Episode:	E162
Show Title:	Your Home for Home Loans
Cast:	Aaron Horne, John McGregor, & Rhianna Farnan
Show Length:	40 minutes 27 seconds

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Rhianna Farnan
And then TikTok came up. I was bored, so we thought about going on there. It was never an idea of trying to get business out of it. I always like the idea of just doing it for education and fun. First video I did, it was literally just five things you need before applying for a home loan. And that’s the one that got the 700,000 views straightaway.

[intro music]

Aaron Horne
All right, guys. Welcome back to The Property Pod, your weekly engagement into real estate here in the Hobart marketplace. I am your host, Aaron Horne, and sitting opposite me in someone else’s chair is Johny Mack. What’s happening, mate?

John McGregor
I like it. I’m just, you know, I just obviously I’m not going to be able to it’s going to be fine for Patrick’s height.

Aaron Horne
Story of of manoeuvred it around to fit your the curly locks so all is good but yeah you’re sitting in that seat where is where is.

John McGregor
Pat’s in Vegas, baby.

Aaron Horne
Vegas, baby! Yes. Pat is not with us in studio today. He is growing his mind at the Inman.

John McGregor
Oh actually to that is going because he missed it last time. He loves that.

Aaron Horne
He does. And yeah, he’s already been like texting through all these things is we should try this. We should try this. He’s been there for a day. Yeah. So, yeah, he’s is over there kind of learning from that. I don’t know if he took a marker or anything last time he was there.

John McGregor
He took that little thing. I have. Yeah. Not this time.

Aaron Horne
No. So it’s all just smack bang business this time.

John McGregor
But he’s got the whole family coming in to last time is pretty much his.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, it was just him and even Abby, I believe. But yeah.

John McGregor
This is a different experience.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. Yeah. So they’re having a blast over there and we’re here in the studio, and luckily, we filled the third seat with an amazing guest.

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m really excited to have ran random from doing science, isn’t it? Yes. Yes, it’s been. We had a mortgage programme for a long time.

Aaron Horne
We actually I ran a guest on for a red hot. Yeah. It’s been, there’s been few and far between lots kind of been getting in the way so yeah it’d be nice to have someone else in the studio to, to wax lyrical with. We’ll have to be on our best behaviour and try and yeah.

John McGregor
Well I think too because they, they started the business must have been about seven or eight years ago. Yeah. It’d be, I’m really excited to chat from, you know, a person from like a younger person’s perspective in this space. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the end, we’re like, like at this point, you know, so but then we’ve got other guests that are generally speaking your society in their forties and fifties.

John McGregor
That’s a very different dynamic of personalities.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. And just the way they’re kind of leveraging new media and, and.

John McGregor
Trying to engage the clients.

Aaron Horne
TikTok is the thing that got us together to to have this conversation. So it’s quite amazing that, yeah, that’s how, how our wells are engaging and colliding. So what I might do is cut away to the conversation that we’re going to have with Rihanna from Don’t Finance. Love it. Awesome. Well, guys, we are joined by a special guest with us today.

Aaron Horne
We’ve got Rihanna fan and from don’t finance. Welcome to the property part three.

Rhianna Farnan
Thank you so much for having me. I was so excited when you reached out a few weeks ago to come on.

Aaron Horne
But yeah, it’s funny, the way we kind of connected was via TikTok, which yeah. Is a strange thing to say in this modern world. I was so against kind of diving into the world of it was actually yourself who got me into TikTok, which is a funny thing. Yeah. So I want to with some of these guys that don’t finance are doing that kind of taking the mundane or out of finance and making it fun.

Aaron Horne
So I jumped on was like, Oh, maybe I should be applying in this space. So yes, thank you for putting it out there and bring it to my attention. So, yeah, you’re your TikTok star. Welcome.

Aaron Horne
Well, let’s not do that. Do you want to kind of let the listeners out there know a little bit about yourself and kind of don’t finance and hit us with everything that’s happening in your world?

Rhianna Farnan
You know, say obviously my name’s Rihanna and I’m one of the directors of Derwent Finance. We’ve been around for seven years in September.

John McGregor
Yeah. Graduations. That’s great. Yeah.

Rhianna Farnan
Which is, funnily enough, the due date of our baby is the end of it. Like the opening day.

Aaron Horne
You’re joking.

John McGregor
Yeah.

Rhianna Farnan
Oh, wow. Yeah. So we might have to maybe. Yeah. Celebrate on the same day.

Aaron Horne
Oh, that’s.

Rhianna Farnan
Amazing. But we are located in Hobart, Tasmania. But we sell us Australia wide. So we’ve got clients all over Australia, which is really cool to be in little old Hobart and then have clients in Darwin or WA.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, 100%.

