.
Unknown Speaker 30:31
When you're ready to put in the offer. And you've given the price to the agent you're prepared to pay. Do you believe them? If they say we've actually had a higher offer? What's your best offer?
Henny Stier 30:43
Such a tricky question. And the very simple answer is there has to be an element of trust in there somewhere. But it's certainly easier to trust someone if you've known them for a long time. And also if you have a relationship with them, and if you also know what their track record is. So I can usually tell when I'm negotiating with an agent, whether they are telling the truth, whether they're prone to exaggeration, you know whether they're trying to push the price up. So it's really important that you understand how that agent typically behaves, and having a track record. So because we've been around here for 15 years now, a lot of these agents I've dealt with many times, so I can usually tell pretty quickly, if they're laying it on, or if they're being genuine about another offer. But I can certainly understand that it is much harder for the average buyer to know that if this is the first time you've dealt with this agent, and you don't know whether to trust them or not. So you can certainly ask questions that would help you. So you might ask them for information. When did the offer come in? How much was it? Who was the offer made by? What are the terms of their offer? When are they able to exchange so you can certainly ask questions to find out whether or not the agent sounds like it's a genuine offer or not. Right?
Rachel Chappell 32:05
Amazing. I always learned so much from you, Henny. Where can our listeners follow you? Where can they find out more about Henny and your company and what you can do for people buying houses?
Henny Stier 32:19
Look up my articles. You can also find us on our Facebook OH Property or https://ohpropertygroup.com/.
Rachel Chappell 32:28
Thanks, guys. Well, that was an absolutely fascinating interview with Henny from OH property I learned so much. I always learned so much whenever I have a chat to her. So hope you've taken away a few little nuggets of real estate Goodness, no, I
Sarah Levett 32:45
Wow, that's gonna get like captivated by all of that for sure.
Unknown Speaker 32:52
I mean, there's so many different topics in that whole sector isn't there so I'm sure we'll get any back again to talk about some other aspect to buying property. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget, you can follow and subscribe to The Parenting Couch so you never miss an episode. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Just search The Parenting Couch podcast or North Shore Mums we'll be releasing all the details of upcoming interviews got coming onto the show.
Unknown Speaker 33:20
If you want to be a guest on The Parenting Couch podcast, you can just go to North Shore Mums, and go to the contact section there and get in touch yet we'd love to hear from you. If you've got anything you want to talk to us and the parents about some big issues that we all face. Love to hear from you. Thank you again so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure to have your company and we will see you again in two weeks time. Catch you then.