Property Law, Market Trends & Risk – Insights with David Buckley

Fraser Coast Property Brief – Episode 11
 Property Law, Market Trends & Risk – Insights with David Buckley

Behind every property deal is a legal process that shapes the outcome. In this episode, Glen sits down with David Buckley, Managing Director of Bell Dixon Butler Lawyers, to break down what is happening across the Fraser Coast market from a legal perspective.

You will hear how busy conveyancing is right now, which sectors are driving activity, and what trends are emerging across residential, off the plan, and commercial transactions. David shares what he is seeing on the ground, including settlement volumes, buyer behaviour, and how global factors are influencing confidence and deal flow.

The episode also unpacks the new Queensland seller disclosure laws and what they mean in practice. You will learn what Form 2 disclosure involves, who is responsible, and where buyers and sellers are exposed if it is done wrong.

Key topics include:
 • Off the plan contracts, sunset clauses, and buyer risk
 • When to engage a solicitor and common contract mistakes
 • The difference between residential and commercial transactions
 • Retail vs commercial leases and who pays legal costs
 • Why commercial sales are more complex and require specialist contracts

If you are buying, selling, leasing, or investing, this episode gives you a clear view of the legal side of the market and how to protect your position.

A practical, straight talking conversation with insights you can apply to your next deal.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Fraser Coast Property Brief, the podcast where property, development, and business leaders share what's really happening across the Fraser Coast. Each episode brings you insights into local projects, market trends, and the people helping shape the future of our region. Welcome to Fraser Coast Property Brief, episode 11. Today we're talking about property law, market trends, and the risks involved with it with David Buckley, the managing director of Bell Dixon Butler. David, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Yes. So maybe just give us a little bit of history about yourself. You've been a long-term local and you know how you arrived at becoming managing director of the biggest law firm in the bay.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Blastman Standing. So I've been went right through school in Harvey Bay and at the end of 87 left for uh university and working in uh Brisbane CBD law firms. And uh when I left I vowed very strongly and honestly that I'd never come back. Thank you very much. And my late 20s I was working in uh Brisbane, looking at the next 20, 30 years of a legal career in a concrete jungle, and decided I want to live and work two streets from the beach in the town I grew up in and make a contribution here. And uh I arrived back in '98 and fell into Beldics and Butler and uh been doing property and commercial law ever since. And um you get a eclipse managing director in a law firm when you don't run out the door fast enough, is the way it happens.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

So you're one of those rare ones that come back to the bay, which has been some of our preview topics, how to get the youth back here. So you're an example.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

It is more common than you think. Uh when they, as I say, not their 20s, but their their late 20s, early 30s. There is a desire to come back because the appeal of Harvey Bay talks to that that age group. You can raise kids here, you can have a family here, you can make a contribution, you can do a business career here. There is a lot to lure them back at that age.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

All right. So your specialty is uh property law and predominantly commercial law and off-to-plan selling and that with us. So I want to run through those issues today. I know it's a lot broader um place in your business, but uh we'll focus on property on this side. So let's start with conveyancing. You know, how busy is is it right now? You know, what are what are the volumes? Are they up or do they down?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Or look, up until last month, I would say they were comparable to the pre-GFC, early 2000s boom era. Uh they uh about 2008-2009 dropped down a half, and that level maintained until COVID. The post-COVID boom has been basically double that level. Um what's uh changed in the past month has been the Iran war and the fuel price problem has uh pulled a great big bucket of cold water and buyer sentiment. So we're seeing a significant change in numbers of deals being done.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

All right. So what's still going? Is it established houses? Is it off-the-plan selling, apartments, homes? Where's the focus at the moment in the market?