Rhianna Farnan
So it’s been really cool to open up and have people everywhere. And yeah, it’s myself and Emmanuel and we have got seven staff now, so we’ve got five mortgage brokers and then we’ve got a couple of in-house settlements offices and an office manager and we also have an intern at the moment as well. So over the last 12 months we’ve grown our team from 3 to 7.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah.

John McGregor
Wow, that’s exponential growth like seven years. And then it was just you two. And then to go from three to doubling in 12.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, yeah. It has been crazy. We bought an office in the Hobart CBD thinking would be there forever. And now we mind and I don’t have a desk.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. Wow. So you actually kind of outgrowing your space just in that little period? Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. So it’s exciting, but.

Aaron Horne
Kind of run us through the philosophies and the ideas of don’t finance and kind of how you’ve gone from this tiny little operator into kind of like, Hey, we’re making a bit of a splash.

Rhianna Farnan
Here. Yeah, for sure. So we always wanted to wait. And you and I worked as a team for a really long time, so it’s just the two of us. And then you would do all the broking, I would do all the customer communications. And then from there, really, we’ve just burnt ourselves out to be completely honest. It was something that we couldn’t do forever.

Rhianna Farnan
And so as the company’s grown and we’ve got a reputation for ourselves, we’ve actually had people reaching out to us to come as a mortgage broker themselves. Okay, so that’s really how we’ve grown. And when you have someone approach you to be a mortgage broker who’s already trained, you can’t really say no because there’s not that many of we have.

Rhianna Farnan
No, no. It’s not a career that you just leave school and go, I’m going to become a mortgage.

Aaron Horne
Broker as well. Yeah, I kind of wanted to ask about how you kind of found yourself into this space. Like, I’ve been listening to your podcast and you mentioned, you know, it’s funny, you mentioned you’ve got a degree that you don’t use trying to be a teacher. It’s the furthest thing from what I’m doing.

John McGregor
I didn’t try to do anything. That’s why I’m a real estate.

Aaron Horne
But yeah, I just kind of wondered how you kind of yeah. Found your way into into this and I.

Rhianna Farnan
Mean you had it was working for his family business. Yeah. So he was with them since he was really young, decided that he wanted to do something else. His cousin was a mobile lender for a bank. Yeah, and he was saying what he was doing. He liked the idea of being able to get commission and earning money. That’s not from a family business.

Rhianna Farnan
And he really liked the idea of writing home lines. He was already really interested in property as it was, so he dived into that space. He then had a really good opportunity a couple of years later to work in a real estate agents office, which is really cool. And then eventually, as I was picking up, the agency basically said, You need to get someone to help you or you know you’re not going to be able to continue growing.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. Yeah. It was that awkward stage where he couldn’t really afford to hire a staff member. I had a really good job at the time I was doing marketing for the Synergy Centres, our clients in north east and things like that and yeah, so basically I came on to work with him for two days. It was planned to be while I was at uni.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. And then it just never stopped.

Aaron Horne
And then you kept going. I know it’s crazy. It’s even the same with my role here. I jumped in. I ran into Pat in a coffee shop. He said, You’re still teaching. You just.

John McGregor
Got a job.

Aaron Horne
For it. I don’t want to sell real estate. No, no, no. Don’t worry about that. Got six months worth of photos for you to take, and then you’re out of my hair. Yeah. Five years later, here we are. Or. Yeah.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. So it’s so rewarding. I love what I do. Yeah, I love I don’t just say, like, I’ve never been interested in numbers and things like that. I’m very dyslexic. So the mortgage broking space and doing the writing of the deals has never been something I’ve been interested in. But I love business and I love marketing and I love growing.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, and thinking outside of the box. So that challenge for me just kept me going. The market’s continually changing, as you know, in real estate. And so I love that it’s never the same. You’ve always got to be thinking differently.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, I guess it’s as you say or you’ve said before in your podcast, that you don’t use the degree that you’ve earned. And I often think like, I’m not using any of that. But when you do translate it into like I might not be teaching people in a classroom, but I’m teaching people things through here. Or Yeah, all the skills that you have picked up do lead over into the other place.

Aaron Horne
And as you say, like you’re really interested in marketing. Your marketing is what kind of got us in touch with one another through this idea of social media and taking that to the next level. Have you found like leveraging that into like do you feel like that’s one of the major things that’s grown? Don’t find out for sure.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. So obviously as young mortgage brokers at the time when I got into the industry, I was only 18, Emmanuel was 22. So it was really hard for us at the start to gain trust in the community because not everyone is going to trust has houses.

Aaron Horne
Yahoo! Got to know how.

Rhianna Farnan
To to do their mortgage. One of the biggest life things that you’re ever going to do. And it’s one of the biggest risks as well. So it was really slow for us to sort we as we would get family and friends and that type of thing come to us. But then it got to the stage where we really just wanted to grow.

