Ric Medlin: the ultimate buyer's agent guide to smooth property settlements

Our guest for episode 05 is Ric Medlin from The Home Buyer Helper, an experienced buyer’s agent who knows Brisbane’s south side inside out, especially the Wynnum/Manly property market.

Ric explains the ultimate buyer’s agent guide to smooth property settlements. He covers why having someone conduct your property inspections when you can’t be there is crucial, how to confidently handle building and pest inspections, and the importance of acting quickly during property settlement negotiations.

George and Ric have an honest conversation about the value of local real estate knowledge, building trust with clients, and knowing when to refer buyers outside your area.

If you want real, practical insights from a buyer’s agent who genuinely cares about getting it right, this episode is for you.

Transcript

Welcome to the Raising the Bar podcast, where we story tell excellence in Queensland Property. I'm your host, George Sourris from Empire Legal.

 Ric Medlin - The Home Buyer Helper.  

That's me. 

Thank you for coming on the show today. 

Absolute pleasure mate. Happy to be here. 

Thank you for being the first person in our new little studio set up. 

What a great little setup. Nice and comfy. 

Thank you sir. You're the first one to sit on that chair.

I'll claim it as mine. We'll put a little 

plaque up. 

Awesome, awesome. How long have you been in the buyer's agent game now?

This is coming up to year five. Excellent. Time goes fast. So it has flown by and 

for most of that time I think we've been working together. 

We certainly have.

Yeah. I don't know how we found each other originally. Maybe a deal we were on or something. 

Mate. It was very early days. I don't remember either. Yeah, it was, I remember it was early, but I remember having that coffee. 

And, here we are. Raising the Bar podcast, the whole point of the podcast is storytelling excellence in Queensland Property.

We think you're pretty excellent, which is why you're here. 

Thanks mate. And I feel the same way about you guys. 

First buyer's agent to sit in the Empire Legal studio. Obviously a testament to how much we trust you and we like what you do and we believe in what you do.

I appreciate that, mate. I really do. 

Property as an industry is pretty interesting. You get a very mixed bag. Our core value is trust. That's how we build our brand. We've referred clients to you. Mm-hmm. And we, we trust what you do. 

Yes, absolutely. And as I said, I really appreciate that and, and I like to only pair with partners that I actually trust as well.

And Empire's been a great partner to work with through that whole time. So it's a good relationship. 

Yeah. Good humans should stick together.

Without a doubt. 

We're going to break this down into three different sections, okay. The whole point is obviously to add value to the audience.

Yes. So I want to kick off with "knowing your niche". So, elaborate on that as you please. Obviously you act as a buyer's agent predominantly. That's your core business. That's your core role, correct? Absolutely. Yep, yep, yep. Tell me more. Let's have a chat about that. Right. 

So my niche is a really good question when it comes to my business.

Yeah. And my business was established intentionally. Yes. To service a particular niche of buyers, as a buyer's agent. So I have the motto, I guess, or the goal of helping ordinary people achieve their property goals. 

Love that. 

So my people, my clients are first home buyers, mums and dads, people who haven't bought property for 30 years.

Those people who really need a hand through the process. 

Yep, yep, yep. Yep. 

Are the people that I work with more often than not. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, if I recall you had another life in the corporate world, was it, it was IT or I did. I had, or something along that line. I had a long 

IT career for about 20 years.

Yep. And even in IT, my focus was all around IT operations and service. Yes. So it was about looking after the customers that use the systems. It was never about the, the tech, it was about the customer experience.

The experience, and then you, you basically, again, correct me if I'm wrong, you scratched your own itch.

I'm looking into the archives of when we first met, when we first caught up. Yeah. Yeah, you, you were helping friends buy a property and then that sort of naturally progressed into you doing what you do, right? 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's how it started. I was helping friends and family through the property journey, and I remember buying a property many years ago and I was talking to a mate and he was buying a property?

At the same time? We were like, there needs to be a book, a guide, something. And 20 years ago, there wasn't everything online. To help people through the process to understand what each step meant, to understand what they needed to do. So it's sort of been rolling around in my head for that long.

So you've been doing this unofficially long before you started the business with helping friends and family? Absolutely. Yeah. And are we talking like, this may sound a bit naive, but is this like pre realestate.com type thing or was that around and people weren't using it? 20 years ago - what was the score?

It wasn't around. Yeah. Okay. Because I'm just trying to think, from memory I was with the age of the internet, that wasn't mainly how it was done. Was it like, no, now you just get on realestate.com, you can look up a property, an area, a price range. It was a totally different beast back then. 

Without a doubt.

And in those days, the properties were in the local paper. Yeah. So your, your local community paper had a real estate section. 

Yep. 

And they'd have little photos and little description, one photo of every property. You'd call the agent, make an inquiry. 

Yeah. 

And a lot of times you'd then meet with the agent, they'd put you in the back of the Commodore or whatever it happens to be, and they'd drive you around to their listings and you'd inspect them.

Huh. So 

you'd go on tour. You on tour? Tour. Like old school? School, old school. Yeah. Yeah. Like when you see people that come from another city or whatever and the agent takes 'em all around. So same concept, just at that local level. Yeah. Going, this is the stock I have. 

That's how it worked. 

It's probably significantly more efficient now.

'cause I imagine we'll get into this a bit later, but, due diligence in what you do. Obviously do a lot of the groundwork, before you actually put your feet on the ground. You're doing it on a computer, you're doing it at home Yeah. Or in the office. Yeah. To research, to strike out the ones that aren't appealing. Yeah.

