E117 – The Big Building Issue

The Property Pod _ E117 Cover
Episode:E117
Show Title:The Big Building Issue
Cast:Aaron Horne, Patrick Berry & John McGregor
Show Length:15 minutes 22 seconds

Continuing the discussion on affordability in the Australian marketplace, this week the team discuss the Innovative social enterprise, Homes for Homes, who are aiming to establish a presence in Tasmania & the provide the opportunity to “pay it forward” and help boost affordable housing supply.

Transcript:

John McGregor
From what I understand with that idea is that every time the house sells 0.1% of that sale price will go to this particular organization that would be set up.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. So it goes into like a pool of donations which can be used to fund grants and community housing providers. So then again, building on that kind of well we’re selling this one, but we’re putting money towards building more and creating, you know, more homes for more people who are. Yeah, without homes it’s going to young one.

INTRO
SOLD!… you’re Listening to the Property Pod

Aaron Horne
All right, guys, welcome back to the property part, your weekly engagement into real estate here in the Hobart marketplace. I’m joined at the desk by our real estate agents here at 41 for Property Co, John MacGregor and Patrick Berry. How are we guys.

John McGregor
Crushing this.

Aaron Horne
Question? Holy moly.

Patrick Berry
I’m excited to be on this side of the day.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, you leave for one week and John’s crushing it in Texas. I’m so glad I don’t have to press those buttons again.

Patrick Berry
I’ve got new gray hairs that you know I had when Chris came here last week.

Aaron Horne
Man. I got to say, editing that together again, Chris, absolute superstar. Like he can come in any time and have a yarn. Yeah, even just going to the first part of it, he’s just saying, look, why do you want to, like, do it? It’s just like, oh, yeah. Like, this is something that everybody should at least think about.

Aaron Horne
Like, do you want to actually own 30 properties or do you just need one or two? Yeah, it was really cool. Yeah, it started with the investor series and we can just kind of roll with on from there.

Patrick Berry
All I can say is as I’m so excited you got an episode together because when you were editing it the other day and the first bit of footage you bring up and you’re like, Yep, you’ve got Chris completely out of the frame of the show. It’s a whole lot of shit.

John McGregor
So that that one moment where you wish you had the masks on again, so.

Patrick Berry
They’d be like half ahead.

John McGregor
Alright.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, that the safety camera that we use for the GoPro basically was just you two and I was just like, man, like you might have big egos but you could have at least framed up the gas. So yeah, there was some crafty editing, but the shout out to another cracking episode. Thanks Chris for coming in and being part of the show.

Aaron Horne
And yeah, it will definitely have more with Chris and we’ve had some really good feedback on all the investor stuff. So look, it’s one side of the coin. There’s plenty of other discussions that we’ve been having and one of those kind of is really the hot topic Autumn in Hobart and across Australia. The moment is this affordability stuff yeah.

Aaron Horne
So we’ve kind of been covering a fair bit of that stuff like that. It’s interesting that we’ve kind of created this little bubble harbor bubble of information where it’s kind of, yeah, this is the hot topic that we’re going to talk about. You know, there’s, there’s ways to help people buy and stuff. But yeah, we’re still kind of covering up on this affordability stuff and a few of the topics I’ve got today are yeah, right up in that space.

Aaron Horne
Yeah.

John McGregor
And with that too, it is kind of fun to explore all the ideas that people are putting out there because at this point, rather than I suppose we’re not worrying about having two strong opinions. I mean, we’ve just got around to it. $0.50, I guess you could say.

Aaron Horne
Glad you started with 20.

John McGregor

Patrick Berry
And the best bit about this conversation that we’re having is today we’re recording this the day after the budget’s been released. And so I’m sure over the coming weeks a lot more will be unpacked from that as well as when the opposition give their rebuttal is going to be crazy. More ideas come through, I think.

John McGregor
Yeah, I’ll be I’ll be really sad to see what either objection or new ideas they’re going to have to. This means the Liberal government through a lot of stuff at home, that’s for sure.

Patrick Berry
But that’s not today because we’re not clever enough to unpack that. We need to wait for other people to.

John McGregor
Tell us what it’s like if unlike the the first episode of the Pod ever.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, there was there was an awkward silence in the air. That’s just like I’m not saying I brought notes for some other stuff. Nina’s put those together. I want to talk about that. Yeah, yeah. I know nothing about the budget. I claim to know nothing about real estate fund budgets. We know. The first thing I want to jump on today is this social enterprise article that I came across, something that’s trying to move into Tasmania.