Rhianna Farnan
And yeah, I had Tick Tock. It started in 2020 during lockdown. I just thought I’d give it a go and then yeah, from there the first video you got, I think 700,000 views. Wow. And it myself and Emmanuel were out for breakfast and our phone just kept ringing and ringing, uranium ringing and we had to leave the breakfast because it was just like, what is going on.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, it dream overnight and we’ve all the phone calls we received. So from there we’ve just been so lucky. We’ve been able to hire more mortgage brokers. So we’ve now got five. Yeah. And we provide all of their leads to them. They don’t need to go out and find their own business because it all comes primarily from TikTok.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. Isn’t that amazing? And it’s this thing that’s been like kind of that’s just for the kids. Like, that’s just a silly thing where people do dances and.

John McGregor
It actually to a legitimate.

Aaron Horne
Legitimate yeah. As growing your business to this.

Rhianna Farnan
Crazy level hasn’t just helped us, it’s helped other mortgage brokers as well. So now 70% of mortgages are written by mortgage brokers. Yeah, and quite often as well I’ll have people reach out to me and it just warms my heart and they’ll say, I’ve been following you on TikTok for three years. I didn’t reach out to you because I wanted to have a broker in house, but without you I would never have gone to a broker.

Rhianna Farnan
I would have just gone to a bank as my mum and dad would have told me to do. Yeah. And I would have never gotten a mortgage. And so it’s just so nice to hear that not only my helping do and I’m also helping people reach out to other mortgage brokers around the country.

John McGregor
Yeah. Indirectly helping your industry. Yeah. What’s, what was the when you started that originally was the idea being that you wanted to do branding or was it more so about an education? What was the angle that you guys had?

Rhianna Farnan
It was more so that it was just covered and I was full.

John McGregor
That works. It works. Yeah.

Rhianna Farnan
And we found that we couldn’t grow on Instagram and Facebook. Yeah. Like other brokers have, we’ve got a very in Hobart we’ve got, we’re very lucky with the brokers we’ve already got. Yeah. We’ve got a lot of experience and people that have been in the industry for a very long time and so it’s not that easy for someone just to share your Facebook posts about finance because they already committed to their mortgage broker.

Rhianna Farnan
So it wasn’t easy for us to grow on them. And Tito came up. I was bored, so we thought about going on there. It was never an idea of trying to get business out of it. I always like the idea of just doing it for education and fun.

Aaron Horne
I was going to say one of the things that I find really interesting about it is that it’s providing that educational service. And yeah, it’s not just like, let’s just do this silly thing and yeah, I’m reading through and people are constantly sending you through. Like, can you just give me an idea of, I’ve got two dependents, I’ve got this and that and you little things are popping up.

Aaron Horne
I was like, Oh yeah, that’s so interesting. That’s actually quite similar to my situation. Like, I might have to reach out and find out more about these. So yeah, and.

Rhianna Farnan
The first video I did, it was literally just five things you need before applying for a home light. And that’s the one that got the 700,000 views straight away. And I never even for the first two years, I never put in I didn’t have a link in the bio for a website 19 and tell people to reach out to us.

Rhianna Farnan
I just purely was giving content about education, about home loans. Yeah. And people would just organically reaching out and it’s a free platform. You don’t have to spend any money, no using Google or Facebook or Instagram ads. If you are investing money. But we’ve talked about just investing 5 minutes of my day to film something and it and post it and then coming back.

Aaron Horne
That’s amazing. Yeah, that’s super cool. And look, it’s obviously worked. It’s someone told me to look you up and yeah, we’ve connected through TikTok, so yeah. Shout out to that platform as a way of making actually organic.

John McGregor
Connexions What I find interesting about that, he mentioned someone had been observing that content for a few years before. They were ready to make that commitment and I know when I first started in this career, there was a guy who was an exceptional operator, but he didn’t like any about 30, but he looked 17. And he said, the only way that you can overcome that if you look young is to have to jump through more hoops is the only way that people he said, you have to wear them down.

John McGregor
The great thing about establishing yourself in that space was you you guys were great operators, but that allowed you to have that credibility built over time so that when the business started to flow through, that did see you as an expert and were prepared to listen to you. It wasn’t like, Oh, you’re a kid, you want a business.

John McGregor
What you can do for me. And I like how you came together as equals and were then able to provide, you know, show that, hey, actually these guys are great at what they do. That’s very.

Rhianna Farnan
Interesting. So when we started, we obviously tried doing the cold calls and the door knocking and the pamphlets and all of that type of thing. And it just didn’t work because of the age in saying we trying to hire staff if we didn’t want to come and work for us because of our age. But now because we’ve got the resources of having the face of don’t finance and tech talk and that platform, it has really grown where we have people reaching out all the time asking how they can get into mortgage broking and also obviously clients as well.