On your client's brief. 

Exactly. Yeah. The client has a brief and, and my job is to find the property for them. And to do that we have to eliminate a lot. Yes. Before we even inspect a property. 

Yes. 

Don't get me wrong, there's going to be times where something hits the market that day and you're, you're through the door because you know it's going to be competitive.

Yes. But in a majority of cases, we want to have an understanding that it fits brief, that it's not a bad buy, before we even start inspecting it. 

Yeah, of course. Because you are effectively handholding your client, helping them through the journey of buying that home, right?

Exactly, and I I I, it's similar 

to us on the conveyancing side.

Yeah. We're doing the same thing, they engage us and regardless of whether they've never done it as a first home buyer or they've done it before, we're still their guide and we're still the ones that are helping steer them towards the right decision or giving them the information to make a good decision.

And that's something I say to all of the potential clients that I meet with or talk to, is that you can be the heart, and I'll be the head. 

Yeah. Cool, cool. So 

I help 'em through the journey. Cool, cool. I also get to say to a lot of couples, I'm gonna be the third person in your marriage for their property, journey,

right. And it's true, because I get to sit there and talk to both of them and guide them on the path and also guide them through their own thought process and their own bias and their own preconceived ideas about property that may not match their partners. Yeah, true. So it's a really close relationship that I have with my clients to make sure that we're getting from point A, to them getting the keys. 

And they're not always necessarily on the same page. Right? I imagine some definitely not, might be more numbers driven or emotional or what's important to each person. So you're also expectation managing and there's a, yeah, bit of a psychologist.

There's all sorts of stuff. You know what we do! 

I think I, I have an honorary psychology degree when it comes to buying property with people. But even single people or people doing it on their own. Yeah. They really need somebody that they can talk to about that stuff? Yes. That they can be emotional with, that they can have those conversations, talk about their fears, their prejudices, their biases when it comes to property, and have somebody who can listen to that, but also give them some advice. 

Well, that's the thing - you're not only listening, you're then adding value back. Correct. Going, I've seen this before, or this is a trap, or, don't do that.

Or, yes, I like that idea. Let's run with that or add that to the brief. 

Yep. It's very collaborative. It always has to have value to them. It's not just a chat and a whinge about the process or the property or the agent or whatever it happens to be. It's about, okay, now how do we navigate our way through that?

Well, let's jump on that. So keeping in mind, we're talking about a niche here of what you are doing as a buyer's agent. Mm-hmm.

Traditionally, there's different ways a buyer's agent operates in terms of fees, right? Mm-hmm. You'll be able to explain better than me, is some people do fixed fee only, some do a bit of a hybrid and some do commission only.

Is that, correct? 

That is correct. Yep. Yeah. And within those three fee structures, there's differences as well. So, from a fixed fee point of view, some buyer agents may just charge a fixed fee regardless of what they're purchasing. 

Okay. 

Some may have a sliding scale based on the brief, based on the budget,

based on the location, 

yep. 

So that fixed fee could shift. 

Yes. 

But it's always fixed. Right. So, and that's how I operate. 

Yep. 

I can come back to that in a second, but Yes. Yes. You do have commission only buyer's agents. Yep. So they essentially charge you their fee based on a percentage of the purchase price that you pay at the end.

Like most sellers agents. 

Sellers agents, absolutely. So a similar 

concept. Hey, I'm X percent in commission and that's how I operate. Doesn't matter if it's a $500,000 property or $10 million property, I'm taking X percentage. 

Yep. And with that, they could have a sliding scale as well. So if you buy up to $1 million, they may charge 1.5%. If you buy to $2 million, it may be 2.5%. So there can be sliding scales in those as well. 



How does that work then, because you work with first time buyers. That's obviously a chunk of your business, is helping them get into the market. Do you operate a hybrid?

Do you operate a fixed, do you operate a commission only? How does it work with you guys? 

So with The Home Buyer Helper, it is a fixed fee. We have different fixed fees. but there's a minimum fixed fee, obviously, because there has to be. So especially for first home buyers and people spending sort of sub $1 million, there's a fixed fee. 

Excellent. 

It's not dependent on budget. It's not dependent on brief. If you are in that point, there's going to be a fixed fee. You know about it upfront, there's no surprises at the end. 

Big green tick for first home buyer. Correct. They can budget in going, they don't have to stress about what it's going to cost.

They know the cost upfront. They understand the value they're getting. Mm-hmm. That you're going to help them find the property. 

Yep. That's exactly right. 

Probably pretty similar to the conveyancing actually. We operate fixed fee as well, in terms of our structure going, Hey, it's, X dollars to sell, it's Y dollars to buy, and you don't get charged every time we send you an email or every time we pick up the phone, which for us creates that culture if a client wants to know something, they can just ring us and talk to us and not be stressed about, oh, has it been six minutes? I'm gonna get charged 50 bucks or a hundred dollars, or whatever it might be. Yeah. It's none of that. It's just they know what they're up for. It's built on trust. Right. That's, we came back to that at the start.

Yeah. I think for our business and that's why we work together, I believe, is it's trust. And that same exact principle trickles down to the way you deal with your clients. 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I want my clients to sign an agreement knowing exactly what it's going to cost them at the end when they get the keys.

Yes. And for those buyers that are sort of at a higher price point or they've got a more complicated brief, it's the same thing. We still have a fixed fee. It may not be as cheap as our first home buyer, sub 1 million mark. 

