Years ago, I surveyed one hundred of my past appraisal appointments and asked them to name the top five criteria that they use when selecting an agent. In order of priority, here’s the most common criteria that this survey produced… They seemed to be genuine/ honest A past business relationship/ dealt with them before Recommended […]

Real estate is a funny profession at times. It’s amazing how many times we hear little phrases from both buyers and sellers…almost like there’s a little instruction manual out there that’s been handed around. Here’s a few examples that you’ve no doubt heard before too… “My offer might be $50,000 lower than the ask price […]

So why are agents generally considered to be dishonest? From my experience, the better agents gain their solid reputations from their ability to share the truth…whether that be good, bad or indifferent. So why do many agents shy away from the truth? Let’s have a look at the classic reasons that some agents are dishonest […]

Yes….I know you’re thinking that those two words go together as well as peanuts and chewing gum but the truth is that not all agents are as unethical as you’d expect them to be. Like most professions, there are some bad apples that spoil it for most. The publication that everyone has heard of but […]

This is on old mantra that has been bandied around in real estate circles for many years…but is it always true? This is a very interesting question! I believe that one of the biggest mistakes a seller can make is to underestimate your first offer although I must admit, I don’t believe that your first […]

Darren Cartwright, The Courier-Mail March 8, 2018 5:06pm   A BRISBANE real estate agent could not believe his eyes when his mailbox was jammed with protest letters from more than 200 disappointed students from a local primary school. Every Grade 1-5 student at St Kevin’s Primary School at Geebung individually wrote a letter to Innov8 […]

There are many ways that you can try to do this (without badgering people) and over the years, one of the ways that I’ve done this is to take the time to be helpful to local journalists. Journalists are always looking for good stories and I’ve gone out of my way to be available to […]

In most instances, gone are the days where an agent takes their own photos on their smartphone and uploads these to the major real estate portals. But like any service, you get what you pay for! I’m very lucky – I’ve used the same photographer for more than 11 years now. In my opinion, he’s […]

If you’re not aware of this terminology, ‘staging’ is the process of furnishing and decorating the interior of a property so that it is more aesthetically pleasing. There are numerous options when it comes to ‘staging’ companies and consultants but I’ve found that the best companies to work with are the larger ones that have […]

Quite often, you can sell a home for your clients and the process can be very quick and seamless. Other times, it can be a process that is like a roller-coaster. It’s hard to express how difficult it is when a valuation comes in low, or the home has building and pest issues that the […]

One of things we’ve learned is that once an online review has been published (irrespective of whether or not it had merit or was even legitimate), it can be very hard to remove. I have no issue with the public viewing a review about us if their experience was genuine, but I do object to […]

With Social Media and rating websites increasing in popularity every day, it is important to be vigilant in knowing what’s being written about you online. There’s an old saying that goes something like this…”If you have a happy customer, most will tell 1-2 people, but if you have an unhappy customer, most will tell at […]

When I first opened a Facebook account (around 11 years ago), my entire experience on Facebook was playing that silly Zombie game and earning more points than two of my mates – Brett and Graeme (Does anyone remember this?) {Footnote for Brett and Graeme – I think I beat you both which means I clicked […]

Here are a few conclusions I can confidently draw about the real estate market right now…   There are plenty of brand new buyers in the marketplace – we often see a good number of new buyers in the market in early-to-mid January who weren’t looking in December. It would seem that people make decisions […]

The first discovery of the South American Fire ant in Queensland was only in 2001 and up until 2015, they had only been discovered in Brisbane twice (once in the Western suburbs an In 2015, you may remember significant press where they were discovered in New Farm Park (the entire park was shut down for […]

Last Saturday, my team and I met more buyers at open homes than we did on any Saturday in 2017. We’ve already sold numerous properties this week this year and at the time of writing this blog, we have offers on six of our properties with contracts likely to be agreed and signed off on […]

We hope you had a very Merry Christmas, a fantastic celebration for the New Year and we hope 2018 brings you much happiness and success. Our Festive Season has been very busy with numerous contracts secured between Christmas and today so we’re hoping that this is a strong indication of the strength of the market […]

Like many facets of commerce, consumers have more choice with plenty of discounters ready to capitalise. But one of the hardest things for a seller to determine is that if ‘cheaper’ is always ‘better value’…and here’s the toughest part of the real estate industry, it’s a very hard question to answer even once you’ve sold […]

that has entered the Australian real estate sales market within the past 18 months. As we mentioned last week, the company purports to sell your home for a flat fee of $4500 including GST and marketing although acknowledges that it is the seller themselves that is doing a majority of the work in selling their […]

This seems to be in response to a number of real estate ‘disruptors’…many of which claim to be the ‘Uber’ of real estate. One of these companies is ‘Purple Bricks’ and I’ve deliberately not discussed them in much detail to date but I have been questioned a little about them from potential sellers lately so […]