The stuff I have read indicates the drop in 1st home buyers and the rise in investing is linked. IE FHB are now buying an IP first. (like I did many yrs ago and was the only one of my friends) is this a problem?

@shannon88 What was your experience? Do you have a sense of whether the properties being offered are actually worth the price or is there a chance they are inflated? This is the biggest problem (as raised by others) I see so many horror stories of these places with conflict of interest, pretending to be investment advisors and buyers agents when they are not. You need independent advice and evidence based valuations on anything you are going to purchase. Best of luck.

You need a new accountant. See Terry’s post above.

Terryw wrote:

Land tax is vic is different to NSW. Trusts do get a threshold there, unlike NSW, but it is very small. But the rates of land tax are higher for trusts than individuals unlike NSW.

Given this I would consider own name if I was you. (unless your day job is high risk of being sued like medical dr or similar)

Tristan1 wrote:

@tristan1 thanks for your trouble of providing these detailed comments! Can you answer a couple more questions?
Did your BA also organise a property inspection?
Did you have a rental yield target in mind which the BA advised on?
How did you find the BA, did you get a recommendation from someone?

I was recommended my Buyers agent through the somersoft property forum. A BA can have a number of rolls you can employ them for. Full service, partial service, single inspections, negotiating and buying at auction.
I got mine for the Full service- As it sounds they will do every thing from start to finish. Starts with a Buying brief specific to your circumstances/strategy. It may include price range Under 300K, rental yield 6.5%, immediately rentable, maintenance free, target suburbs. Then they will inspect properties that fit the criteria. Write detailed reports and valuations of each property inspected. They also have lots of advice to give as they have the local knowledge, aswell as getting a better gauge of the selling agents. Then they will negotiate or attend an auction on your behalf on properties you like. Mine even short listed a number of property managers for me.

Hope info helps, If your interested call or email a few buyers agent. You will know which one to go with after talking to them and reading reviews.

Cheers

@hdewalais the description above by @tristan1 is about right. I didn’t mention the other forum earlier out of respect for Steve who founded this one, but you might find more specific BA recommendations over there too, for example I know that an investor or two have written things about me there and they aren’t on this one. Both are useful as there is a different set of investors on both. The full brief of service from Tristan is roughly correct, it is a start to finish service designed to make buying easier, and smarter. Only you can decide if its right for you, so do your research thoroughly. Once you commit to a path you don’t want to be doubting yourself. Best of luck.

Yep. Really depends on you, your goals, strategy and research that led you to Yepoon in the first place. If you provide some more information you might get better answers.

DM Jake Milne is in Melbourne he is very good. Working with a company called Qura. Metropole also do good work in inner ring.

Helen de Walais wrote:

Well it looks like my post has now been hijacked,not bad for a first attempt at a question on this forum!
@knightm I have searched the forum and have not found anything helpful from anyone who actually *used* a buyer’s agent.
Which was my question.
I guess there isn’t anyone on the forum able to share this experience, a shame. I expect that buyer’s agents can provide references though.
I did find someone in Canberra (through another means) who had used a buyer’s agent and he said he would never do it again due to the problems this caused establishing who the selling agent actually was, to his bank. The bank caused a lot of issues and stress as a result. It was a new apartment and there was a selling company, a real estate agent and a buyer’s agent involved and it did not go well.

So sorry the original question hasn’t been answered Helen. If you do a general buyers agent search in this forum and spend enough time reading there are some recommendations that are free and independent. To find more in-depth reviews you might need to do some google searches, do a little more digging inside this forum or the other major property forum. REBAA is also a great place to make an enquiry, they are a national body of BA’s and have info and testimonials from many states I think my property hunter in TAS is actually a member so you should be able to do a quality control check through them.

From the way you describe your referral’s situation it sounds like there may have been 2 selling agents and 1 was masquerading as a “Buyers” agent because they handled the buyer. This does not mean they are licensed and independent. If both parties are on contract or there is dispute as to who then this means both parties are representing the vendor (I am a BA and I have never been listed on a contract) which means both parties probably got paid money by the vendor (whether the service was “free” to the buyer or even if they had a to pay a fee which I have seen) if they both got paid by the vendor then its a dodgy situation and not a true Buyers Agent arrangement. The above is confusing but it happens – In big real estate agencies I sometimes meet a selling agent and they say “oh, I am a buyers agent too” meaning speak with buyers and they may have a partner who spends more time working with the vendor, but they still get paid by the vendor, so they are not really true buyers agents. It gets even murkier with new developments as the developer can pay marketing firms, real estate agents, spruikers who run seminars to advertise their stock etc etc etc. Clear as mud?

The biggest 2 questions to ask in my mind are:
1 – How does this person get paid?
2 – Are they good enough to have a track record of happy clients?

Keep going you will learn a lot from this.

Helen de Walais wrote:

Yes I gathered that Richard since his name is Rob. Is it against the forum rules to self-promote?

Welcome to the forum Helen. The purpose of the forum is mutual education. In that spirit anyone in property related industry is welcome to post and comment and even mention their service but we try not to sell so much as to help. This way everyone learns, free of charge (which was always the intention of the place) and anyone interested in contacting a service can see the track record of posts, advice, information etc that has been offered by a service. Usually those only interested in selling don’t last too long. Those interested in property investing for the long term often hang around. See TerryW above for example, some of the best free legal wisdom on the forums with many many people who have been helped. Hopefully Rob is willing to participate on that basis and if so I am sure his business and reputation will benefit. As always doing your own research is a good thing, and there are often testimonials online (here and elsewhere) from happy, or not so happy customers.