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Oh the stock that is here is moving, so I think is the answer to that. So there is plenty of uh established houses that keep turning over.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Uh, and there's a there's still a level of activity. It's just not as uh there's not as many transactions now as there were six weeks ago. Um there is still the land sales are still going, but the stock shortage is driving the quantity of that, uh, as you well know from your business. Um the there is still a significant change over in retirement accommodation, the land lease communities, the Saranitases and um those sort of communities, they're still a very popular market. We're seeing resales of that go through uh regularly with our place. Off-the-plan unit sales, uh there's not a lot of them because there's not a lot doing them. Walter OEZ is doing Opal to Anna Shelley Beach, and we've seen contracts go for that, but there's not a lot of stock available.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

All right. So, what about the commercial side? Um, you know, it's an industrial retail office. What's what's still moving in that sector?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Uh stratated commercial offices, if you can build them, you can sell them, you can lease them. Yep. Um, so we're doing those at the moment. There is a demand in excess of the stock available. Um and beyond that, you're seeing um there's still, I think, uh an underlying demand for good industrial commercial spaces. You see Drury Lane moving, you see the airport uh estate stuff turning over um and being developed with new businesses. So I I still think there's an underlying activity there driven by the Harvey Bay base, medical, the services industries uh in particular.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Yeah, yeah, we're we're seeing it a lot in the industrial. I think Maggie goes to see the muffin man out drew lane just about every day. We've got a lot of properties out there and industrial because it's it hangs off the building sector as well, because there's a lot of um industries that rely on you know our building, so from painters to storage or everything like that. So it's it's going pretty strong as far as I can see. So we touched on the Iran war a minute ago. So how much is that instability making buyers cautious? Are they uh are they just holding back through fear, or is it becoming a problem where the banks or contracts are falling over because of that instability?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

We're seeing it in buyer sentiment rather than bank finance issues at the moment. And it's like uh oh, you see it for your business, you get an election, you get a major taxation announcement, and the market just goes cold for a while there. I think is still um there's still a feel of an underlying demand there, an unmet demand where the capacity can't meet it. So the fundamentals are still there. If this war ended next week and all prices started to go down, it would be just release handbroken away we go again, is the feel of it. Um I think the question is how long the pain's gonna go on. But buyers are just spooked uh at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

So the buyers could be more spooked after today or you know this week if interest rates go up. Um, you know, is that going to replace the petrol price crisis?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

I think it exacerbates it. Uh although, as you know, most of the buyers we're dealing with are not particularly sensitive to interest rate rises by and large. A lot of it's baby boomer money, a lot of it's selling down south, buying up here. It's not um it's not a market that's highly sensitive to interest rates directly.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

So it's more cash buying.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Very much cash, yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah. And what I'm seeing is is it's locking the first home buyers out of the market. They're the ones that can't afford, even in the current market, to get into it. And the house prices are going up too much as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Oh, absolutely. The first homeowners grant here uh has a 750k cap on your on your house of land. And I'm dealing with people who are trying to fit a house of land package into 750k, which uh historically you would laugh at, but these days is rather difficult to do. It's near impossible at the moment without the bank of mum and dad as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yep. All right, let's get into a little bit of property law. Um few things have changed over the last year. That uh the Queensland property law changed, and they brought in a thing called Form 2 disclosures. So, can you give us an understanding what this Form 2 is all about and who prepares it?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Uh the disclosure law is what happens when you have a problem and give it to a committee of lawyers to solve. Um, you end up with no solution and lots of extra paperwork to do.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

And kind of expensive.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yes, exactly. Look, it's uh for those who go back to the Panda days, it's it's a bureaucratic process that is intended and has good intentions, intended to give buyers information on property before they lock themselves in, and that's fine. Uh, I think the concern with the disclosure is it doesn't give them enough useful information on the key things they care about. So it'll go through, it'll give you title, it'll give you a plan, it'll give you a race notice, and there's a whole bunch of triggers of things that you need to know if they're exceptions. It's an owner-builder, for example. Um, what it doesn't do, and what most buyers of existing properties are looking for is information on building approvals, what's approved, what's not approved, uh, building condition. It's it's that's the key information that the people who put together the disclosure regime ducked as too hard.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

