EP. 1230 SOLICITORS BLOWING UP DEALS 🧨

Navigating the treacherous waters of property transactions, we uncover how the right solicitor can be your lifeboat or the iceberg that sinks your deal. Join us, Mark Novak with my vast Sydney real estate experience, alongside Zanthany Borula, as we navigate the legal labyrinth of buying and selling properties. We share war stories of deals nearly capsized by substandard legal counsel and dissect the critical role that astute, detail-oriented solicitors play in steering transactions to safe shores. Our anecdotes serve as a beacon, guiding you away from the siren song of cut-rate services and towards the value of exceptional representation that can make all the difference in sailing smoothly through a property purchase or sale.

This episode also turns the spotlight on the power of clear, effective communication in the volatile seas of real estate deals. Misunderstandings and poor dialogue among professionals can provoke negotiation storms that threaten to derail your property dreams. We stress the significance of meticulous research when selecting your crew, from conveyancers to mortgage brokers, ensuring you have the most responsive, capable hands on deck. And while it might seem off the chart, we acknowledge the rare yet poignant issue of ego clashes in negotiations—akin to a modern-day cockfight that can ruffle feathers and disrupt deals. Tune in for an enlightening voyage where we chart the course to successful property transactions through the art of collaboration with top-tier professionals and clear, concise communication.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

solicitors blowing up deals. It happens, um, perfectly good property, perfectly good buyer, perfectly good seller, perfectly good real estate agent and boom. So we're going to talk about how to avoid solicitors blowing up deals.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Stay tuned I'm the ring leader.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Boom, hi, we've got Zanthony Brawler, biggest transactor on the Northern Beaches with buyers.

Speaker 2: 0:53

We'll go for that sure.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Yeah, you're doing some serious volumes, zanth. So Zanth is dealing with buyers and buyer solicitors all the time. Yes, and I'm Mark Novak, real estate agent of over 30 years on the northern beaches of Sydney, so we're going to share our experience with lawyers today. What do you reckon, zanth?

Speaker 2: 1:16

Do you know what? I think that this is something that is just a massive oversight to any kind of buyer, in particular, especially a first home buyer that just wants to find someone on the cheap. Look, cheap solicitor, cheap conveyancer can equal cheap service and it can really f up your deal.

Speaker 1: 1:38

And before we go any further, we'd like to acknowledge this happens in real estate agents, it's happened. That happens with mortgage brokers. It happens in all industries. But if we can, if we can educate you today on, particularly on solicitors we're not having a dig at them or the industry, but if we can educate you on how to choose a good one, it's more likely you're gonna get a good deal absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 2:06

We're not dissing anybody's career, anybody's level of service. It's just need to find the right solicitor, the right broker, the right anything to best suit your needs effectively oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:21

So good morning, mr ray price, there's one, there's a legend out there, legend of a mortgage broker. Now, xanth, you've got stories, you've got an experience you want to share that's going to help people on this.

Speaker 2: 2:36

Look of all of the deals I've done. It's not all that often that we get a solicitor that kind of throws a spanner in the works and makes a deal very hard to put together, but they do happen from time to time and it's when they happen that something that was hard to put together can fall apart very, very quickly. So most recently we've had an offer on a property that was an unconditional offer. Contract amendments had started going through to the seller's solicitor and the responses that came through were just very subpar, below average, and just basically every question or query was rely on your own inquiry effort into really helping substantiate the property and giving the purchaser as much insight into the contract as possible.

Speaker 1: 3:32

So to give you a working example on one of those responses, and because when you get, when you've gone back to your vendor and you've explained look, I think we're just blowing up this purchaser the vendors like, yeah, but you know my lawyer's a good lawyer. It's like yeah, can I give you a working example? And he goes well, okay, well, what are the inclusions? So normally a solicitor will say the oven's included, the blinds are not included, the dryer is included. They'll go through with the client and find out what's included and what's not included. Sometimes they'll go through it with the real estate agent to help the client. But when your lawyer writes back purchasers to rely on their own inquiries, what they've seen of the property, and then those sort of responses are sort of all the way through the document. It's sort of like going like, and then as a buyer, you're going well, are the sellers serious about selling? You know like, I don't think these guys, the sellers, are actually vested in this or motivated in selling. So that is a perfect example.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Yeah, absolutely so. You want to have that confidence behind your purchase and equally, as a seller, you also want to have that confidence that you do have a solicitor that's batting for you in your corner. Not just this. I don't know if it's more of an egotistical kind of thing that solicitors or conveyances may do. I'm sure real estate agents get it as well.