Aaron Horne
They’re trying to it’s kind of taken off across the rest of Australia. It’s based on like a US idea. But this organization or this what are they called a non for profit is basically, you know, when you’re, you know, you go over to Melbourne for the footy or you got a concert or something like that and there’s somebody selling the magazines on the street, you know, kind of like they’re homeless people or people are the big living on the big issue.

Aaron Horne
So looking into this topic, I was like the big issue. I know that. What’s the big issue? Yeah. And then I was like, Oh holy crap, this is like them growing and expanding beyond kind of just this magazine and trying to empower people who are, who are living it rough. This is kind of it. So they call it the Home for Home scheme, and essentially it is organizing kind of a caveat in the contract of sale that will kind of like once the sale goes through it, I think it’s down at 0.1% of the sale price.

Aaron Horne
So a small fraction of the sale price.

Patrick Berry
Well, like they call it a donation deed, which I thought was an interesting way to describe it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A secondary deed attached to the property which is a donation. So 0.51% as you said, Aaron, which is nothing like John Math. Math is amazing before the show really works out that on a 500,000 double sale, that’s 500 bucks.

Patrick Berry
Yeah, yeah. So it doesn’t seem like much, but you get more people to sign up to this and that that would generate some serious money right across.

John McGregor
Yeah. And the important thing to distinguish here is that when I it’s a caveat on the title, it means that that potential donation date can carry over through multiple ownerships. So from what I understand with that idea is that every time the house sells 0.1% of that sale price will go to this particular organization that would be set up.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. So it goes into like a pool of donations which can be used to fund grants and community housing providers. So then again, building on that kind of well, we’re selling this one, but we’re putting money towards building more and, and creating, you know, more homes for more people who are. Yeah, without homes.

John McGregor
It’s a, it’s a really interesting idea and I suppose the that little bit you’re probably not going to mess on in Melbourne with an average sale price of a million bucks, you know, it’s $1,000 in that sense. So you’re probably not really going to miss it. You know, however, the what it does allow people to do is opt out if you want to.

John McGregor
So it wouldn’t be that once it’s on their you know, you’ve a person set this up 30 years ago and then no one’s allowed.

Aaron Horne
You stuck with it for life with this deal that you.

John McGregor
Can’t get out. But I’ll do that donation deed is a kind of a nice way to recognize what it is. So so you don’t have to be naive to have to get any money today it’s only going to be right the last minute where just you know these ads and bucks goes to a particular particular charity once that money hits your bank account.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. So there was information night I think Monday, the 28th of March that was. Yeah. Basically come along and find out a bit more information on this. I think it still needs to go through that land titles you guys are no more the Yeah.

John McGregor
With the Lance told office which controls obviously the which in effect is just those that say goes from your you know transfers the total from one person’s name to another person’s name. Yeah.

Patrick Berry
So it’s still seeking approval from that aspect of it all but yeah the wheels are in motion for this potential idea to get up and running, which is interesting. Yeah.

John McGregor
I don’t know how it will, you know, the real uptake, I know the attraction would try and be to get on to early bird with develop isn’t where I don’t but the curious thing if they’re brought developers on board is whether or not that on on each sale whether or not the development would actually be donating that as a giant pool or whether or not once the development is finished then all the new owners just opt in to this idea.

Aaron Horne
Yeah.

John McGregor
So yeah.

Patrick Berry
Well it’s a bit like so what they describe it is as a caveat. And for people that don’t understand what that is, it’s just restrictions as to what you, you are required to do with the property. Yes. So normally we don’t seem in this tent, but we might see a developer on a house subdivision where it’s just vacant land put a rule in that says nobody can build two storey properties on these certain blocks.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, for sure.

Patrick Berry
Like I’ve seen examples where the developer still has their own personal family home on the site and they don’t want to lose their water view. So the ones that are in front of their house can’t be two stories, but then the ones inside.

Aaron Horne
It, they’re fine. Yeah.

Patrick Berry
So that’s how it’s been used in a more traditional sense is putting restrictions on what you can and can’t do with that. Yeah, this is a new take on it, and I actually really like it. I think it’s quite a clever approach and it says here is no, it’s a they’ve already raised $52.5 million worth of donations in the pipeline.

Patrick Berry
So that’s actually that’s already a that’s a big.

John McGregor
It’s a serious.