Yep. 

But it's agreed to at the time. Yep. So there's still no surprises. 

Yeah. Awesome.

Do you do a bit of work with non-first home buyers as well? 

I do. Okay. Non-first home buyers, my usual niche is going to be, mums and dads, who may be relocating to Brisbane or they haven't bought property before, they've been saving their entire time. Just ordinary families that are trying to buy a home. 

For some reason, I, I seem to get a lot of people who are later stage of life that haven't bought for a long time. They may have lost a partner who did all that stuff, and they need to downsize. Okay. They're out of their, out of their depth, out of their depth, or scared, so they want somebody that they can rely on to help them through the journey.

And also a lot of first time investors. So first time investors, I do a fair bit of work with, because they tend to be a bit more emotional than a really seasoned property investor. 

Oh, of course they would be, because if it's their first investment, that's probably all their money going into this property.

Right? Most of the time? Yeah. The majority of people are tipping in whatever they can to get that investment property to get to that next step. Yeah. 

And for those people, it's not just about the numbers. The first time investors can be a little bit more emotional, they look at property still through the lens of an owner occupier, instead of just a pure investment lens.

Huge switch, isn't it? Yeah. 

Massive switch. Yeah. 

Especially if you've only had owner occ stuff in the past. 

Yep. 

Then going, alright, don't be emotional about this. You have to use your head. 

Without a doubt. 

Literally. We might actually segue to the second point, which is some of the due diligence process that you go through.

You'd have a shopping list of things you'd look for, how do you even begin to navigate that? Like, I like. 

Where does it start? 

Yeah. Yeah. To be honest, I don't know. I'm not a buyer's agent. I get the contract once it's all signed up and you found the place. So there's a hundred steps that have gone into getting to the point where we even talk about helping a client. Yep.

That you've already done. 

Yep. Due diligence in Brisbane, in southeast Queensland, the first thing is always flood maps, right? Yeah. Huge. So that's the no-brainer. That's the first step, and that's probably the first question that every single person asks when they sign up or they talk to me about signing up is, do you check for flooding? 

That's what they come to you and ask about. Yeah. Which is ironic, isn't it? Because if you look at the REIQ contracts and your Standard Terms in the way contracts are done here in Queensland, no rights for buyers if there's flooding problems. 

Correct.

Whatsoever. 

Yep. 

Even if it's, yep, this thing's been underwater, it's too bad, so sad, should have done your due diligence. 

Exactly. 

Which is such an awesome point that you do, is you look after that for the client. Because unless someone's seasoned and checks a flood map or has a buyer's agent or representative that knows how to navigate that, some people wouldn't even have a clue.

They wouldn't. No. And they buy it and it would settle, because we don't look at that at the conveyancing side unless a client asks, because there are no rights for that. If they've signed it, they can't get out of that contract because of flooding. 

Mm-hmm. 

And they may be just none the wiser. And then,  something happens and it floods and they go, why didn't anyone tell me?

And the other part of that is they can talk to the selling agent who can say, oh, it's never flooded, right? 

Mm-hmm. 

Doesn't mean it's not on a flood map. It doesn't mean it's not on a flood risk map. Fair. It doesn't mean your insurer's going to cover it. 

Yep. 

So, even though it may never have flooded in the past, it could still have a high likelihood of flooding at some point in the future, which is going to impact your insurance.

It's going to impact your risk. 

Yeah. 

We want to dig a little deeper into that. We can always look and go, no, it's never flooded. 

Yep. 

But we want to understand what the projected risk of flooding is. That's the first part of due diligence.

For, for pretty much everybody. That's what they wan to check first.

. So that's sort of like the, you can knock out a property pretty quickly if it's in a flood plain or it's potentially there going, you know what, let's just not worry about that one, because that's gonna be a problem for you. Or could be a problem for you. 

It could be, but could be. The, the flip side of that is that there's some areas that.

Pretty much the entire suburb is on a flood map. Mm-hmm. But people still buy there. People still live there quite happily. 

Brisbane River Main. Exactly. You've got multimillion dollar homes that are prone to flood sitting on a flood map. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. 

So it's a conversation with the decline in that case is you wanna live in this suburb.

Yeah. It's prone to flooding. Yeah. What does that look like from your risk? Yeah. You know, do you, do we need to make sure that the, the way that it's built, that the insurance is gonna be okay. All of those factors mm-hmm. Have to come into the conversation, not just strike it off. Yeah. 'cause you've just struck off a whole suburb.

Yeah. In some cases. 

Yeah. And I guess depending on the brief, someone may wanna live in a particular, even pocket, right? Like, and then you're getting right down narrow. 

Mm. 

Yeah. 

If you wanna live on the river, yeah. You've got a risk. 

I like that. That's pretty simple, isn't it? Yeah. It's pretty simple math.

Yeah. But you just look around Brisbane, the, the property on the river is expensive. It's great property. It has great amenities. People wanna live there. Yeah. So they do wear that risk. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Even like when you talk about due diligence as well. I remember I heard this a while ago and it sort of stuck with me.

Something might look really good on paper, say, you know, you go through your process and it all looks pretty good. You go out to that property and then you realise, I can hear the train or I can hear planes flying over, which look to some people, they don't care. Train's, probably a bit annoying for me, but the planes; I grew up in Carina, it's on the flight map, it's a problem.

It's always been a problem. And I don't even hear the planes. 