Rhianna Farnan
So it’s grown up business not only with clients but also being able to hire staff and grow a team.

Aaron Horne
That’s so funny. I’ve probably mentioned this on the podcast before, but growing up I remember it being like, Don’t talk to strangers online. Like Don’t go. If you don’t know who they are, don’t talk to them, wear it now. It’s like, Oh, I want to search out and find strangers and I want them to help me. It’s a complete flip on it and I just, I like the letterbox dropping and stuff.

Aaron Horne
Seems so old hat when you can spend 5 minutes making a tea or something, fill it up some information on it and. Yeah. Oh, here we go. Yeah, yeah. We’re going to engage.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. Countless. They become the biggest search engine online. Yeah. So more people are searching on TikTok for businesses and like, say, you’re searching for a mortgage broker. More people are now inclined to go onto TikTok to search for a mortgage broker. They know Google now, so and on Facebook and Instagram. So it’s really important that and we’re so lucky that we jumped on that earlier.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. Yeah. So you could get that right.

Aaron Horne
Oh, well, I’m so glad that I found that as well because yeah, we’re exploring in the space and having some fun with this podcast is actually a really good content for pumping on that sort of thing. So yeah, our goal here at the Property Party is to try and educate kind of first time buyers and stuff as well and, and get young people into homes.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, we think we kind of a line on that. I just wanted if we could go into kind of what the three biggest like common mistakes and misconceptions people have.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. So the biggest misconception we’re seeing at the moment is listening to people that aren’t professionals and taking on their advice. Yeah.

John McGregor
Like people on TikTok. Sorry.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, well, you you’re not qualified and. Yeah, but yeah. Mums and dads and I know I’m real life personal experience is really important but when it comes to an area that you’re taking into consideration, you’ll got your income. It’s not just about yes or no. It changes for every person. Um, we find that a lot of people will speak to their friends and family about getting a high line in that group of lifecycle.

Rhianna Farnan
Before you get a home loan, make sure you go out and get a credit card or a personal loan. And so they do. And then they finally come to a broker and they say, Oh, we’ve got a credit card in the cycle. Now, is they crazy? Borrowing capacity by 100,000? Yeah. So that’s one of the biggest misconceptions is listening to it.

Rhianna Farnan
And I know that sounds funny and I know mums and dads who try to do the best they can to help their children get into the market. But it’s really important finance and getting a home loan and that type of thing, it changes so much. It changes the bank’s policies change every couple of weeks. Yeah. So from when they bought a house or even when their friend bought a house and that type of thing, the information changes all the time.

Rhianna Farnan
So making sure you’re speaking to a professional, if you’re going to speak to family and they give you advice, reach out to a professional first and ask them if that’s okay. Most of the time, mortgage brokers don’t charge a fee for their services, so you can reach out to them at any time and ask for their opinion based on your personal circumstances to see what they think on the situation before you go ahead and proceed to make sure that you’re in the best position possible.

Rhianna Farnan
The next misconception we have a lot still, which is really surprising, is that you still need a 20% deposit to purchase your first home when that’s really not the case. As so many options out there, you could use a guarantor if you are in that lucky position where you do have the option of having mum and dad or your grandparents or an aunty use a property as a security against a property or purchasing, and that way you don’t need any deposit at all which can be really, really helpful.

Rhianna Farnan
And there’s also schemes out there like the First Home Guarantee scheme we only require had a 5% deposit and Yolanda small that insurance is waived. So there’s lots of different options out there if you wanted to still if you’re not qualified for the first time I signed guarantee scheme and then you can also look at using lender’s mortgage insurance as well, which I know it sounds a bit like, oh, I don’t really want to spend that money, but a lot of the time the lender’s loans insurance is less than a 20% deposit.

Rhianna Farnan
So if you do go down that avenue, you’re probably going to get in a house a lot quicker than if you were to size up for 20%.

Aaron Horne
Is that the scheme now as well where like if you’re brother and sister or something like that you can be like it wasn’t in the past you weren’t able to get a mortgage together. But now that’s yes.

Rhianna Farnan
On the 1st of July they kind of revamped the scheme. So it’s been going on for three years and personally it’s our favourite scheme because the Government don’t hold ownership of your property once it started, you never have to think about it again. For us it’s a really simple process as well, but on the 1st of July they revamped it.

Rhianna Farnan
So you can now purchase with a sibling or a friend. If you are a permanent resident, you can now go on to the scheme where regionally it was only for Australian citizens. And also the big one is if you owned a property ten years ago, so you haven’t held ownership over a property in the last ten years, you’re now eligible.

Rhianna Farnan
So first home guarantee scheme as well.