Patrick Berry
Bang for coin.

John McGregor
Yeah. Yeah. That otherwise didn’t exist. And the other thing too, is that the it means for a person to donate, that becomes a lot more easy. It becomes easier because you have you you know, you are seeing a huge amount of money just hit your bank account from a certain from a sale so that that little small little contribution isn’t something you’d miss all that much.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. It’s often like when you’re at the chemist or something like that. No side you want to tie, donate you a little bit to point to the research foundation.

Patrick Berry
You want to round up the. Yeah.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. Not a problem publicly.

Patrick Berry
Don’t you sense it’s nothing like whatever, but you add that across all the transactions that they do and it’s big money. Yeah.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. Well, talking of developers, this other one, the last little bit I saw on this was that the Melbourne based developer think it’s military property, which is the preferred developer for the Macquarie Point. Oh, yep. Like getting all that set up, creating the homes. They’re there, they’ve got a home for homes clause in their sales contracts now. So basically they’re getting in with big developers and saying like, Yeah, we’ll jump on board this.

Aaron Horne
And it’s, I know there’s other companies that will put in, you know, like we don’t donate this much of our commission to.

Patrick Berry
Oh, I think it’s.

Aaron Horne
A charity of your choice sort of thing, which is something we’ve looked into.

Patrick Berry
I think it’s a sad social responsibility that so many companies are looking at these days. Like we do it with climate gap here and trying to offset our carbon footprint. Exactly. As other companies out there here in Hobart that donate $500 out of the commission to every sector charities as part of their their branding. And I think it’s just comes back to companies wanting to be more socially aware of the impact that their businesses are happening having.

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Berry
And what can they do to improve the situation?

John McGregor
And that’s the, the little pessimist head to put on for just one second is where then the direction of these charities and what their mission statement is going to be. Because if all of a sudden you’re amassing a serious amount of money.

Patrick Berry
How do you not waste it?

John McGregor
That’s it. You know, and I think the lot of time to it, it’s it’s sad. It’s a sad reality. That some charity organizations are so heavily ridden with administrative costs that so little of the actual amount goes to the people in need. And so, you know, before even if I was to sign of my home onto this, I’d be like, okay, no worries.

John McGregor
That sounds like a great idea. What the heck are you going to do with this? Yeah.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. I guess like one thing that I really liked is when I found out that it was like a big issue kind of initiative, I was like, oh, they’ve been around a while. And they seem to be kind of, you know, in the right side of the coin. They’re not kind of like, you give us all your money and we’ll set.

John McGregor
You.

Patrick Berry
Like the fact that they’ve got track record back. Yeah, yeah. I guess they’re not just a brand new charity that’s opened up there. A well established one.

Aaron Horne
Exactly.

Patrick Berry
Yeah. Like, I remember when I was a little kid going to the football Melbourne trips.

Aaron Horne
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You made a character when you’re at the footy or you’re coming back from the console or whatever and, and you kind of have a great time and it’s one of the things you’ll get back and tell your family cars cruising down the street. And I got a big issue and I actually really liked reading them back in the day as well.

Aaron Horne
So yeah, right. Yeah. No, the fact that it’s something that’s been established previously and this is kind of yet where they’re branching out now, it feels like that’s something cool. I liked writing the article about it and I’d love to know more about it moving down the track. Maybe we can reach out to someone from there to to have a yarn with us that would.

John McGregor
Be really.

Aaron Horne
Interesting and find out a bit more about it because yeah, I loved finding out about it and the more I’ve delved into it, I thought, Oh yeah, this would be called if that’s something that even if I don’t know when I sell my place, if I just can work out kind of, Oh yeah, I’ll add this to the fund if I don’t, even without the caveat.

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Berry
But that’s the other interesting thing about the caveat though. Like they’re saying $52 million now in the pipeline average home is, you know, five to seven years the whole time. It’s another guaranteed almost $52 million coming back in, in five or seven years time. So keep compounding that with new sales every single year like this idea 0.1% in another five to ten years time.

Patrick Berry
That’s just a money monster machine.

John McGregor
Yeah exactly.

Patrick Berry
It’s the amount of transactions that take place in Australia every year which.

Aaron Horne
Well then the other side of it is like once the fun starts to get used, you know, that’s building. So that’s adding more jobs, that’s creating more opportunities for people. So it’s yeah, it’s this ongoing growing effect just from this kind of simple little donation Yeah. I’m all for.