I have a client at the moment that's a plane spotter. He, he wants to be near the planes. Right. 

Wow. That's, that's, it's pretty different. Yeah. That's cool. But some people just don't 

want any noise at all. Yeah. Correct. And inspecting a property is a great way to tick off a lot of due diligence items.

Right? Yeah. So you want to understand the location, the amenities, the condition of the property, what the neighbourhood looks like. That all plays in a part of, of due diligence. But beyond that, you've got all sorts of things depending on the property and where it is. Mm-hmm. So if you're looking at an apartment, for example, you want to dig deep into the body corporate disclosure, and you want to understand 

Yeah, 

yeah, yeah.

Where the maintenance items are, where the special levies are, what was discussed at the last AGM. But we want to have that visibility. We want to see where the control room for the lift is. If there's risk of flooding into that, we want to understand how you access the car park. 

Yep. 

We want to, is there 

problems with the building, are the neighbours busting up, pets so many things where the, where are the bins?

How does the truck get in? True. There's so much stuff that that forms due diligence as part of the process, but it's really dependent on the property. Yes. The property type, and essentially what the buyer is willing to accept. So yes, there's a list. Some of those things will apply for each property, some won't.

Mm-hmm. So you're buying a free freestanding home, there's nobody corporate stuff to understand. But we may want to understand approved buildings or additions on the property. We may want to understand what the neighbours are planning on doing with that empty space in the backyard that's potentially going to be subdivided.

True. So there's a, it's a whole different, it's 

actually, they're totally different products, aren't they? Yeah. Comparing a freestanding home to a body corporate property. Yeah. They're totally different problems. Mm-hmm. And even what you said before, I really liked, it's the house or the property, is one component.

It's only a component. You have to look at the suburb, the street, the aspect - if it's north facing is obviously attractive to a lot of people, but not to everyone. There's some that will not buy, right? If it's facing a certain way or, 

but also what do you want to be north facing?

What do you want to be south? Do you want your front of the property to be south facing? Do you want your kitchen to have morning sun? Do you want your kitchen to have afternoon sun? So the aspect plays a part in how you live in the property. 

True. 

It's not always just, it faces X. That's a problem. You can't really rule that out.

If you're in the UK and you want a nice south facing garden, kind of a different story. In Queensland, what you don't want is a west facing balcony in the afternoons because it's going to cook. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

So it's understanding how the property sits and what the floor plan is when it comes to aspect. Oh, 

such a great point.

You talk about a lot of properties on the Gold Coast, right? Mm-hmm. I'm living down that way now, so it's pretty topical for me. But you look at all these canal properties, I imagine you want your backyard to be north facing. You want the canal frontage to be facing north, not the front of the house.

I had a client who was Sydney based a few years ago, and she was buying an apartment on the Gold Coast. Yep. Great example. And she said, the balcony must be west facing. And I was like, why do you want a west facing balcony? She said, because I want to come home from work, I want to enjoy some sunshine, have a drink.

Whatever. And I said, you're going to cook. 

Mm-hmm. 

And she's like, what do you mean? I said, glaring afternoon, Queensland sun. 

Bad idea. Yeah. On the western side. 

Bad idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it really took her actually being at a property in the afternoon to go, oh no, I don't want this at all. Yeah, because it was hot.

Yes. And we just started avoiding those. Right. But it was that preconceived bias, perception, whatever it happened to be, just based on living somewhere else that that made her think that's what she wanted. So all of those things add up depending on the property and the brief. 

I reckon that probably moves pretty well onto the next point about, what you do for your clients and how you help them find property.

But before we jump into that 

mm-hmm. 

Fun fact. You are, you are still a marriage celebrant, is that correct? 

I am a marriage celebrant, yeah. Yeah. So I'm an authorised celebrant, yes. 

Yeah. 

Cool. So I can find you a home and marry you. That is awesome. If need be, I can do a baby naming if you like, and you know, when we get to the end, I can, I can help with the the departure arrangements as well.

So yeah, I do. Celebrancy work as well. Yeah. It's a good little side gig, I guess, but it's something that I, I really enjoy. 

Mate I could tell by the smile that it lit you up, so that's awesome. Yeah. I remember when we first met. I'm like, that is cool. That is cool. I, I don't know any celebrants.

You're the only one I know. There you go. I really 

like being part of people's journeys. Yeah. So whether that's buying a home, buying an investment property, getting ahead financially, getting to the location they want to live in or the rest of their life, their personal

really family stuff, getting 

married.

I just love that part of, 

just genuine that connection. It's, Hey, when you meet good humans and you help people, people yeah. People, 

yeah. 

Your service is like ours, it's not just you're a commodity on a conveyor belt, and at the end of the day you collect a cheque Yep. It's actually not about that at all.

Exactly. It's the polar opposite of that. Correct. With our service, there's been times where we've actually said, we're maybe not the best fit for you. I'm going to introduce you to these people over at XYZ firm, that are better suited to help you. And, okay yeah, we're giving revenue away, but I don't care.

The ethos of our business is everyone that comes through our door has a good experience. 

Mm. 

And if we can't deliver that five star service, we actually don't want to deliver it at all. 

Yeah, I feel the same way. Yeah. And, and there's been potential clients in the past, from a buyer's agency perspective, where I thought, this just isn't the right fit for us.

Yeah. And I've said to them, I think you need to find a different buyer's agent, who's going to work more in line with the way that you want to achieve your goals. 

Yeah, yeah. But that's just also knowing your client and knowing what value you add and what you want to help people with as well.