All right. So this disclosure form, the seller's got to do it and pay for it.

unknown 8:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

When do they have to do it behind the listing or before it goes to contract? When's when's the point?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

So classically it's um it's prepared at the listing stage, is what's commonly happening at the moment. Uh, it's usually done by lawyers. The agents, some will do it, but most of them have left that alone. They're just setting it to the lawyer to do it when they sign the listing authority, um, which is working, so it's created a lot of extra work for the lawyers. But it's basically a form, when you go to list a property before you can sell it, you have to have the disclosure form filled out, sign, ready to hand to the buyer with the contract, or you can't enforce the contract, and if it information gets out of date before settlement, you have an obligation to update it.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So, what's the risk if the sellers get it wrong or put wrong information? Is the contract null and void or buyers get out?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

What's uh in a lot of cases, depends on how big the error is. If you don't do it, it's you haven't got an enforceable contract. If it's a fundamental problem, it you know a buyer can terminate. If it's a minor problem, it can be rectified. But essentially you're you're you know backing contractually the content of that statement. So it's an extra process that uh that means there's extra work involved in the sale. The criticism from our point of view is it doesn't tell a buyer a lot that they weren't being told already.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

No, it just sounds like more paperwork to me most of the time. It's happening to put lawyers in charge. Yep. We know about that for most things. All right, so while we're on disclosures, let's talk about off-to-plan selling. Um they are full of disclosure documents. Um if you are selling a property without a title, whether it's land or apartments, or whatever it is, you have to have an off-to-plan contract and a disclosure. Can you describe what that is?

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah. So existing properties, you've got a title, uh, you've got a house there, you know what you're buying, you can kick it, you can walk all over it and check it out. Um if you're buying off-the-plan, you've got uh a paddock that might be grazing cows at the moment. Or in the case of uh of a unit development, you've got a vacant block of ground that's got nothing on it, doesn't have the six to eight story unit development. So the off-the-plan regime sets up um, and it's a fairly mature legislative regime that actually works pretty well at the moment. It sets out what you need to know to describe what you're getting when you're starting for that vacant block of ground. So different from units to land. For land, it's um the key thing is a plan that is survey prepared that's got um full meets and bound subscriptions, it's got services down there, it's got contours, it's got the amount of fill, it'll have retaining walls. So you can you can look at the plan against the vacant uh parcel or paddock that you're looking at, you know exactly where it is and what it's going to look like, and what you're going to have to build to. And as it's delivered at the end stage, if there are departures from that, there's an obligation to do further disclosure, which, if it's materially different, if it's something that's big, you can get out. Um otherwise the buyer has to, the seller has to deliver what's in the disclosure. Units are a bit different because there's a different beast. So you've got firstly your uh plan showing what the unit is in relation to the eight-story building. Uh you've also got mainly your body corporate setup. So how many units are in the body corporate, what sort of is it residential, is it commercial, levy budgets, so what you're going to be paying, what agreements are in place, management, a whole bunch of things like that.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

The intention is fixtures and fittings in the unit. Fixtures and fittings, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

So think of it, it works similarly in a title sense to a uh building contract. I engage a builder to build a house, I have plans and specs, you know, with which they're building to. This is the equivalent for off-the-plan land or unit purchases.

unknown 12:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

And how much tolerance is there legally? Is it around 5% or something wrong?

