Today, we have a special guest, Emily Wallace, a Buyer’s Advocate from our own backyard of Tasmania -who is currently taking over Melbourne with a mission to empower first home buyers and family home upsizers.

With a background in teaching, Emily’s primary focus is to ensure her clients are provided with the correct information and education through the buying journey. She believes all buyers should have the same level of representation as a vendor. As a Buyer’s Advocate, Emily levels the playing field for buyers and represent them throughout the entire purchasing journey.

Her goal is to reduce the fear and anxiety of buying a property through education and trust. + Along with that Emily is co-host of her own Podcast, My Millennial Property Podcast.

Transcript

Emily Wallace
Do you like buying property? Are you a property nerd? Do you surf real estate? Become too fun. Maybe you should consider being a buyer’s advocate. Don’t want to go.

Aaron Horne
To know you’re losing to the property. All right, guys, Welcome back to the property pod, your weekly engagement into real estate here in your Hobart marketplace. No time to mess around with all the new hiring that I normally start with. Actually, I’m following the story this morning. As I recall this intro, the boys are out and about doing things like Pat is over in Western Australia and John doing a gin delivery, would you believe so?

Aaron Horne
Yeah. Ask find out more about that in the future. Today we are joined by a special guest. Today we have a special guest, Emily Wallace, a buyer’s advocate from our own backyard here in Tassie. She’s currently taking over the heart of Melbourne, however, with a mission to empower first time buyers and friendly home up sizes. She’s really passionate.

Aaron Horne
What she does and a real superstar. Purchasing property is a task that most people only undertake a few times in their life and it’s pretty daunting. Pretty scary. It’s caught on why we started this podcast. So having someone like Emily on is yeah, is super handy. So as a buyer’s advocate with a background in teaching, she started her career in a similar way to mine and then found her way into real estate.

Aaron Horne
She believes all buyers should have the same level of representation as the vendor. As a buyer’s advocate, Emily leveled the playing field for buyers and represents them through the entire purchasing process. A goal is to reduce fear and anxiety and buy property through education and trust and sharing all her knowledge with others. She also has her own podcast that she co-hosts, which is my Millennial Property podcast.

Aaron Horne
Check that out if you can, but no time to mess around with the jump. Straight into our chat with Emily Wallace. I’m sure you’re going to love this one yet. Jump on in to our new episode. Yeah, well, welcome by our guest today. Who is Emily Wallace. Emily, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Emily Wallace
Sure thing. So born and bred Tasmanian, which I’m very proud of and I let people know about all the time I got out of the study, I, you know, my professional life. I’m a buyers advocate. I basically work for buyers in the property transaction and absolutely love real estate property obsessed, property nerd self-confessed and yeah, have a great time doing it.

Aaron Horne
Yeah it’s bit interesting. We were just kind of talking a little bit before we started recording about your past. Not only are you Tasmanian, you’re trying to be a primary school teacher which that was my background as well. So yeah, funnily enough we’ve, we’ve found our way into real estate, but it started off with a completely other kind of career goal in mind.

Aaron Horne
How long were you doing that? Just before we would jump into property.

Emily Wallace
Yeah. So I finished the degree and in my final year actually knew I didn’t want to go into the classroom. So I did a final year, full year teaching year for us here in Melbourne. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, Yeah, this is not not for me. So I need a few days relief title. But I ended up in the recruitment side of education, so I’d never officially worked as a, as a teacher.

Aaron Horne
No. Well, look, I have a very similar story where, yeah, I was doing my fourth year prac and I was like, Oh no, look, I don’t think this is what I thought it was going to be. And then battled it out for. Yeah, for a little while and was like, No, no, no, no, I’m going to do something else.

Aaron Horne
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one thing I have found with especially doing the podcast or or working in this space is there are ways to educate lots of people through other things. I did pick up a bunch of skills, but I am really sick of my ex school hanging over me and being like and that the great I never use.

John McGregor
Yeah, well, I always do like hearing about what a person did before real estate because it’s always really different because at some point everyone guy’s going to have a crack at real estate. You know, we invested early in their careers or, you know, really, really late in life as well. How did you transition?

Emily Wallace
Yeah, I still ask myself that question to be honest, because it all unfolded so rapidly. It was never a clear intention of mine. It was something that came in front of me and I sort of followed it and it led me to where I am. It was never a really big plan to do what I ended up doing.

Emily Wallace
So basically what happened was I saw a paid ad on LinkedIn that said, Do you like buying property? Are you a property nerd? Do you surf real become fun. Maybe you should consider being a buyer’s advocate. I like I mentioned, I bought my first investment property, but I had never heard the term buyer’s agent a buyer’s advocate in that process.