Speaker 1: 5:12

when it's just they're acting on their ego before they're acting on their client's best interest, yeah, and you know what, sometimes between lawyers, because they're always dealing with each other sometimes I find there's a little bit of a cockfight, and it's not particularly for, it's not for that property, but it's almost like a legacy cockfight. I used to see it a lot more between local solicitors and solicitors in the city, the big city firms. They used to sort of push around the little guys that were in the burbs. It's changed a bit. But another working example, guys and girls, on why, if you've just tuned in, we're saying why you should have a great lawyer in the deal. Um, we had, we had a deal, uh, where we did a lot of transactions upwards of 50 transactions in one building. So the there was. The buyers were actually getting very, very good value on these apartments, residential apartments, really good value. They were getting a bargain. The purchasers knew it Now when they took that deal to their lawyer, their lawyer got into the royal cockfight that we're talking about and they said they looked at the contract and they came back with 30 changes and then it started.

Speaker 1: 6:29

But where I knew there was something wrong was there's traditional floors where they say there's a 5% variance. You can change your floor plan by 5% bigger or 5% smaller when you're buying off the plan. And this lawyer said not good enough. And I'm like that's weird. And he said I want two percent. And then I'm thinking dude, we've just exchanged 50 contracts and no one had a problem with five percent. Why you got a problem with five percent?

Speaker 1: 6:57

And then the vendors lawyer, the sellers lawyer, came back and said look, we don't want to look like we're sticking the mud, let's make it four. And I was like that's generous, that's generous. And then there was all these other clauses behind that that you could do. I'm just reading and thinking this is weird, because we've exchanged 50 of these contracts with 50 different lawyers, with 50 different buyers, and the buyers are turning around to me saying these particular buyers go, look, we don't want to lose this property, we actually but we don't want to get into something legally. That is stupid either. So in that circumstance we got a second opinion with a second set of lawyers, um, and it just sailed through. So it was very obvious, um, once, that they sort of have explained to them better what's Ray got to say.

Speaker 2: 7:46

That it happens in all industries. True, the egotistical, the cockfight that we're kind of speaking about Pouring cold water on it to dampen the deal. Luke Maroney loves egos. It's a way of putting a deal together. For sure, and this is across all industries, not just real estate, um, so for sure, when it comes to your solicitor, make sure you've got someone there batting in your corner, that is. You know that is reputable. Um has done a lot of deals together or in this industry, and that's not just. I don't't know how would you explain that?

Speaker 1: 8:27

I don't want to diss anybody and make them sound really bad, but most recently, no, but I often think, zant, that the solicitors aren't given the proper information from their clients. They just whacked a contract on a table with thousands of words and then they go through and look at it, but I think sometimes the client's failing because they're not sitting and explaining how it got to this. So there was a deal, for example, yesterday that I had, where it was a deal where they were buying a factory but then they were paying the builder to build something which was like it was, because the meson it was a mezzanine deal. So the means, the build said look, mate, I'll just do it for you at cost price, you know. And the value to the client was five times the cost price of what he was building. So, yes, the builder could have just built it himself, sold, sold it for five times more. But no, the builder said you buy this property, I'll build this mezzanine for you at cost price.

Speaker 1: 9:31

Now, when it got into the lawyer's hands as a working example, the lawyer said my client's got to get three quotes on this mezzanine. And it's like dude, you can see that all the other ones are selling for five times the price Because we're selling these measures at 9,000 metres squared and they're building it for 1,500 metres squared. It's a quarter of the price, but you know I can see from the solicitor's point of view. You just get three quotes on any building project that comes across my desk and then the solicitor, the vendor, the developer, the person selling is going. Mate, just tell the guy not to worry about the whole deal. I was doing the guy a favour.

Speaker 2: 10:22

It was lost in translation. Yeah, makes sense. I mean, there is, uh, so many conversations that happened in the way of putting a deal together with the property, whether it's with your broker, your solicitor, the real estate agent, your. So many conversations take place and it's a matter of really filtering all of those conversations and communicating in a clear and concise manner to each of the parties involved. And I think that's what kind of can underpin putting a deal together just that level of communication. And when that starts to fail, falter and wobble level of communication. And when that starts to fail, falter and wobble, that's when everything else can start to crumble. Um, and it's just kind of hard to get back to a really good place after that once it becomes really wobbly just good, old-fashioned communication.

Speaker 1: 11:05

Guys and girls make sure it's there. And uh xan, thanks for talking with us about the uh, the cock fight. It's really surfacing something that we deal with on an irregular basis, but it does come up.

Speaker 2: 11:17

It does Make sure you're out there just doing some reviews on your solicitor, your conveyancy, your mortgage broker, your real estate agent. Whoever you're dealing with, you do want to find someone that is reputable in the industry, is quick to respond to any of your queries, and that is a master in their field as well. Boom.

Speaker 1: 11:38

Have a great day.