SPEAKER_01 12:15

It's not there's not an exact science, it's not a particular measure. There are rules of thumb, uh, which is the 5% rule commonly, um, but there's a range of decisions. So think of it as if it's a big enough variation that you wouldn't have done it in the first place, then that's an exit. And then how much leeway depends on you know what the motivation is and what the market is. Because you know, when a rising market prices are increasing, these things are tolerated. If the market's falling and there's no demand, then any little variation will spark a uh uh an opportunity for a buyer to exit. Uh five percent's a rule of thumb, but it's not something that's actually backed by uh sort of a line in the sand, clear, prescriptive legislation.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah. All right. So the big the big one in that is we we sell it off the plan a lot, and we're sometimes way out in front, you know, one, two years ahead of the market, you know, or when the land's gonna get titled. So explain sunset clauses and how they protect the buyers.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Okay. It's one of the differences from pre and post-COVID. Um so for land, you've got 18 months to uh deliver the title to settle, basically, from when you sign the contract date. Historically, that's been fine. Um, the problem post-COVID, as you're well aware in the market, is the um the lead times to get approvals through council, uh, to get contractors on site to complete all the civil works to completion, get them plan sealed, get the council at the end of the process to tick off everything and then get titled, is often taking us over 18 months these days. So the 18 month is your termination event where the buyer gets to pull out. The change uh in the environment for us these days is it used to be seller and buyer has an opportunity to pull out, whereas now it's buyer only unless the seller goes off and does a Supreme Court application procedure. So 18 months between contract and titling or buyer has termination rights. Um, it's uh four and a half with uh years for units with some pluses on top of that in some circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

So this is more of a government thing to protect the buyers because you know we've seen it in the past where it's taken so long, construction costs are gone up, development costs are gone up, so the seller or the developer just outweights the 18-month period, crashes all the contracts, puts the price up and goes again. Now they can't do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

That's exactly right. The you know prior to COVID, you could the developer could effectively crash the contract and move on for uh for their own reasons. Now you can't, and it off the back of COVID when prices were increasing so rapidly month on month, you had unscrupulous developers who would just take advantage of the delay, run dead on the project, crash it, resell for more, and you had people that were took themselves out of the market for an 18-month lead time or years in case of units, uh effectively priced out of the market because of the capital gain that happened over that period of time.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yep. All right, let's get on to residential transactions. Go back to the established market. Um, you know, usually it's a mum and dad market. A lot of time they're just buying their own home or maybe the first investment property, whatever else. Um, they go to an agent, you know, they they start looking around for property, they engage into an REIQ contract or something like that. For a start, when should a buyer start talking to a solicitor? Before they go out in the market or once they're ready to exchange contracts? What's your advice on that?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

I think there's two schools of thought. Um, the lawyers like to have a conversation early.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Uh I think some of the agents would like to have the conversation as late as possible. Yeah. Um, look, if you're listing a property, you're going to be talking to a real estate agent first and choosing that path. Uh, as soon as you start signing the listing authority, you're going to need to come and talk to us to do the disclosure. And that's where the regime actually does have a positive effect because it it enables us to have a conversation with you on what selling your property or buying selling the property would involve, and we start to flesh out the features and problems and things that need to be managed. Have you got an owner builder? Do you have um a fence that's not on a boundary? You know, do you have an unapproved garage at the back? We start to flesh those issues out and sort them out early.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Yeah. That's from the seller's point of view?

SPEAKER_01 16:28

From the seller's point of view.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

What about buyers? Like I I often see it that you get somebody exchanged into a contract and they haven't even worked out who the slitzer is, but they're already going into a contract. Um, to me, it always seems too late. Yeah. Um, when should a buyer, if they're starting to go into market looking around, start talking to lawyers?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

We run a good sideline in fixing contracts that are signed up without legal advice. Um and it's it's not universal, it's not always guaranteed to go wrong, but it's there's a high probability something is wrong. Um because they're not looking at it from our point of view. Uh look, when a buyer gets a draft contract, that's the time to have the conversation with the lawyer because we'll take you through how the purchase works, you know, what uh how you're buying the property, what the property involves, what sort of searches and inquiries you want to do. You run through the process to give you the best chance of making this successful. So achieve so the contract can achieve, and an outcome of the process can achieve what you're aiming to achieve with this now very significant investment decision.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

So that's usually a lot of time during that five-day cooling off period when they first enter, or they should take the contract before they sign it.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Before they sign. It's you know, once it's signed, uh you've got time periods running, it's a little bit late, you're constrained in what you can do legitimately. Before the contract signs, um, we can do the process properly, structure the contract to suit you, and in a way that suits the deal.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

And what's some of the common mistakes you see in those normal REIQ contracts that you know are done by a real estate agent most of the time?