Aaron Horne
Oh cool. Yeah.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, yeah. So that’s really handy. Yeah.

Aaron Horne
So say you were an owner before and then you’ve been in the rental market for ten years. Yeah. It’s kind of get revamped back into I’m a first time buyer again.

John McGregor
Well, I mean, gosh, with the experiences that we say with people over a lifetime is dramatic. You know, you can have a catastrophic relationship break up in, you know, in your early twenties all that all that wealth gone need try and find a way to, you know, muscle your way back in only that you’re just you can’t compete anymore.

John McGregor
So I think that makes perfect sense. And I think that for a lot of people, I mean, I’ve had you know, guys have been quite on our podcast before saying, look, I’m a single mum. I had this blah, blah, blah before, but now I’m stuck, you know, it just gives those people the capacity to compete again.

Rhianna Farnan
Well, single parent. So if you’re a single parent and you have held ownership private property 12 months ago or six weeks ago, but you no longer do, you can go for the family home guarantee scheme only if you don’t have a limit on when you have owned a property before. So as long as you don’t hold ownership over a property now you can actually go free that single parenting scheme and that’s only a 2% deposit, so that’s really handy.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, yeah. Obviously you don’t get the help of the stamp duty wave out of this home owner’s grant or that type of thing. Really. So you’ve got the option of just putting down a 2% deposit.

Aaron Horne
Like this is this is exactly why we love having someone like yourself on the show. It’s like you’ve got this knowledge base of like will cater or tailor a service to your needs and whatever you’re after, we’ll find a way of making it work sort of thing. Like even as just assign them like, oh, I know someone that that would help out.

Aaron Horne
And that’s something that I’ve no idea of. And yeah, you can search it on your Bama website. How you go to the bank, that’s where you get a loan. I know these people will be able to help you out. Can I go back to you saying like their policies and stuff might change week to week from the banks?

Aaron Horne
How are you kind of keeping abreast of are they like giving you the information of being like, hands up, this has changed?

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. So it’s something that we as brokers have to be on top of. Yeah. If you’re not, yeah. You could make a huge service to customer. Yeah. And you’ve also got the risk of submitting an application to a lender that no longer accepts.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. Those, those conditions.

Rhianna Farnan
And so we constantly have got webinar civil lenders, we have our bank medium so they like make money, just come into the office and talk to us about what’s changing email communication. Yeah. Just so on their portal. Also making sure that we’re reviewing the policy as much as possible.

John McGregor
Yeah, I guess that one thing that’s on it, it’s interesting because we from our perspective, we obviously are usually distrusted from the onset. It is it is what it is. Luckily enough, once you can break down that barrier to a client, then they’re willing to listen to most of the introductions that we try and make actually to try and make their life easier.

John McGregor
And it’s been interesting in this problem, the current climate last couple of years, where most people have generally reached out to a bank first, but it’s hard to break through that thing. Maybe you should try and seek some alternative advice, because it sounds to me that you’re making a lot harder on yourself than you need to. And that’s the thing I find with brokers is that you it’s not a loyalty to any one particular stream.

John McGregor
Like is not only you’ve only got four products and that’s all you can do. Let’s open your up to 50 possibilities and see if we can make this work for you sometime. You know, which to me is makes perfect sense and I think I find two people don’t actually realise that that’s the case.

Rhianna Farnan
Exactly right. And we have it happen constantly where people communicate and say, Oh, look, I went to the bank that my mum and dad go to because that’s the one they want to me to go to. But they said I couldn’t get a loan and it was really disheartening. So I gave up. Yeah, well yeah. Actually fit the criteria for a lot of lenders.

Rhianna Farnan
It’s just a bank that you’re going to.

Aaron Horne
You don’t get their rules.

Rhianna Farnan
Didn’t their rules don’t apply. They don’t socialising guarantor loans, so they don’t specialise in the first home guarantee scheme. So that’s not an option available. Yeah. Yeah, they might have high interest rates and going back to one of the common misconceptions that I was speaking about before is that, yeah, if you go to a bank that’s your only option.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. They’re not going to go and tell you the next or have a better interest rate.

John McGregor
Yeah. Well they could make it work for you. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, sorry you done come back to us with more money. Yeah.

Rhianna Farnan
So that happens quite frequently where they’ve gone to one bank and they’ve given up.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. They said no, that’s done. My dreams over. Yes. Oh no. We’ve actually got 25 different doors here that you could travel, say.

Rhianna Farnan
Come and let us.

Aaron Horne
Unlock them.

Rhianna Farnan
A lot of the time. Like if there’s over time involved, some lenders won’t take into consideration over time we some lenders will take 80% of your over time as part of your income. Yeah. Some lenders won’t take going back to single parents. Some lenders won’t take child support payments or family tax benefits, while others will up to a certain age for a child.