Patrick Berry
Yeah, me too. I mean to it.

John McGregor
Look, in the end, ultimately, if it always becomes voluntary, we can do it. Just always. I know, you know, like it can always be an option, but you just say no, oh, yes, no. But, you know, getting up and getting up at you bet. It’s like, well, I don’t want to be part of it, but no worries.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, yeah. And yeah. And if you if you are selling for reasons where you’re kind of in a tricky spot and you can’t afford that little extra bit, then it’s totally understandable as well. So yeah. Yeah. Interesting little idea. Would definitely like to find out more about it. Yeah. Watch this space. You might even get some some blog issues out there to to ah, the blog issues from the big issue.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Right itself.

Aaron Horne
Before we finish up today, I did want to jump over to the cost of living is really quite high at the moment and we’ve talked about fuel briefly on another episode a few weeks back and just how crazy things have gotten on that front. But this also links back to when we talked about the ferries. Yeah. Something else really cool that some that kind of seems to be in the pipeline here in Hobart and Tassie is they want to kind of expand the ferry trial, which seems to be a big test and a big success.

Patrick Berry
Isn’t that cool though? Like, you know, a year ago, people like ferries never going to work, no one’s going to use it. We’re not Sydney, we don’t have the population to justify it and now they’re already talking about rolling out expand the experiment ever with additional brilliant.

Aaron Horne
Well yeah, this is like Hobart, Glenorchy, Clarence and King bromance all getting together and saying, look, we, we probably need another 20 million over the next three years to expand the ferry service, but like we’re all for it and we want to pop it in all these spots. And I think it’s crazy. Like we’ve talked about the how the rail is not being used and that seems like a waste.

Aaron Horne
But if they can use the river, like why not let’s go for it and be awesome.

John McGregor
Well, that’s the thing because that, that is one you know, the geographical problem of Hobart is you’ve got mountains and rivers, you know, it is really difficult. So the fact that they could open it up search is really exciting just to give some other.

Patrick Berry
Options I think though, as we’ve spoken about in previous episodes, to make it really successful, there needs to be some sort of form of parking at the of course because the idea is to remove the cars from the center of the city. Well you still need to get to the like they’re talking about Wilkins Point, for instance, for a ferry terminal.

Aaron Horne
Which of we’ve is before.

Patrick Berry
Which is great, but there’s nothing there at the moment. So yeah, it’s a big open space, which would be awesome for a car park for people to park and then ferry in, which is great, but they need to commit to that infrastructure as well. There’s no point having these ferry terminals in the middle of nowhere if no one’s going to utilize.

Aaron Horne
The harmless net network.

Patrick Berry
Wilkinson’s point isn’t that a I on the that gasp? Oh, that’s where I thought it was.

Aaron Horne
Oh, isn’t there like a massive carpark at like the most that arena isn’t? Yeah.

Patrick Berry
Like it’s at the point by itself.

Aaron Horne
Oh you mean like it like you still got to walk. Yeah.

Patrick Berry
I’m the lazy shit. I don’t want to walk. Yeah, I got I got to build these two avenues. You got to have got a lot of these that are with them.

Aaron Horne
So yeah, it almost looks this point.

Patrick Berry
You got the room to make the, the car parking.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. No, I just was like, there’s a big gap. There’s a big stadium with a carpark people look at. But I’d say what you mean closer to the actual.

John McGregor
It may sound like a first world problem, but the problem is, is that that’s exactly how a lot of people will think. It’s if it doesn’t, if it isn’t convenient enough, it’s like.

Patrick Berry
Oh, drive to town.

John McGregor
Yeah, exactly. I must just get, get where I want, where I want to go. So, um, but.

Patrick Berry
The free movement works because there is talk of the, you know, hotels and restaurants and everything going in there. So great position to have a ferry terminal. Um, and then they talk about, you know, rest points, any value. There’s another great location for another terminal. Yeah. Yeah. High density area with loading units and so the flexibility there is fantastic.

Patrick Berry
And even coming back to that new stadium that’s been drawn up for Hobart on the regatta grounds, did you notice in the three day renders it was light ferry terminal central on the front of it?

Aaron Horne
Yeah, yeah. Which is really cool. And then also talking about in where the terminal is in the city at the moment at Bellerive Pier, I know the one on the other side, they want that upgraded again to be kind of like, yeah, this is working. So let’s like really bolster it, which again parking could be an added feature to that.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, it’s yeah, they’re talking like Point Casino, Lindisfarne Wilkinson’s point would be all great places where you can yet get everyone to travel to here and then let’s make our way to the city or wherever.