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Jumping in then, let's just i'm going to look at my little cheat sheet over here. I've got, there is a little cheat sheet down here, guys. Alright. I have industry secrets for people looking to buy. What is the tea? 

What is the tea? 

What is the score, mate? I know it's a very broad question.

It's a really broad question. I'll let you run free range.

All right. There's a few things that come to mind when I, when I hear that and, yep. The first thing that comes to mind is probably a little controversial for some of the sales agents out there, and for a lot of buyer's agents is the concept of "off market" properties.

Hmm. 

A lot of buyer's agents really spruik their access to off market properties. 

Oh, that's the pitch I hear all the time. All the time. And I've got access to all these properties and ok, how. 

Exactly. Yeah. Right. And look, I'm not going to say they don't exist. Off market properties absolutely exist, and I've purchased some that are true off market properties, but there's still the concept of saying a property's off market is a marketing tool.

Yeah, what does that mean? What does that mean? Like, is it not on realestate.com? Have they sent that out to their network of sellers agents? What? What's that even mean? 

I got an email as I got out of the car, which was an off market property from a real estate agent. I know this agent really well.

I know that that "off market" exclusive went to every buyer's agent on her database and probably every buyer on her database. True. So the exclusivity factor Yeah. That people think, oh, we got it off market is not always there. Mm-hmm. And you can't tell me that a property with a giant sign on the fence that says "off market - call agent" is an off market property.

My brain's malfunctioning a bit there. I've seen it. Hang on. It's crazy. 

It's it's not off market. Yeah. A true off market property to me is something that is only exclusively shown to a handful of buyers. Yes. Or selected buyers who have a need for a specific property type, a specific budget, if there's discretion required by the seller.

Mm. If there's a, a circumstance, that means that it just really shouldn't be publicly displayed, right? 

Which seems quite odd to me in itself. So if you're a seller, wouldn't you want as many eyeballs as possible over that property? In 

99% of cases, without a doubt. 

But you are saying, if there may be super private people or they're, they're, well, don't want people to go through. Okay. That's good example. 

And, and just as a, an everyday one, I purchased an off market property late last year for a client. The reason being is that the sellers were building a new home.

Yep. 

And they had reached a point where they had some cashflow issues. Mm-hmm. So they needed to sell their existing home and rent it back. 

Yep. 

So that they could continue on with their build. 

Right. 

They didn't want anybody to know that. 

Fair. 

So it was essentially an off market conversation, and that was a 

good example of when off market is the right choice.

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

I'm not saying they don't happen. Absolutely, they do. It happen and you can get some, some great properties off market. Yep. You, you've got a question why a seller wouldn't want it. 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking - wouldn't you want as many eyeballs as possible on this thing to get the best money possible?

It's probably a contentious issue for agents and some buyer agents that, that I've brought it up, but you've really got to understand why a property's on the market, how it's being marketed. 

Mm. 

How the agents' presenting it to the market and what the motivation is to get it sold.

That's probably the first little tip that is a bit of tea for, for want of a better word. 

What a different way to look at the words "off market". That's a huge shift, isn't it? Because people hear the words "off market", it's like a buzzword and they go, oh, I've got exclusive access to this property.

Yeah, but there you go. Peek behind the curtain. Not necessarily. They've just blasted that out to a whole network of people, or they've stuck a sign up out the front. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How is, how is 

that off market? Everybody driving past can see it. It's on the market. Yeah, 

maybe they haven't copped the realestate.com ad.

Mm. And that's how things saying it, it's off market. But 

look, that's, people know about it, that's another one. You know, the, the seller doesn't want to pay for marketing, right? So in some cases it's a marketing technique. Forgive me agents for, for heading down that path. But in reality it really is. Mm. So. As a buyer's agent, I say to people all the time, my job is to find you the right property.

Yes. Whether it's on market, off market, withdrawn from market, hiding under a rock, coming next week, wherever it is, I want to make sure that we find the right asset. 

Yep.

Because property's an asset whether you're emotionally attached to it or not. 

Mm-hmm. 

At the right price. Yeah. That's, that's my job. 



At the end of the day. 



Do you want more tea? 

If you've got more. I'm still processing what you said before. I've been in the conveyancing real estate game for seven years. Mm-hmm. And I've always, I've taken the, the off market bait. I've actually taken the bait, if it's like, oh, this is off market.

Like, oh man, I better go look at it, because it's exclusive. It's just a, it's just marketing, not always, not always, not always. Not always. But it, it could be a very good marketing tool. 

Correct. 

There you go. Correct. Yeah. Go agents, you guys, that's why you guys are master sellers. You guys know what you're doing.

That's exactly 

right. I think the other tip that I give to everybody is whether you're engaging a buyer's agent or doing it on your own, is do your own pricing research. You can talk to agents and they'll give you a guide of as to what the property's gonna fetch in the market. 

Yep. 

You can look online.

Banks have, price guides on their apps. There's different valuation tools online that people can plug in an address and it'll say it's worth X amount of dollars. You spit out a number 

or a range or whatever. Yeah. 

The thing to bear in mind is that those tools are data driven, so it's going to look at properties in a certain radius that have the same criteria.

Yes. And go, this is probably what it's worth. Yes. Right. That doesn't take into account the condition of that property. It doesn't take into account the seller's motivation. It doesn't take into account how well it's marketed. It doesn't take into account the outlier that was sold at $200k more than it should have been.