Emily Wallace
It was all foreign to me. Learned about it, saw the gap in the market with first home buyers. And honestly, from hearing that and understanding that ad and a phone call behind it, it was three months to quit my corporate job and start in the industry. So I didn’t mess around. It was a very quick decision and one that I entered into quite naively in hindsight.

Emily Wallace
But I’m very glad that I did it the way it is because, yeah, it’s paid off.

John McGregor
But how did that naivety benefit you though? I think that’s not a bad thing sometimes.

Emily Wallace
Yeah, it’s a really good point. Probably the biggest thing was the financial component. I, I definitely should have saved more money before I just decided to not have an income for six months. But I think the biggest thing was I went in with the mindset of educating buyers. Yeah, and that’s what I thought you would just do. Like tell people what you do and and educate them on how to do it themselves and, you know, create a bit of an expert in the industry and no one else is really doing that.

Emily Wallace
And that kind of has led to where the business being where it is today. But yeah, I was just a bit naive about how you even get business. I just took my own approach that was different to everybody else. So yeah.

Aaron Horne
Just, just before we go any further down the road, this is where I get to jump in and kind of say like, I’m the guy outside of that. I don’t know. All these things. For the listeners out there that would have been like you and would have thought like, what is eBay like? What does a buyers advocate do?

Aaron Horne
I think you’ve got a really good analogy about searching a car yard on your TikTok or your Instagram. Could you talk us through kind of just let the listener line like what is a buyer’s advocate?

Emily Wallace
Definitely. So fundamentally, I think the first thing to understand is the real estate agent. The sales agent is engaged and paid by the vendor that is their client. And I always go with by the philosophy, if you’re not paying, you’re not the client. A lot of buyers, don’t get me wrong, agents can really help buyers, but at the end of the day, they’re not there to save you money that way to get the highest price possible for the vendor.

Emily Wallace
So Buyers advocate is the opposite of that. It’s the person who advocates for the buyer and gives them independent opinion and gives them choice. So with the car example, it’s like if you go to Toyota, Toyota is only going to sell you what they have a Corolla, whatever else, they have other types of the Toyotas that they have.

Emily Wallace
Yeah, they’re not going to tell you, hey, go down the road to.

Aaron Horne
Mazda or Ford or someone. Yeah.

Emily Wallace
Yeah. And try one of their cars because they don’t get paid to sell you a Ford. They get paid to say a Toyota. So the biggest thing it buys Advocate does because they’re independently engaged by the buyer, they don’t care what real estate agency has the property because it actually doesn’t impact their outcome. They’re paid engaged by the buyer to pick the best possible property regardless of who’s selling it.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, perfect. Awesome.

John McGregor
It’s such an interesting point because we upsell. Speaking from the sales agent perspective is it we can be very scene is very unhelpful for the buyer’s journey I think will all what can you help me find a properties like. Well I’d love to but unless it’s through our company I’m not going to get paid so you know like you said at the beginning, when your whole structure is paid by transactions and not by the hour, you really have to understand and remember who it is that you’re investing your time in and getting paid from.

John McGregor
So I think a lot of buyers in which I’d love the other side to kind of put buyers agents because they can actually experience what it’s like to have a professional working for them. And I just don’t. Most of the experience getting into the industry would not understanding that fact that, look, no one’s actually working for you and there’s huge a lot of animosity can be built because of that.

Emily Wallace
Yeah, for sure. It’s quite interesting when you think about it though, like if you were going through a court case, you know, the defense has a lawyer and so does the other side, like both people are represented. It’s just so funny that in real estate you kind of rely on one person to be the middle person for both sides, even though they’re only working for one side.

Emily Wallace
It just it’s quite an interesting concept.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, that’s a really good way of putting it as well. I’ve never really thought about that yet. I guess we’ve kind of spoken about gatekeepers and stuff, but yeah, there’s always been that idea of yeah, you’ve got to kind of traverse through this tricky minefield. But yeah, only really one side is being represented in that equation. Can you kind of talk to me and the listeners about like what does a day in the life of a on a look like?

Emily Wallace
Yeah, sure. Look, it’s hectic. It’s organized chaos most of the time between contacting real estate agents to source properties for our clients prospecting for new clients. So simply, you know, trying to look at some buyers that might want to work with us to help them inspecting properties, negotiating deals, Saturday’s auction bidding. It’s a lot of time on the road and it’s a lot of time on the side.