Rhianna Farnan
So yeah, going and speaking to a broker is a really good option. If you are someone that would prefer like if you’re someone that’s really on top of everything and loves doing your own research and would prefer to be involved every step of the way, then that’s when you probably reach out to a lender. But if you’re somebody that you want to meet, you don’t have time.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, yeah. Personally, I if I wasn’t doing my job, I wouldn’t have time to reach out to 45 different lenders to say what exactly. And I wouldn’t have time to research them as well.

John McGregor
So this is an odd Segway, but my partner got really into that. Share the good doctor. Okay. And the premise of that is this this doctor’s autistic.

Rhianna Farnan
So yes, I love that.

John McGregor
Shop, right? Yeah. So last night there was one that was worth watching and one of the fathers and a daughter had been in hospital her whole life. Like they were onto it. He was really onto it. And so he was in the the war room. So coming up with different solutions. And he came up with this like thought digging into this information.

John McGregor
But his is ideas were wrong and they what what they then followed what he wanted because he wouldn’t approve a different surgery, you know, complicated things dramatically. And then later on, though, they the good doctor was able to resolve it and then his ideas meshed in was all great. The reason why I use that as an example is that we can think that we’re experts.

John McGregor
But the like he just said, you are not our doctor is like, you know, a lot. You’re not a doctor. So it’s that thing. It is still not working in that day to day. And so we can bring a lot of our knowledge and think. And I think once, you know, a little bit is that that’s when you think you’re an expert and you can get yourself in trouble.

John McGregor
So it’s that thought where you’re going and going, Look, I know what’s right. I know what’s best is like, how many loans have you written the last 12 months?

Aaron Horne
Yeah, I’m making it till you make it in. That scenario is probably not the way to go about it.

John McGregor
Yeah. So then you can lock yourself in to what you think is right. Realising that only two degrees of separation away was a much better solution for you as well. Yeah.

Aaron Horne
So what happened to the patient in the end?

John McGregor
She’s not so lucky enough both of these, because the good doctor he was, he went into his autistic mode, which is legitimately how they phrase it. It’s silly. But then he sees his three days like seen come up in his head and it was it was all good. But the thing is, I guess if we’re to bring it back to drowning.

John McGregor
Sorry, but Rihanna now you know her mind works them the but the thing is that all they would need to do is go right could you this is my situation can you help me is like in boom you’ve got all that years of research across all these different levels of what could be possible and all of a sudden you’re going to open up ten different doors with I thought there was only one.

John McGregor
Even when they thought they were the expert. And that’s how I always view working with great people is that they will they they they their interest are aligned with yours.

Rhianna Farnan
And one of my favourite things about growing a team now and having a group of experts when it was just myself and Emmanuel and now we’ve got a team is if we have a scenario with a client and it might be a little bit more challenging, we’re not sure who to put them free will all come together and we discuss it together.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah well, you got a.

Aaron Horne
Brains trust people. Yeah.

Rhianna Farnan
And it’s so awesome to see like a team really in an industry where it is clients singular and yeah it’s just so nice to see our team coming together and putting together a scenario to help a client out.

John McGregor
Well, one thing I when looking at the see was start around about 2017, etc. So with that we were coming into a market that was absolutely booming. Obviously now we’re shifting, so things are getting harder, but for lack of a better term. What’s that been like for you as the business now? What are you needing to do and what conversations you’re having as people’s expectations have changed?

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, for sure. So we’re seeing a lot more people needing a lot more help. Originally back when we started, it was a lot o awesome. This is what I can get. I’m halfway decent. I can buy a house with this amount. Yeah, yeah. Now it’s I asked for a cent in price and a lot of the time was like, hang on, we’ve got to pull back those expectations.

Rhianna Farnan
But also the property prices are really high. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Horne
Interest is higher than it.

Rhianna Farnan
Was as high as well. And it’s a lot of people coming to us and saying, Oh, look, we want to buy house, but we know the market’s not ready, so we should wait and things like that. But it’s always coming back to that. The my kit is always going to up and down and change. But your situation of when you can buy a house is not always going to be there.

Rhianna Farnan
So buying when you’re ready and when you’ve got the opportunity to hope, buying when the market’s ready. Because as we say, we’ve covered that was when the market was ready.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. And the whole world changed.

Rhianna Farnan
And then the whole world changed a couple of years later. So yes. And those people who bought them probably not ready now. So.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, great circle.

John McGregor
Of life. Well, I think that message is so important is we all got an email from a client that was saying or should we ask, should we sell now? And my question is, well, what are you going to do with that money? Yeah. And it’s the same with we’ll winch should our buyers when it’s suitable for you because it’s very few people that are actually masters of picking a market the rest are all lucky.