Yes. Which is And bumped everybody up the stats. Yeah. Yeah. Or the one that was sold really low. So you may go, oh, that looks really cheap compared to everything else, but maybe a couple of really bad properties got offloaded cheap and that's skewed the data. So it's a guide, but it's a good idea to do your own research and go, okay, well what has sold in the area?

Yes. 

Put in your criteria. Find out what's sold. Make a list. Compare those properties. Did this one have a view? Did this one have a new kitchen? What explains the pricing? So don't just take agent word, app word internet word, dig deeper. It's your money. 

That also blows my mind. You talk about a pre-settlement inspection, right?

We tell all of our clients on the buying side, you are entitled to this, you should go through the property, purely, even if it's just to make sure the removalists haven't taken out a wall or something like that, but it's your right to do it, why wouldn't you? I've seen people that fly to Sydney to go look at a car, for example. Mm-hmm. You know, myself, I've, I've done that. I've jumped on a plane before i've gone and spent money on a car. To check it out, get a mechanic to see it.

I want to sit with my own eyes. I want to drive it. I want to hear it. I want to make sure it's what I want. Yep. Before I commit and give tens of thousands of dollars away. Times that number by, a much bigger multiplier when you're looking at property. Exactly. And some people are buying things sight unseen, and you think, man, like unless they, unless you're a baller.

Unless you're super wealthy, even then I'd say you probably should still go do it. You need to go and see the property. That's a big part of what you do, right? You've got all this experience, but you are also using your senses when you go to these properties and you can tell if something's asbestos by the way the roof looks, or you've got a pretty good guess, whether it is or not.

Yeah. You know, probably better than most because this is what you do for a living. Whereas your average Joe might roll into an old house and have no clue about asbestos and it may not be disclosed, and then they don't even know what they're buying. 

Yep. Look, I'm a firm believer that I will never recommend to a client that they purchase a property that I haven't seen touched and smelt.

Right. Awesome. 

Yep. 

A lot of people buy property sight unseen through a video. 

Yep. 

You cannot smell mould through a video. True. Right. I was with a client on inspection a couple of weeks ago and she was, she was following me around. She goes, I, it's just fascinating watching you work. I was literally standing in the shower sniffing it, because I had this hint that I could smell mould, and the only way I could do it was to get in there and shut the door.

Yeah. Like, I'm not weird, I swear. This is just what we do. It's it not some sort of weird thing that I, 

So you, you wanna make sure that you have done those things. You've seen it, you've touched it, you've smelt it. Yes. You've looked over the fence. What are the neighbours doing? Is there a meth lab next door?

You really want to have visibility of that property before you make an offer, right? That's the first time you should view a property is before you make an offer, which is gonna upset the borderless buyers agents out there who do do this stuff remotely for their clients or their data driven.

The second time you want to inspect it is right before you get the keys. Mm-hmm. Pre-settlement inspection. Yeah. Yeah. I had some clients last year. We were one day from settlement.

Somebody posted on a local Facebook page that a property that was on the market had been broken into overnight and they'd seen the criminals running away from the property.

I was on Facebook the next day. It was my local Facebook group. Yep. And I went, oh. I think that's our house. 

Mm-hmm. 

We were settling the next day. 

Mm-hmm. 

I called the agent, told her, and we were like, we need to get to this property straight away. 

Yes. 

And the risk we ran. Well, we were going to walk in there and find that somebody had broken in and trashed it.

Somebody had broken in and stolen stuff. Thankfully they didn't. 

It wasn't that property. 

It was that property. Oh, okay. For sure. 

Oh, so they had broken into that property? They had broken into that property, yeah. Okay. 

But they'd done nothing. So we think somebody scared them off. 

Okay, cool, 

cool. These things can happen.

You know, you also hear horror stories of, of of sellers taking the curtains, taking the carpet. 

We deal with that every day of the week. They take the built-in fridges, yeah, the light bulbs, washing machine, all sorts of stuff. You know what, it's not necessarily a black or white answer. No. When it comes to what's "fixed" and what's not. It usually gets to the point where you've got lawyers firing letters off at each other. That's not where you want to land. 

No.

Especially the day you're getting the keys to your new home, you just don't want to have to deal with it. So making sure that you get there, have a look around, make sure everything's as you expect it to be, is a really, really good idea. 

And I think it's actually a no brainer. Anyone that doesn't do that, it's a, it's a red flag for me.

And 

if you can't be there, get somebody to go on your behalf. 

Yeah. 

Right. Yeah. If 

you're on a holiday, you're away. Get your folks, get anyone to come and look through that property. Does it look okay? Is there chunks of wall missing? Yep. Because if so, you've gotta get on the phone to us so we can fix the problem before it settles.

Once it settles, it's often too late to actually get a solution. 

Correct. 

We want to fix that before. 

The other part of it that just came to mind is that you may do a building and past inspection and something comes up and the agent says, yeah, we're going to take care of it. 

Yeah. 

Right. A broken gate latch or something.

Right. You just wanna be there and check those things. 

Has that been done? Because Yeah. Again, it's, yeah. I, I say to, to our clients, it's like trying to get blood out of a stone once it settles. Yeah. You may technically have a right, but good luck. They've got their money, they've run off into the sunset.

Mm-hmm. And more often than not, unless it's a very expensive problem, it's not worth the money, let alone the time or the stress to pursue it. Whereas if you catch it before, you've got leverage. Mm-hmm. It hasn't settled yet. In saying that, we may not necessarily be able to hold up the settlement, but we can usually work with the agents and the other side to come to some sort of solution.