Emily Wallace
Probably the two key activities that I do the most very it’s actually quite minimal admin, really. There’s not a whole lot of admin on my side, which I’m lucky about because I never really like admin. Me I don’t know who does.

John McGregor
You guys are.

Aaron Horne
Two peas in a pod. Yeah.

John McGregor
Yeah we did. We did do a big personality on going off track, but a big personality test for our business and it just defined who hates admin and who just lives for.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, and you’re at the top of that.

John McGregor
I’m a real fast. Sorry. Me. Yeah.

Emily Wallace
Yeah. They’re different skill sets, aren’t they? So yeah, a vast majority is inspecting and qualifying properties for our clients and trying to get them as much choice as possible. And that really comes back to how many real estate agents want to do deals with us and will give us exclusive access to properties that they have, or at the very least some intel on a property they have coming up, which is the agent, the guide.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, I kind of saw in your in my little research phase of of preparing for this that Yeah. You had another video that was kind of like we are friends with real estate agents like not the enemy building that relationship is really important.

Emily Wallace
Yeah And I’m like, we took a team out for lunch last week. We done a few deals with them and it was just like sitting down with colleagues. Like, we really are friends with them. We do make sure that we’re very much on the buyer side and they’re very much when the windows are up, we go into battle for each each other’s best interests, but certainly it’s a lot easier to get information out of people and to put deals together when you actually have a friendly approach rather than a us against them approach.

Aaron Horne
Well, I guess another thing is kind of, you know, if you’re the agent selling agent on your side of the fence, John, and you’ve got these things coming up, you’ve got buyers or you want to find the buyers, you’ve literally got a resource there where they’re like, Hey, let’s team up, let’s make this work. And you don’t have to go through all the extra marketing phase and on or the hunt of, of finding the buyer.

Aaron Horne
You’ve got someone that’s basically doing that for.

John McGregor
You and you’ve got and you’re dealing. But one of the things that I love is that you’re dealing with another professional in the industry. So the conversations are very, very different. Um, in that like if I were to get engaged in a negotiation, we’ll be able to quickly cut through the noise very, very quickly because we know the terminology, we know the terms, we know what everything means.

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah. Whereas if you’re, if I’m trying to negotiate with a first time buyers, just come in often spend 30 minutes just walking him through the terms of the contract. So at the time when we’re ready to start discussing pricing terms, they know what the hell they’re even talking about. I don’t mean that maliciously, but for me, you know, it’s the honest from a seller’s perspective, I need to ensure that a deal, even if it’s on price, is irrelevant.

John McGregor
Is it going to go through? Yeah, yeah. And it could be guaranteed if you working with the buyer’s agent will then just buy through that connection alone. It’s like this contract is 100% solid. Whether or not those terms are going to work at first, we’ll get through that by me working with Emily. I know that this is something I can depend upon.

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah.

Emily Wallace
Yeah. And I know auctions on is common in Tassie, although I wish they were because they’re always really good fun.

John McGregor
I totally agree.

Emily Wallace
Yeah. Like they’re great. They’re a great avenue to sell a property. But in Victoria, like with the auction capital over here and when a buyer’s agent rocks up to an auction, the agent knows they’ve got at least one person bidding on the property and it just distresses them. It makes the process easier. They’re going to bid at some point.

Emily Wallace
We haven’t gotten this far to just walk out and watch like we’re bidding and it’s guaranteed. So yeah, I think that that also helps in the auction arena as well.

Aaron Horne
That’s got to be like a good feeling. It’s almost like a rock star showing up or like, you know, like when they did the wrestling entrances.

John McGregor
But yeah.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, it’s like informal music, like Emily.

John McGregor
They want a place to please do that.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, well, that cold air.

John McGregor
Rest of the. Yeah, I like. Yeah, I’m doing that. If ever you bid an auction we’re bringing forward, well.

Aaron Horne
You’ll raise it. So John’s older brother is Luke McGregor, the stand up comedian and television presenter. Yeah. So John did an auction only recently, and I swear you, my practice system gear like some real comedy gigs. You’re like, All right, I’m going to get the stretches going on. I was like, I feel like I’m at a stand up gig and an auction.

John McGregor
So what’s the interesting thing is we know that’s very it’s more likely that nothing’s going to happen, but you still need to put on a show. Yeah, so at least for the so I mean, there was one where, um, it ends up becoming more of a like just a presentation, I guess, to keep everyone engaged, even though no one wants to put their hand up.

Aaron Horne
I enjoyed the giggle. I was like, Yeah, well, if Luke needs, you know, Brothers in Arms for the comedy show, he’s got someone that terrible mistake.

