Sometimes things happen fast in property investing! In part 5 of our Queensland buyers agent case study, assisting Serg to purchase his Mackay investment property, not only do we narrow down our search location to a focus area, but we get out on the ground inspecting properties and present our findings to Serg for his consideration.
If you haven’t yet read the first parts of the case study, check out:
Part 1 – Queensland Buyers Agent Case Study – Introducing Serg
Part 2 – Queensland Buyers Agent Case Study – Buying Criteria
Part 3 – Queensland Buyers Agent Case Study – Location Analysis – Mackay
Part 4 – Queensland Buyers Agent Case Study – Suburbs in Mackay
After presenting our location analysis and suburb recommendations to Serg we reviewed the buying criteria that we’d set and decided that the target property we were looking for would be:
- New to near new
- 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom
- Up to $500,000
- Located in Glenella, Andergrove or Beaconsfield
- As close to neutrally geared as possible
Given that Serg’s criteria was initially quite broad, this step of undertaking the location analysis was a crucial step in really focusing our efforts in the property search. Armed with our revised and more targetted criteria it was time to hit the net and the phone to gauge the properties available that fit the bill.
We had already made some good relationships with real estate agents in the area and so made contact with these agents to clarify our criteria and let them know we’d be coming to buy. Real estate agents love knowing that you mean business and that is certainly a benefit of being a buyer’s agent. They know that you’re here to buy and you aren’t simply ‘kicking tyres’. They are keen to show you what they have that best meets your criteria and will often also give a buyer’s agent information about the vendor and the property that they may not otherwise share directly with a potential buyer.
I must say, often real estate agents get some bad press, but almost all of the agents I met on my trips (and there were so, so many in Mackay!) were friendly, helpful and professional.
We spent a good deal of time on our desktop research, utilising a wide range of tools, websites, data and knowledge to narrow down to a list of prospects that we felt were worthy of an ‘in-person’ inspection and so we set off for 3 full days of inspections for Serg. Whenever you inspect a large range of properties there are often a couple of standouts, a few ‘maybes’ and a whole lot of ‘no’! We narrowed down to a shortlist of 3 standout properties and a number of ‘maybes’ and presented our 3 standouts to Serg for his consideration. Presenting the properties to him involved providing documentation outlining the location, the pros, the cons, the numbers and lots of photos. In this case our 3 properties included one brand new property that had never been lived in and two properties that were just a few years old. Cashflow was very similar on all three, though slightly better for the brand new property (as you may expect).
It was important to act quickly as the good ones, even in a slower market, can be snapped up quickly and so Serg assessed the information and after a few phone conversations together he provided us with instructions on which property he’d like to make his first offer on.
The fun starts!
Stay tuned for more information on our offer and purchase in the next part of this case study.
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