Yep. 

Even if it's, hey let's throw some money in trust, a few grand. You said you'd get that gate fixed. You haven't. We'll still settle. 

Mm-hmm. 

When you fix the gate, we'll give you money back. 

Yep. 

And if you don't, we'll use that money to fix the gate. 

To fix the gate. 

Boom. Everyone's happy.

Everyone's happy. A solution. 

Yep. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Let's jump into the last point. Wynnum Manly.

My home. 

Your home. It's been a place very close to my heart as well. I spent four years at the Manly Hotel. Ooh. Pouring schooners of XXXX Gold. Yep. When I was doing my law degree.

Yeah. My dad's always had boats down at RQ, at the marina. Mm-hmm. Love the Bayside. I've seen it change a lot since I was in high school. I went to Iona College in the Bayside.

It has changed significantly, and I've lived there a few decades now. Yep. And just to see the shift has been phenomenal.

Shout out to 4178, 4179 Wynnum Manly. Love that area. We've got our Manly office down there, which we love. But what I want to talk about in this last little section is areas you service. Mm-hmm. Because you said before that you like to see, touch, feel, et cetera, the properties that you inspect for your clients.

Yep. What does that look like for Ric and the team? Where, where do you service?

Wynnum Manly is my home and the surrounding area is the area that I know the best.

Yes, right. Just because 

you've bought and sold there, you've lived there, you just, yeah. You know the area really well. So 

local knowledge is so incredibly important. Especially when you're engaging a buyer's agent, right? You want somebody who knows that that street's okay, but that one's not so good.

I definitely service that area, but through the years I've built agent relationships and started to understand the benefits of different areas across Brisbane. Yes. Generally the south side of Brisbane. Yep. The Redlands, i've bought a fair amount of property in Logan area. 

Yep. Right. 

Logan's 

underrated.

It's a whole other conversation, but I think Logan - close to Brisbane, close enough to the Gold Coast. Correct. Look at Daisy Hill. 

They're great areas, there's good schools, there's good amenities, there's good access to infrastructure.

Yep. 

There's good buying. There's still some affordable property down there. There's some areas that you may not particularly want to take the risk in.

Certain pockets or suburbs, even still suburbs, right. But the same thing happens anywhere. 

Yeah. Eventually 

give it time. It's still proximity to Brisbane and I think proximity to Gold Coast.

But as a buyer's agent, I've bought from the Gold Coast up to Nambour and out to Ipswich. 



Would I do that every day? No. I'm happy to talk to potential clients about that, depending on what their brief is, depending on what their budget is and we come up with a way that we can do that or I can refer 'them onto somebody I know is a good BA in those areas.

What happens if it's outside of your area? So is it similar to what we do? Like I was saying before, where we go, you know what, I'm actually probably not your guy because it's in, I don't know, north of Sunshine Coast or something, and you may not service there or want to go up there, or know the area, you'll just refer them to someone you know that you trust.

Yes, exactly. Same as 

us. Yeah. Same as us. Very similar philosophy going, you know what? You may be able to help thme find a great property, but you'd probably sleep a bit better at night knowing that they're with the guy up there that does that for a living. 

Yeah. Yeah. I think those redirections of clients happen in two ways.

A potential client who I just don't think I want to work with because there's a clash of personality, or I feel their expectations are really not achievable. 

And you can usually smell that from a mile away, right? Yeah. It's actually not going to be a good fit for me. 

Yeah. And, and I'll say to them, look, I don't think you're going to achieve what you're going to achieve.

Go back and, and revisit what you want.

If I think somebody's going to be a great client, they've got good expectations, not necessarily a good budget, but the right budget for what they want. 

Yep. Yep. 

I'll happily refer them to BA's that I know will take care of them. 

BA's = Buyer's Agent.

Yeah. Yeah. Just for, yeah. Sorry. No, it's all good. It's normal lingo for you and me, but I know who knows who's listening to this business analyst. Yeah. Buyer's agent. Buyer's agent. Buyer's agent. 

So I will, yeah, definitely refer them. I know a lot of really good buyer's agents across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria. I belong to a mentoring program of buyer's agents who are heavily invested in making sure our industry offers really good service to clients. 

Yes. That's beyond Queensland as well, isn't it? Well beyond Queensland. You work with guys from other states? Yeah. I 

can refer people to those people, regardless of where they are. 

Do you get briefs where people like, oh, I want to buy, I don't know, in New South Wales or whatever.

Does it happen often or? I get inquiries for it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. People call 

up and they go, look, I found you on Google. Do you service New South Wales? I'm not licensed to buy in New South Wales. 

Okay. It's another whole different kettle of fish. Yeah. It's a whole other kettle of fish and 

I think that's also a good tip.

If you're engaging a buyer's agent, one of the first things you should ask them is, are you licensed to purchase in the state that I want to purchase in? Because unfortunately, some people aren't and they still buy property. So it's a bit of cowboy country around. Yeah. It's a little bit. We're 

up in Queensland, but we're getting, it's getting better.

Yeah. They're building better systems and processes all the time. Yeah. Yes. 

If I'm not licensed in the state, it's an automatic referral. Of course. I can't help you. If somebody says to me, I want to buy in Toowoomba. 

Yeah, 

right. There's a conversation that I have about what that looks like.

Can I take on a client with that brief? Do I have the capacity? Do I have the means at that particular point in time to service that client and service them well? 