John McGregor
He’d be like, Oh, man, I should not have got my brother on this night.

Aaron Horne
Yeah.

Emily Wallace
They call it straight theater over here when there’s no one, then they know. They know what he’s going to show up. It’s just like, Oh, it’s free, straight theater for everyone in the neighborhood to come watch you to do a copy that. And I don’t know. Bubbles and like kids bubbles, not champagne bubbles and lollipops would work.

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, actually, one thing I was curious him is I know we’ve so with this, like, there was this I just got through the RIAA and if review on industry generally speaking real estate agents as normal mild hard and I remember there was one where we were were the top 50 professions and then like these trusted professions, normally we always well there’s normally the top 20.

John McGregor
We never make that one year they released the top 50 and we got like 47. But what got me was that the average Australian will trust their run of the mill sex worker more than their average real estate agent, which which was actually on. The thing is like, okay, well that’s where we’re starting. That’s really interesting. But I was curious do from it either, but I just never hear it spoken as the same as it does when representing sellers.

John McGregor
What’s the experience you’ve been like when you if you think back to start now, you’ve built up a reputation. It’s very different. But early on, do you find the same backlash or pessimism related to buyers working as a buyer’s agent versus the other side? What’s your sense around that?

Emily Wallace
That’s a really great question. I think anyone’s ever asked me that and I really passionate about it because the reason I actually chose to be on the buying side was to shape how buyers are perceived in the industry and to the public. So when I entered, funnily enough, I actually got offered three different jobs as a sales agent.

Emily Wallace
People were like, Come work with us. But unfortunately the impression, particularly Victoria, is already made of what you are and I want to impact what an advocate or a buyer’s agent can look like. So we’re actually really well received by the general public. The issue that can arise is when and this is getting into technicalities of fees and stuff like that, but when a buyer’s agent charges a percentage of the purchase price as their fee, so the contacts with the listeners, when someone selling a property, it’s not uncommon that the selling agent gets a percentage of the sale, as they say, usually 2%, 3% depends.

Emily Wallace
Every state’s different. And so that’s great because with have sold the property that the vendor pays the money, wants it sold and they’ve got an outcome. When you’re working as a buyer’s agent, if you’re paid based on the percentage of what the client spends, if you think about it logistically, A, you’re probably going to want to spend the most amount of their budget because you want to get paid more, which is contradictory to saving people money.

Emily Wallace
And B, you’re probably going to favor buyers who have more budget because you’re going to get paid more overall. And it actually wipes out the people in the market who need your help, which is typically first time buyers. So I think in the reputation side of things, I’m very passionate about a fixed fee for that very reason and to try and keep, I guess, a benchmark of expectation of what you can experience with a buyer’s agent, which is there’s no best practice manual in the industry for us, which is actually a real downfall.

John McGregor
I think that’s such an interesting point on the basis of incentive, isn’t it? Because what you just described there is if you are working on the base percentage is yes, the you can money the bigger view, but also true there is no real incentive to keep to negotiate hard in the favor. The buyer’s like, well, if we you know, we pay an extra 50 K to the max to the budget.

John McGregor
Okay. Yeah, yeah. Because there is no incentive at the wrong side. I know in the States, for example. And what’s interesting about that part is the, the obviously they’ve got their buyers, the seller’s agents, but it’s not quite true, at least in Australia is a transparent element where you are getting paid by the while in the States. What happens is this a larger commission split?

John McGregor
They, you know, four or five or 6% and then the seller? Agent Yeah, the seller is paying everybody. And then what happens is, look, just imagine Emily and I working in the States. Well I’ll keep a side, namely flipside, all paid by the seller. So it’s sort of the same. This, I don’t know, the incentive structure works in the same basis.

Aaron Horne
Yeah.

John McGregor
So I’m not totally understand where you come from. I mean, like, did you had how is that in searching for clients and what has that looked like on the because I know there’s a lot of egos that are driven in this industry with bigger paychecks. What’s that been like with you bringing on in your business new clients as well, knowing that you’ve got a different face structure or attempting to.

Aaron Horne
Are you an outlier too? Yeah, the the crowd.

Emily Wallace
I wouldn’t say I’m an outlier in necessarily the fee structure because a lot of people are shifting to the fixed fee because we were more and more people in business have a fixed fee than a than a percentage. But what I would say is that we have refined quite heavily to purchase properties pretty much under 1.5 million now in some areas that sounds like a lot of money.