John McGregor
And is that again the the cliche of the yeah. Your friends or your family go well I made all this money like my. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So is that the message to you is that you’re finding that no matter what it is, you just trying to get them set up and then letting them decide for wins, right?

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. When the right time is for them. Obviously, you could be ready now, but when the market’s ready, you could have had another child. Yes. Capacity drop. So your you need to have more savings because of grants. Unavailable is a reviewed every 12 months. Yes. So that’s trying to show that you’re working together. And that’s one thing we try to do with our clients as well.

Rhianna Farnan
If they reach out to us now, they’re not quite ready because I don’t have the savings or the income. So it’s making that plan to get them to where they want to be in 12 months, two years, three years time to be out of purchase. And then it’s also making sure as a broker that we’re communicating with that client every 3 to 6 months to make sure that the scenario hasn’t changed and they’re not falling behind where they need to be in the next three years.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, I’m or two years or whatever it is. Or maybe they’re more ahead of where they thought they would be. So maybe they.

Aaron Horne
They can move up the timeline. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

John McGregor
We see it on a practical level where they’ll go, Look, I’ve got seven days until my my thing expires. I might just relax. Like, that’s not exactly how it works that way. And yeah, completely missing the point. The it’s a constant negotiation and conversation with the mortgage broker just because the appraisal approval loses it in three days. I was great, was wrong, but really doesn’t matter much.

John McGregor
It’s just a high.

Rhianna Farnan
And at the moment we’re actually seeing less and less pre approvals happen because they don’t really mean much with interest rates changing all the time. And so a lot of the time we’re just checking with our clients to make sure that the borrowing capacity hasn’t changed with the interest rates increasing and making sure that they see on the right point.

Rhianna Farnan
So when they do find a property they are still able to purchase for the what they’re wanting to purchase for and then they’re not getting to the stage where they get the contract and then they realise that they are borrowing capacity changed with Blaina.

John McGregor
Yeah. Yeah. So that that’s an interesting scenario. So if you are a buyer that you just, just left your office one day ago, like they’re really excited to go out into the market. What would be as a race out the door, what’s often almost like you try to grab them by the neck and just go, you know, grab them by the shirt and just remember this.

John McGregor
What would that thing you’d say to eBay?

Rhianna Farnan
I always try to tell them that you maximum borrowing capacity is, but don’t.

Aaron Horne
Rely on.

Rhianna Farnan
That to rely on that. You don’t go that high. Obviously, as brokers, we need to say what their maximum borrowing capacity is. So you also try to get them to draw back a little bit. So they’ve got that common ground of if they have an emergency and they need to get additional funds or they need to buy a new car.

Rhianna Farnan
Well, it’s very common. You buy a house, you want a new car, then you get pregnant and you go on maternity leave and it all just builds up. So it’s really important to make sure that they’re not rushing again. On the rushing, we have a lot of people come to us, they get their paper, they are so excited.

Rhianna Farnan
I’m going to buy anything.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, I’ll take it now.

Rhianna Farnan
They can get their hands on them. For some people they need to because they don’t have the luxury of living at home or they need to get out of their rental. And so some people do need to rush. But when you don’t need to rush, don’t rush.

Aaron Horne
Yep. I love that great tip. Yeah. Can we can we have maybe one or two more tips before we, before we sign off with the show today. Just kind of. Yeah, don’t rush.

Rhianna Farnan
I think my notes, it would be having a really good team behind you. So having that really good mortgage broker or your lender for you, having a really good conveyancer obviously can be a little bit harder with real estate agents. But if you’ve got a really good agent that you’re working with that can help you secure secure a property that you trust.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, just having that team of people around you that, you know, you can reach out to and.

Aaron Horne
You got to get on like a house on fire.

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s, it’s interesting, you know, like, I’ve been really toying with the idea of branching out into moving into a buyer’s agent option for our business. Yeah, because the, it is a reality that, you know, you know, the incentive changes because obviously an agent’s going to be getting paid by the owner, not by the by the buyer.

John McGregor
But I don’t think that’s there are some really good buys agents in Hobart at the moment. I think though generally speaking it’s a very under misunderstood field and also to the buyers who go on, I’m going to pay a guy to do that work for me. But again, it’s about building in that value where they can negotiate a better deal, better strategy to marry with what the broker advised for you so.

Rhianna Farnan
That you can help. We are very lucky with some of the buyer’s agents we have in Hobart, but a lot of them are for the higher end. Yes, investment in. We don’t have that many for the first time buyer educational side. Yeah yeah yeah it is definitely a market that J-Mac maybe.

John McGregor
Well that’s something we can look good I guess your horses the reality is though is that there’s a commercial aspect to it, because if providing the advice and time is really beneficial, no one wants to pay you money and ultimately you can only provide that services. You’ve got the capacity to earn, which makes it very, very difficult, you know.