Yes. 

If the answer's no, I'm going to refer them somewhere else. But we may be able to work together if it's the right fit, the right brief, the right timing.

Because as a business, I won't take on more clients than we can actually serve at any one point. Yeah. It's you want to give them that good experience. Right. 

Otherwise they're not going to have access to you. They're not going to have that Rolls Royce experience. Yeah. You want them to finish and go, yep, that was tops.

Yeah. I will tell my family and friends about Ric. Exactly. That's the goal, right? I also won't 

take on a competing brief. I don't want to have two clients looking for the same thing in the same budget, in the same area. 



Because if we find it, who buys 

it?

I want to make 

sure that if I'm servicing this particular client, one of my clients is not competition for that property. 

Yeah. From the bottom of your heart, everything is helping that client find that brief. Yep. Yeah. That's awesome. Yep. Yep. Like, we don't act on both sides of a transaction.

We legally can, but we don't want to do that. No. How can, how can I help you sell and this guy buy and I'm the, the source of truth and the escalation point for both. Yeah. Messy. Yeah. It's the conflict. It's messy. It's a bit murky, isn't it? It's messy. We don't like being in those waters. 

It just does not sit well with me at all.

Yeah. 

Yep. So I guess that's a really good point for a local person with local knowledge. I think if I rung you and said, Hey Ric, I want to buy in in Byron Bay, you'd probably be like, mate, that's not my bread and butter. Mm-hmm. I got a few guys down there I'll put you in touch with.

Is that, is that a pretty fair cop? 

Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what I would do. 

And you know what? I think if you said, oh yeah man, I can help you in Byron Bay, and I say, oh, what do you know about Byron Bay? And you say, nothing. Well, there's that erosion of trust. I'm totally picking up what you're putting down with the way your business operates.

Yeah, 

I've got one more thing for you. 

Okay. 

I have a little question here. 

Yeah. 

A unique question that we ask everybody. 

Okay. I'm not prepared. 

We are here to raise the bar after all. 

Mm-hmm. 

In property. Yes. What is your golden nugget to share with listeners on your life experience so far?

It can be anything you want. You can have a few seconds to think about it. Just a golden nugget that's in Ric's head that someone listening to this might want to hear about. 

It doesn't have to be related to property? 

Anything, anything that's going to add value to someone that might be listening to this?

This is something that I've always applied to my professional life and my personal life, my, my entire career. When I worked in IT, I managed large teams of people and, and dealt with clients, customers, difficult, easy, the whole works. And the, the thing that always came to mind is that you catch more flies with honey.

So if you treat people well,

show them respect, 



you're going to be able to grow your business, your reputation, and your trust. That's my golden nugget. 

It's pretty simple maths, isn't it? Yeah, it's so true, isn't it? It's so true. It's easier to smile than frown as well, isn't it? Exactly. Yep.

You catch more flies with honey, 

you catch more 

flies with honey. And you actually do. You do. Yeah, you do. Same. The saying is true. 

Yeah. 

I reckon we might wrap it up there. Awesome. Hopefully whoever's listening in or watching, if you're on YouTube or the other platforms, thanks for giving it a listen.

Hopefully you learn something, you've got something out of it, and your property journey is as smooth as it can be.

Simple, sunny and smooth sailing guys. That's our philosophy here at Empire Legal. Quite literally. 

What a great philosophy. 

I love boats. So when Abi and I were putting our little slogan in, I wanted sailing to be in there somewhere. Yeah, yeah. Which is pretty cool. 

Yep. 

Wynnum Manly. It's all close to the Bay.

Oh mate. 

Perfect place. 

Yeah, it is. It's a good spot. Underrated spot. I reckon. Watch this space. Give in 10 years. Give it. Yeah. Give Wynnum Manly, It's gonna be, yeah, it's already run compared to where it was. It's come a long, long way and I think it's not finished. 

There's been significant growth, but there's a lot more in it.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure the yacht squadron down there is the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere, if I'm correct, correct? I believe so, yes. In the southern hemisphere. Yes. And you think about we've got Gold Coast, there's Sydney like this, this Manly boat. Harbor is as big as it gets big as it gets in the southern hemisphere.

Pretty cool. And I think 

when you look at that part of Brisbane, so that east side out to the Bay, you've got accessibility to both coasts in an instant. 10 minutes and you're on the the highway either way. 

Mm-hmm. 

Train. Airport's not far away, still close to the city, and you have the bay. It's magic formula, in my opinion.

Just super quickly when you talk about that area, look at what's happened out at Birkdale and, and even all the way out to the Redlands. Yep. Isn't it unbelievable those property prices? I look at some stuff that's happening around the Birkdale area, which if you're not familiar, it's not too far from Wynnum Manly on the Bayside heading out towards Cleveland.

It's phenomenal the growth that they've had out there. Yeah. And I don't think they're done either. 

No. Yeah. It's always been a sleepy little secret. Mm-hmm. But it's waking up.

They call it the Deadlands. They're wrong. The, the Redlands. The Redlands is a space to watch, right? I, 

I think you're absolutely spot on.

Yeah. It's a great place to buy. And I've got clients that are noticing that as well. We've bought a few in the Redlands recently, so. It's a good place to buy. 

If anyone has any questions, it's cool for them to reach out to you? 

Anytime. 

Yep. 

Happy to have a chat. Anytime with anybody. 

Perfect. Thanks for your time. Thanks mate.