Emily Wallace
In others it’s barely anything. Won’t even get you like a two bedroom house. So which is crazy in itself, but I think our point of difference is that we sort of are the little fish. Am I helping the first home buyers? Most advocacies will have a minimum spend and it might be two mil is the entry level and some are more like only five mil plus because they want to do a deal every six weeks.

Emily Wallace
But they’re getting paid, you know, like 60 to 100 k a deal.

John McGregor
So two deals a year and you Yeah.

Aaron Horne
You think.

John McGregor
Yeah. Yeah. Which is a terrific idea.

Aaron Horne
I, I really love the idea of Yeah. Let’s get in and help these first time buyers and it was kind of where this podcast was born was the idea of there’s this group of people who are being moved out of the system, like this idea of the Australian dream of owning a home is, is being taken away. Let’s find a way of educating people.

Aaron Horne
And yeah, obviously with your education background, it’s really a big part of, of what drives you. What kind of what kind of people do you find that you come across like, do you have a, a normal demographic of, of, of buyers. What would you like of clients.

Emily Wallace
Yeah we do l can describe our top two people that we like, profiles we work with. Yeah. Number one is a young couple who are probably in their mid to late twenties who have a dog. They want a courtyard or a backyard for their dog and they’re planning for baby number one and they want like a two bedroom entry level villa unit or townhouse, definitely under $1,000,000.

Emily Wallace
Sets out may by so many of those. And then the other profile we deal a lot with, which I love a single female clients who are buying solo so their mortgage is a little bit less. It’s not a dual income household, probably between 6 to 700000 as they’re sort of safe base of this is what I’m starting with.

Emily Wallace
If I meet someone down the track, this will be become an investment property for me. They’re sort of setting their financial house up from the get go. And that’s where I think I just that’s what I attract because that’s what I am probably. But yeah, that’s what we do a lot of.

Aaron Horne
I’m wondering as well like obviously in, in the way that you market yourself, kind of online presence is quite large. You’ve got a a big following on TikTok, you’ve got your podcast. I’d love to know more about kind of how you got into that. But yet do you think that working in that space is what’s attracted those people who are using those platforms to find your services?

Emily Wallace
Most definitely, yeah. Especially Tik Tok. A lot of millennials on Tik Tok is endlessly scroll or guilty of it. But yeah, we’re not. We’re not really dealing with many established families who are looking to upsize. We used to do a little bit more of it. Yeah, but a lot more probably 35 years in.

Aaron Horne
Can you like kind of take us down that road of kind of being like, Yeah, I’m going to jump into this world of Tik Tok and podcasting and, and educating people that way. I was so against the world of Tik Tok when it came out. I just this idea of these crazy dancing, but I use it all the time and it’s really useful once the algorithm works out what you’re kind of like down the rabbit hole.

Aaron Horne
It features some pretty good content.

Emily Wallace
It’s the best algorithm set up I’ve ever seen. So I’ve sort of graduated from platform to platform. I think like I started heavily on LinkedIn and LinkedIn video was a big thing back in 2018, and that’s how I read the business initially. And that was a really great platform that I moved Instagram and I focused on reals a lot and posting a lot of stories about I document everything that I was doing and now I’ve I saw on Instagram a fair bit.

Emily Wallace
I’ve got a really low community, but now I’ve graduated Tik Tok and I only wish I’d gotten on TikTok sooner because the rewards from Tik Tok, it’s such an instant reward of people watching your content resonating with it, finding out who you are, booking a call like I can’t spend enough time on Tik Tok, to be honest, in terms of promoting the business for the return that we get in qualified clients coming to us.

Emily Wallace
We have a waitlist now for clients purely because we’re like, we just get blown up on Tik Tok and yeah, it’s content that people are finding useful. Even if they don’t use our services, they get value out of what we put out there.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, well even I was going to say as I was traversing through the suburbs of Melbourne video, they’re amazing. They’re so good. Do you have a videographer that does that? Sorry, this is not part of the podcast.

Emily Wallace
That’s okay. Yeah. We do have a videographer who does the more detailed shoots and yep, Suburbs of Melbourne is a segment that he helps with.

Aaron Horne
Yes, it’s it’s really amazing. It’s something I’ve been trying to get up off the ground like similar down here. Yeah. It shout out to your videographer and for you guys it’s a love when you’re talking to the people on the streets and tell us all about it and then just, oh, this over here is a beautiful cover. Yeah.

Emily Wallace
So passionate neighbors are always passionate about their area.

John McGregor
I guess that’s the thing. Is that it again, to the I’ve certainly noticed is that the idea of like the perception of real estate agents is not great. But ironically, everyone wants to talk about it and talk to us about it. Yeah, to talk about themselves, about it.