John McGregor
So but that’s something I’ve really been thinking about a lot we’d love to build in, but obviously the market needs to see that value as well, you know, 100% challenging.

Aaron Horne
All right. One more tip. I just I just.

John McGregor
So like, there’s something you just did that.

Aaron Horne
I just want to add one more tip.

Rhianna Farnan
I think reaching out to a broker at the very first start of your journey is really important, even if you think you’re three years away. We have clients I’ve been working with the whole seven years that we’ve been open, and that’s really important because if you don’t have a broker, you don’t know where to start, you don’t know what you’re borrowing capacity is, so you don’t know what you need to save as you deposit.

Rhianna Farnan
You don’t know what yet. So reaching out to a broker, the very first stage, understanding your needs, understanding your partners needs, as well as having that broker. You can really have that conversation a lot of the time. As for I guess we feel like counsellors and like life advisors because we’re getting that plan together to get them in place to be able to buy a house when they’re ready to.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, yeah. And we can also, you know, get so I am probably not making much sense not speaking to a mom broker. You also get that understanding of what is available to you as well. So reaching out to a broker. AC First step, even if you don’t think you’re ready for the next five years, it doesn’t hurt to speak to a broker straight away.

Aaron Horne
As you were saying that I was just kind of like, yeah. Rather than just thinking of it as this, like, transactional relationship of like, I need this thing right now, I’m going to get it. It is like, let’s build this relationship and work out what you need, whether it’s two years from now or three years from now or seven years, you’ve had these clients.

Aaron Horne
It’s like on a trust ray in the it don’t finance like they’ve got me covered and they’re going to keep me informed across the journey. So yeah, that’s actually really handy.

Rhianna Farnan
It’s really sad. After you deal with a client for a couple years and then they buy the house and you only check in with them every six months instead of every couple of weeks that work.

John McGregor
So it’s really it’s really surreal, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I really like that point because the as you said, people think these relationships are transactional. No part of it is a transaction at some point in time. But if you were, you know, the first thing that I got was a credit card, you know, but I didn’t have that information.

John McGregor
I just love a chicken borrowing capacity.

Aaron Horne

John McGregor
Three.

Rhianna Farnan
Depends on the.

John McGregor
Funding. And now, I mean, like when I’m 18, you know, so it’s that thing where.

Rhianna Farnan
I do too.

John McGregor
Yeah. The first person you speak with will build a relationship with some people about that. Can give you some points for your future. There’s like, even I never want to buy a house. That’s fine, but these are the options. And if that’s something that’s important to you, let’s have that conversation today knowing that nothing come about for 3 to 5 years potentially.

John McGregor
Yeah. And and then the thing is, it’s, you know, it’s on you. You’re happy to be with that relationship.

Rhianna Farnan
And for sure and every broker we speak to about like we talk about it all the time, about building relationships and every broker is the same. They’re happy to speak with a client for a couple years before that transaction happens, because a lot of the time and I we get a bad rap and some brokers that we talk to and we try to do things just to make money.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah, but I’ve really seen a shift in the industry and a lot of the time we actually care more about you being in a good position. Oh yeah. I have said anything else. Yeah.

Aaron Horne
I think the, the growth of your of your business in the seven year period is just a testament to that, to say that like I know where, when the good guys were not like kind of yeah. Just kind of come out of the back and we’ll throw a loan at you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for all you got, so.

Aaron Horne
Yeah.

Rhianna Farnan
And I couldn’t save it. Not like I’m sure not many people could sleep at night. And for me, and I don’t know if it’s my age, but the raptors and mortgage broking industry gets. I’ve never met a broker that falls under that category.

John McGregor
Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah. I would say with our industry, you know generally speaking we’re all those people. Yeah.

Aaron Horne
Just trying to get awesome. Well I think we might wrap it up there, but thank you so much for coming in and having a go. It’s been a hoot for two people out there that aren’t falling on TikTok. How else can they kind of yeah. Connect with don’t finance.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. So you can go free to tik tok. All social media are the same so it’s just I don’t finance and I websites don’t finance secondary social. So even though it’s all in the same name.

Aaron Horne
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well yeah again thank you. And yeah congratulations on seven years and it would be so amazing if Bob comes out on that. The birth of a business that would be that would just be amazing. So yeah. Yeah. Good luck with that. Good luck with that adventure beyond yeah. Motherhood is parenthood is the best adventure of all.

John McGregor
Remember growing up, my parents often said, If you guys don’t have a desk as it is, you are going to need bigger premises.

Rhianna Farnan
Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Horne
Awesome. Thanks, Ray.

Rhianna Farnan
Thank you.

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