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Uh probably the biggest one is getting the description of the buyer wrong. Um, either not filling in the buyer correctly, deciding you want to do it one way, you want to change it to another, that causes problems. Um, time periods are another one. Not if you're doing a finance contract, the days of 14, 21-day finance conditions disappeared 10 years ago. Um, you need every bit of a month to do that. Um, are probably two of the main ones. The other batch is is making sure you have not only building and pest, but building record conditions. So your building and pest will be the builder and pest inspector walks over to look at whether it's full of termites and whether it's falling apart. But you want the building records to have a look at what approvals are in place. Because there's plenty of sheds without finals out there, there's plenty of um back verandas that have been tacked on without approvals that you want to know about because it affects you when you resell.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yep. Right. All right, let's jump across the leasing for a minute. Um, commercial leasing. Um, I've always had a very strong opinion that just about anything commercial should be done by a lawyer, not by a real estate agent. And you know me, I've 90% of the stuff I will push through you rather than do REIQ lease documents. So, what's the main difference between getting a basic common tenancy document done on an REIQ form versus a lawyer's one?

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah. Uh I'm not a strong uh pro lawyer, not a big fan of lawyers, um, that get in the way of deals. If you've got a a commercial tenancy under three years, it's a fairly simple property, and you're working with a property manager who knows their stuff, an experienced commercial property manager, I think an REIQ commercial tenancy agreement is a viable way to document that sort of transaction, um, provided it's done properly and a few other gaps are filled in. That's a legitimate path that gets a deal across the line without creating resistance. Uh, if you've got a lease that um is over three years, including option periods, it's high value, it's a difficult property, it's a difficult tenant, it's because then that's all go to lawyer, get a lawyer lease done. It will be a a document that will be more robust and more properly protect the investment that both the tenant and the landlord uh have in the property.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

So if it's over three years, is it a legal requirement to use a lawyer lease or can an agent use a REIQ lease document?

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Uh there's no law, right? There's there's two things that are happening. Uh the REIQ uh has a three-year requirement on it because it's not in registrable format, so they create a liability problem for themselves. So there's no law banning um using the REIQ tenancy agreement for a six-year lease. It's not a good idea if you want to get your insurance covered by what you're doing. Um but it certainly can be done, and I've signed off on in the past where it's there's been good reasons for doing that uh for a deal. But it's rare and it's exceptions. Your basic rule over the three-year requirement is a lease under three years doesn't have to be registered. That's where it comes from under the title under the Land Title Act. Uh over three years it should be registered, and that's why you have that line between lawyer prepared and the REIQ version.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

So sticking with commercial leases, who pays, landlord or the tenant, or is that something that's negotiated?

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Um you've got a demarcation between commercial and retail shop lease. So retail shop lease, um, there is legislation that says landlord pays for lease prep, full stop, can't negotiate out of it. Um if it's a non-retail shop, so I'm leasing a shed to a plumber to run as a workshop, uh service base, for instance, it's negotiable. The rule that uh was in place, the commercial rule 20 or so years ago, was almost universally the tenant would pay for the landlord's legals for prep prepping of the lease. These days it's much more a case by case uh situation that depends on relative on. Demand, the premises, who's driving the deal, how generous the landlord is, but it's very much a negotiable exercise. And you see a mix between between tenant pays all, split 50-50, landlord pays, varies.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

All right. Getting on to retail shop lease, what's the main difference between a commercial tenancy agreement and a retail shop lease?