Emily Wallace
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. I think no matter how much technology does advance and, you know, the changing world that we live in, real estate, I believe, will remain a people business where real estate agents are required and a skill set that can’t be done by a robot, you know, is required. And that’s that human element of the process.

Emily Wallace
You know, selling off on a property for someone is a huge milestone. It’s a big financial milestone. It’s a life changing decision for a lot of people. It’s, you know, moving from one chapter of their life to another. So, yeah, there’s definitely that room to be taken away by the advances in technology. There’s room for the human element there.

John McGregor
Sure. Let’s where if I may, I guess because I’m a much more per person driven rather than technology.

Aaron Horne
Um, you’re not. Don’t look, man.

John McGregor
Yeah, Yeah. But if that everyone gets excited about. Oh, I always the next. It’s just the next thing, the next. It’s like and the hill is they are supposed to do what you do and like rock up to auctions visit the properties Aside thought from.

Aaron Horne
Now I’ve worked it out you get that profile that we got before about the person, the dog. Then you say, Oh, you.

John McGregor
Paid him property. She’s ten properties. Well, I mean, I thought that so I just there’s, there’s a lot of those different referral companies where they’ll say, give us your information. We’ll connect you with three different real estate agents. And I got to say, behind the scenes of what that looks like and ironically, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of work that was done behind it.

John McGregor
I just when they just went, Oh, he’s three people. He’s themselves. And then and then you go call them now. There’s very little, you know, work that goes into that. Yeah. But it just I know on the ground like how much legwork you have to do in order to secure those properties eventually for those clients. It’s just a phenomenal amount of hours sometimes.

John McGregor
And on your website it said will often, you know, find your house within 31 days on average. But I mean, I mean, tell only like what’s how often can you remember a client You remember the longest time you’ve been working with a client.

Emily Wallace
Yes, I can. It was last year. So 2022 that the only client so we have a 90 day, a three month engagement, and every client except this one client bought within that time frame. And people don’t even really need the 60 day mark, like really it’s between four and six weeks. But this client, I know, it’s such a beautiful client, like we love them.

Emily Wallace
There wasn’t anything wrong with them going over time. The reason they took so long is because the stock levels at the price point now right there was sort of like a 3 to $4 million buyer, one of our biggest buyers. You just don’t the whole time on those properties. It’s so long that you’re lucky to get one property that’s in the area.

Emily Wallace
They want it like every eight weeks maybe if you’re lucky. So the reason that blow out was because of of that and they were fine. We got them a great house in the end and they’re really, really happy and they’re going to rhinos and live there forever. But yeah, we had them probably for I think five and a half months in the end.

Emily Wallace
Well, but they were lovely people. It’s probably different when expectations out aligning well that’s something not quite right but that wasn’t the case for these clients. It was just timing.

Aaron Horne
On the on the flipside, what about like shortest engagement is I’ve been like I am I’ve got it 4 hours later last week.

Emily Wallace
So we engaged a client on the I think it was we met with him on the Friday to send out their profile on the Tuesday. Harry, my brother who worked with me, he posted something on socials on the Thursday. So two days later I got through it on the following. So an agent replied Sorry on Instagram with the property I got through on the Monday, the client got through on the Thursday, said, We’re like what, nine days in?

Emily Wallace
Yeah. And Peacemaker just signed a contract for it. Off market exclusive access. She’s been looking for eight months before using us Yeah and we found something in area in budget bigger than what she expected she could buy and yeah before Christmas that was like a nine day turnaround.

Aaron Horne
That’s awesome.

John McGregor
That’s right. That’s money for jam as far as I’m concerned. For the client. Not good enough. Yeah, the amount. Because the amount of work that she otherwise would have had to spend to do it on her own is insane, you know? Yeah, we can expect this province beckons new relationships.

Emily Wallace
The biggest thing in that is that agent knows us so well that he instantly replied to the Instagram story because he’s like, I know that if you’ve got some on your wrap it up. Like he just Yeah so whilst the time taken to actually get the property was so small, that relationship has been four years in the making to make sure that that’s how they perceive us and you know how we deal with them.

Emily Wallace
So yeah, it is. You can’t really put a dollar value on that because it results in an awesome outcome.

John McGregor
Oh look. And that’s why I think people just don’t say, is it? Look, the reason why I was able to go through smoothly for years because it’s been five years worth of work with before just for you to come in at this moment. This one moment.

Emily Wallace
Yeah, totally.

John McGregor
Yeah. I mean, what what are the if what are the common objections to someone using like if they what you often come across.