Patrick Berry
We went and that’s it. And I just love the fact that you know Hobart, you know the new infrastructure that they’re building, they’re obviously still thinking about this ferry system. So it must be getting some pretty good response from it so that new future plans are incorporating that into it. So yeah, yeah, it’s a clever.

John McGregor
Well and with now for the trialing that um, you know, obviously the bus, bus fares are very well, I wouldn’t say free, it’s always subsidized. It’s probably a better word to use now.

Aaron Horne
Freight busses might right now subsidize.

John McGregor
Metros just like go for it. Yeah. Have had it in where then if they start to think because obviously that’s still a separate private company at the moment and then if maybe the future long term plan is to just have it all is one interconnected you know public service you know operation. Yeah. Yeah. You know what that looks like or even if it’s efficient.

John McGregor
But that way, you know, if you get rid of the cars, we need the busses getting out of the suburbs.

Patrick Berry
I can’t wait to see the little metro brand it e-scooters sitting around the Hobart City. See you later Bayman whatever that everyone’s going to be trying.

Aaron Horne
Yeah.

Patrick Berry
We’re going on the metro. The vic I screwed up.

John McGregor
Well and it’s it but then what the cool thing is is it if you’re, you know, looking at the timetables, is it so long as you can just look at the bus and that’ll automatically set you up to the ferry where you need to be within there’s not, you’re not planning three different sort of things to make sure it’s going to happen.

Aaron Horne
Oh, yeah. As long as they’ll talk to itself. And, and it kind of gets you from point A to point B with an efficient way, and you don’t have to walk too far like that is you not have to walk that extra 70 meters from you. Oh, wait. In the car in the winter. I totally understand. But I did think there was a big park hop.

John McGregor
You go to 80 car park and you see like people will do laps around it just so they can get to the closest side of the front door. Whereas if they just park three car parks down there would have already been in the shop already.

Patrick Berry
It’s the elevator. You got to be next to the elevator. That’s it. You might have to go to the store to get the elevator, but you have to.

Aaron Horne
Know, I think it’s very interesting like that, says the King Power Council. Here as well, which I think that would be a really like key. I think it’d be great if you could take a bunch of people off to some outlet and have them kind of yeah. Subverted around, like what’s the pavement by of my purse. Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Aaron Horne
It’s like you go on that. You see some wild I’ve mentioned rolling into work and there’s some seals just sitting there and having a little sun bike in the morning. I’ll be all for it.

John McGregor
Well, I guess to that not everyone wants to drive a car. It’s just a means that they have to of there’s no other way of getting into where they need to be at the moment. And to give a much more feasible option that people can sit back and enjoy. I mean, even if you just said, okay, it’s added an extra half an hour to an hour to my day I’m sure to be a lot of people.

John McGregor
That goes sweet. I’m just going to read a book.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, I get extra time to listen. My podcast. Yeah, I get extra time listening to probably those boys just talk about some amazing things and I just want to hear more and more about.

John McGregor
It is so good. I listen to it twice.

Aaron Horne
Just to hear, Oh, they’re their five night look. I think boys, we might ended up there. It was. Yeah, it’s fun to be back on the mike. So I had a great time listening in and saying Pat kind of brain explode, pressing the buttons and framing up the images wrong. But what Chris had to say last week was excellent and we definitely will be reaching out for him.

Aaron Horne
So he’ll be.

Patrick Berry
Back soon for another episode. We’re working on the next one now.

Aaron Horne
Excellent. Excellent. Good to know. Um, yeah, great to be back. Great to sit at the desk with your guys and have a yarn and yeah, we’ll see you all next week for some more property pod.

John McGregor
Sounds good. Till then, I’ll say bye.

Aaron Horne
You have been listening to the property both recorded and edited by 41 full media house in conjunction with the full one wonderful property code.

Patrick Berry
This podcast is General Information Only and the thoughts of views expressed is the opinion of our panel and listeners should always take their news, their own investigation into any topic we discuss to ensure they fully understand their own situation.

John McGregor
It does not constitute and should not be relied on as purchasing, selling, financial or investment advice or recommendations expressed or implied, and it should not be used as an invitation to take up engagement or investment services. No investment decision or activity should be undertaken on the basis of this information without first.