SPEAKER_01 22:22

So a retail shop lease, it's a lease to a retail business, uh, is the basic rule. So you're selling stuff. Okay, so um if I'm you know uh selling clothing, I'm uh convening in the store, they're all retail shops. So selling products. There's a legislation with a seven or eight page list of retail businesses, and you think all the grab bag of stuff you see walking through a shopping centre, all different kinds of retailing. Retail shop leaves regulated, lots of tenant protection from nasty landlord, shopping centre landlord clients uh in there to protect them from being shafted, basically. The your commercial tenancies are the rest, and they uh have a lot more of an ability to negotiate various outcomes without having the regulatory regimes. So you don't run through the mandated disclosure requirement uh that you do for retail shop leases. You don't have a bunch of prohibitions um like rent reviews, for example, retail shop lease, one review per year, one type of review with some butts. Um commercial, you can have reviews on any basis you like. I can do greater a CPI and 3.5%, and to my heart's content, can't do that under retail shop lease.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

So can you do one or the other under retail shop lease, or is it what is it that you have to be for increases?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Um it's made you can have a CPI six percentage market, for example. Yep. Um you can have CPI plus three percent, you can't do an either or.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Right. Alright. So and the landlord has to pay for the lease in a retail shop lease.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

So one of the confusing things of retail shop lease is say if you've got a small group of shops, um strip shop on the Esplanade or something, five or six shops, um, but you go and put an accounting firm in the middle of fish and chip shop, hairdressers, and all the rest of it, they're trapped under the retail shop act, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah, that's one of the definitions of retail shop lease. If you've got a centre with um uh with uh five or six shops that are retail, then everything else is caught as well. Yeah. So if you're gonna put um if you put an accountant in a stocklands, for example, um up here at Bay Central, then uh it's retail shop regardless of the actual use.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, there's small traps you've got to be careful of when you're going in there, even if you've got a commercial tenancy. All right, let's move on to a bit of commercial sales. Um is it a lot of difference between selling something vacant possession and selling something as a tenanted um investment? What's the main complexities in contracts picking up those two things?

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Uh different beasts. Um with a uh a vacant uh uh mainly it's GST and managing the tenant that are the two things you're getting into. Um if it's vacant possession, your starting point is it will always be plus GST, except in rare circumstances where you're not required to be registered. If it's a tenative property, then you fit within that exemption for GST where you can do it as a going concern with a buyer that's registered, and that often makes just it's a funding issue for the sale that makes it easier. It's less money to find at the end of the day. Uh your second batch of issues around managing the tenancy. So if you're selling it with a lease in place, you've got not just your premises due diligence to go in, you've got to you've got a review of the lease in place. So you want to, it's a proper lease, it's enforceable, how strong is the tenant, what their payment history is like, um, you know, whether they're paying outgoings, how that factors into a return on investment for the property.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

And the tenant's fully protected, no matter who the landlord is, if they've got a lease with that property, it doesn't matter how many times the owner changes in that property.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Tenants should be protected, but the tenant, from the tenant's point of view, uh your gold standard protection is a registered lease.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Uh that is uh almost universal if you're in Brisbane, Sunshine Gold Coast. Uh one of the shocks I had coming up here to practice in the late 90s uh was that it was uh uncommon up here. People just don't pay the expense to get the survey plan to register, uh which can be $1,500, $2,000 just for a normal shop plan to get on title. Yeah. Uh, and the um $238 odd dollars to actually get the red get the lease registered. If it's registered, yes, the tenants are protected. If it's not, they should be protected because there's an obligation upon the landowner seller to get their freehold buyer to be bound by the terms of the lease and sign a deed to do that.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

All right. And your advice about doing contracts with a you know commercial property with tenants in place, investments, sometimes inside a body corporate, should it be a specialised lawyer contract or an REIQ contract?

SPEAKER_01 27:07

I if you're buying or selling commercial, must involve a lawyer, must involve a lawyer that knows the way around commercial property transactions. This is not something that um anyone can pick up. I don't do personal interest claim, I do this. Yep. Uh don't play outside, it's don't play outside the paddock from our point of view. But it's um it's usually a significant investment. There's lots of moving bits, um, there's lots of things that can affect the aim of the investment, be it a realization or a or a purchase, and it needs a specialized knowledge to get into. So it's uh it's not a game, it's certainly don't you can't approach it effectively as a from a lay person, and it needs a specialised knowledge to do to do properly, or you'll increase your risk of having problems.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

So, what's some of the major mistakes you see people going into commercial contracts?