Emily Wallace
Or price is always the biggest one because people have to pay us. It’s not like when someone sells, you know, they’ve got the sale proceeds to basically pay your commission out like they don’t actually pay you to. They get an outcome with us. We do have an engagement fee to begin with. It kicks off the 90 days and then a success fee wants to have an unconditional contract.

Emily Wallace
So for a lot of first time buyers, it’s not like they don’t see value in us. It’s more than eight into their deposit too much and they simply can’t afford us. So the probably the biggest pushback that we get, not that they want us to change our face, like they understand the value in our fees, they just simply can’t afford it.

Emily Wallace
So to go back to that being said, when you think about the Melbourne property market and how quickly it increases at that moment, even if it was increasing, you know, on a 1% median change every month, that median was creeping up by 1% by three months time after you would be saved in the fact that you probably can’t afford now what you wanted.

John McGregor
So yeah, that’s such interesting point.

Emily Wallace
Spend money to make money, this type of. Yeah, but that’s the main objection.

John McGregor
I suppose to those that e if you were to as a negotiator again based on your reputation that more often than not you’re going to be able to secure a better deal with an otherwise would have been able to do on their own too. I would think.

Emily Wallace
We had one client recently who came from Tick Tock, funnily enough, and we negotiated a deal after it flopped at auction and they were prepared to spend. I was 860 was their budget of what they would spend on this property. And I was like, We can definitely get it for less than that. Like, oh, you know, eight 5850 I cannot leave it with me.

Emily Wallace
It is just we got it down to like, Yep, yeah. And this is the thing, right? If I was paid by percentage I’d be like, yeah, just pay 850 will get the deal done. I got it down to, I got them down to I think it was 815 and I was so happy with that. I went to sign it and I was like, Now I reckon I can get you another five.

Emily Wallace
That’s a couch for you. Do you house? Let me see if I can go in for five more and we go to four, eight, ten site and I would have paid eight 6050 grand if they weren’t, you know. So there is a saving.

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again like, um that’s, it’s so interesting because it’s the perception of value, Right. Well look, I mean how many times are you buying a house in your lifetime and there’s like it I’m buying multiple a year, you know, so it’s just such a difference in, um, you know. Yeah. Perceived value and actual value. And that’s such a good one.

John McGregor
That’s measurable.

Emily Wallace
Yeah. And that’s the thing. It is hard. The off market component is actually another real valuable piece. I’ve gotten properties off market exclusive access to me. A client has said no for whatever reason and that’s totally fine. But then it’s gone on market with competition and it’s sold for 6070 grand more. Great outcome for the vendor. All right.

Emily Wallace
Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome. Sales result, but it’s like we could have had it for this, you know, six weeks ago. But yeah, yeah. So there is that saving that you can’t quite quantify when you buy off market as.

John McGregor
Well in those instances too. Is it again your clients are just saying they don’t have if you look at that experience specifically, what was it that had the client not pursuing with the sale? Was it the is it the if the window saying now, is it your client said now I don’t want to pay that.

Emily Wallace
It was just that it didn’t feel like the right house which is something that I struggle like because I’m so non-emotional about the purchase. But obviously our client is their home and it just doesn’t feel right. And I just have to take their word for that. If it doesn’t feel right when they’re spending that much money, who am I to say it should feel right, you know?

Emily Wallace
So yeah, it was just wasn’t the right one.

John McGregor
That stuff as like, you know, it’s a good deal. But I mean I’ve heard it said before is it we buy on emotion and we justify with logic later. Yeah. Whereas in your case you’re wrong and you’re justifying the logic, but it’s just you just can’t get them of across the line. That’s just human. Yeah. Yeah. So if you’re, if you’re now if you’re now you’re with the experience you have, are you using a buyer’s agent if ever you want to buy property at this point or are you um, you know, are you doing it for yourself.

Emily Wallace
Yes, I, I’ve bought two investment properties since without using a buyer’s agent out of Sydney. They cover all of Australia for investment purchases. So I have actually been a paid paying client over the bay to buy properties and most recently as recently as this week of actually found a place that I would like to buy as my own home.

Emily Wallace
And I don’t think I can bid for myself, like I actually don’t think that it’s possible. Yeah, yeah, I’ve already like, I’m like, that’s my house. So yes, that’s how much I believe in it, is that I wouldn’t even buy a property.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, that’s awesome. I think I’ve also seen that things are going so well. You guys like, as you say, you’ve got the waitlist, you’ve moved into a new space. You’ve mentioned. And I think Jamie’s planning on growing. I’m February next year.

Emily Wallace
Yes. Yeah. Yep, yep. Looking for a new recruit. So yeah, it’s all, it’s all systems go at the moment.

Aaron Horne
Yeah.

John McGregor
So I suppose with that with that case mate, like um, then the next six months then is it, you still want to be continuing in the role that you are doing or are you hoping to transition to, um, an educator for growing a team at this point?

Emily Wallace
Yeah, very much the latter. So I will step away to a degree from doing the deals. I’ll be more so coaching the team, how to do the deals and stepping where I need to with the relationships that I have. But I actually want to travel a lot more. I feel like I’ve missed my traveling years a little bit because I started the business when I was 25, and so I’ve had my head down for five years and I just want to see the world so I could do lead generation through the form of content, educating people and then helping the team out remotely with coaching and training.

Emily Wallace
And then they’ll be a team that grows. And with Harry stepping up more into the role and then other people stepping into the business as well. So I’ve been saying for a long time that I don’t want to grow. I like a lean team, but I’ve realized that yeah, actually I do need people.

Aaron Horne
So like I said, like you said, when you jump from the corporate world into this, you’re kind of like I’m and naive. And I just went for it as like you just yeah, it’s, I’m just that level up to the next level. And look, you can do it from anywhere in the world, like the, the power of Zoom.

Aaron Horne
Now you could be doing your meetings from, I don’t know, the Bahamas or Europe.

John McGregor
Well, through the connections we have with the leading real estate agents, maybe out of magic and send you those details that you’re connected with. Like, I mean, those guys buy internationally. Yeah. Wow. You know, so I di like with that stuff then I bought all across the world. So the networks that they built very, very different again, you know so that would.

Aaron Horne
Be cool if Emily from Tasmania just took over the world.

John McGregor
Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Horne
We haven’t got to cover off on, on your podcasting side but you want to give it a quick plug and let our listeners know that if they enjoy our rubbish that you might actually get some information from, from your show.

Emily Wallace
You’re going to give yourself a bit more credit than that I think is is awesome what you guys are doing and we’re doing something similar really like you can you can never listen to enough podcast in my opinion, always competing and always you know something in areas. So I co-host the my millennial property show and along with another John John Pigeon and yeah we just talk about all topics to do with buying property.

Emily Wallace
I’m more about home buying John’s more about investing. And then together we just answer questions and have a yarn and yeah, hopefully people get value out of it.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, for sure. And there’s a stack of episodes out there and it’s also part of like My Money millennial.

John McGregor
Yeah, my millennial money.

Emily Wallace
So yeah, the overarching brand I guess. And they’ve got all these little subcategory. Is it different topics?

Aaron Horne
Yeah, I hadn’t realized until I did a bit more research that yeah, that branched out into all these other places. It’s really cool.

John McGregor
Yeah. It’s a great ecosystem of credit, that’s for sure.

Emily Wallace
Yeah. Also, Glen’s basically a full time podcaster who runs my millennial money. That’s his.

Aaron Horne
That’s his job. Isn’t it crazy? I remember when I went to uni studying teaching, I was saying about how, you know, when you start teaching kids, by the time they graduate, there’ll be new jobs that didn’t exist. Yeah. When someone said, Oh, you’re a full time podcaster, or even when I think like I, run the media team here, I’m just like, How is this a real job?

Aaron Horne
Is that job?

John McGregor
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aaron Horne
But yeah, thank you so much for coming on and having a go with us. Good luck with the kind of next step up into the, the, the big leagues. And you’re already taking over the big leagues and kicking butt.

Emily Wallace
But I should have about that time until I get.

Aaron Horne
Yeah, yeah. Go on a holiday. Go around the world trying out your time. Let Harry do all the hard, hard work for a little while.

John McGregor
Yeah. Harry, start.

Emily Wallace
Yeah.

Aaron Horne
Harry said thank you so much. We’ll put some plugs in at the end to the show. Do you want to direct anybody anywhere in particular?

Emily Wallace
Not really. They search my name or they search my millennial property. They’ll find me eventually. You know.

Aaron Horne
Also. Not a problem. Well, thank you so much for your time.

Emily Wallace
Thank you.

Aaron Horne
Appreciate it. You have been listening to the property, both recorded and edited by four wonderful media house in conjunction with full and full property code.

John McGregor
This podcast is general information only and the thoughts and views expressed is the opinion of our panel. And listeners should always seek and use their own investigation into any topic we discuss to ensure they fully understand their own situation. 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 any agent or investment services.

John McGregor
No investment decision or activity should be undertaken on the basis of this information without first seeking qualified and professional advice.

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