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Uh um entity choice where you've got um you've got the wrong entity that'll be earning the income or in having expenses and not being equipped for succession planning down the track. Um the uh compliance, building compliance, so buildings that don't have a certificate class of stick classification, not legally able to be used. Um planning restrictions, where just because someone's in there and using it looks like the neighbours, doesn't mean they have the approval to use as it is, or a buyer coming in uh doesn't realise the planning application, planning approval they need to establish their use. Um buying a property looking at a tenancy and not appreciating how strong or weak that tenancy position is or how the property, how the rent compares to market. Um you get a plethora of problems. Marking it up for GST purposes, yeah, buying a property with a residential and a commercial component, not realizing that that has a nasty little GST side effect attached to it. Going casins or all those things, yep. Um it's an increasing adjustment, which is a bit of fun for young players. The um uh financing requirements are very different from commercial, so understanding how that works, um yeah, there's uh yeah, there's a broad range of due diligence.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

I think you're convincing people to use a lawyer. Um we might start wrapping it up now. Um give us a bit of a your uh insight and where you see the market. You know, how does the market look going forward over the next couple of years?

SPEAKER_01 29:28

You know it's positive for Harvey Bay. We still have the things that have driven people into Harvey Bay since I turned up in the mid-70s from Sydney. Uh there's still lovely blue stuff out there, it's still a fantastic esplanade. Uh, it's still a wonderful place to grow up and raise kids. It has um some base infrastructure now that is exciting, it has some really extensive, deep medical infrastructure. Uh, it it's a town that's growing from the 50s, 60s into 70s and 80s, um, and that brings some exciting businesses and opportunities for employment and career growth and investment in the town. And I see those basic drivers, notwithstanding this situation, as carrying it forward where I think current it's uh might be a temporary lull, but we've had plenty of those in the past and come back bigger and better.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

In the property sector, which sectors do you see is going to be outperforming the others in the coming years?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Uh anything that someone over 55 to 60 wants to live in.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Right. So that's in the housing product.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Yeah, it's housing product. And appreciate a lot of those from my point of view are into um uh the it's the Lendlease communities. They, you know, uh you have a gated community, not much yard to take care of, um, you know, uh people and a social life around you, there's a reason there there's lots of those selling. That's because uh for that age there's a strong demand of people moving up, getting into that sort of property.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

And in your commercial product, where is there a sector outperforming the others or that you think that will outperform?

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Medical, medical, or medical?

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Yep. I suppose uh about 22% of our employment's in the medical sector, so and we need a lot of medical to look after the older population.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

So and the satellite and the the service industries around the building developer community as well is a is the other highly, highly significant employer in this region that I don't think is really respected well enough by the decision makers, to be honest.

unknown 31:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

All right, one bit of uh closing advice. What advice would you give to a buyer or a seller um regarding using a lawyer?

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Uh a couple of things. Um if you AI your way through a property transaction, it's a lot like Dr. Google. You'll get a lot of information, but you need to have the experience to work out what's right, what's wrong. Um, so if you're doing a property transaction from my point of view, is talk to an experienced property lawyer, and there's a few of us around that know what they're doing. Our job is to get you where you want to go uh and de-risk the process for you.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Yep, so talk to a lawyer early, is probably the advice. All right, thanks for that, Dave. Great insights, and um, if you need some legal advice, go to Bill Dixon Butler. Um, Dave's got a specialised commercial team down there. And thanks for listening to the Fraser Cast Property Brief. Uh, don't forget to check us out on YouTube, uh, Facebook, Podcast, um, just your favourite channel, and we'll be there once a week. All right, see you next time.