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In today’s bonus episode, Bryce and Ben answer a listener’s question and walk you through the step-by-step process! 🔍✨
It all starts with getting clear on your goals—Do you need a growth asset? A balanced one? Or maybe something with a higher yield? They then dive into the full journey, from checking your finances to navigating state-specific property market regulations.
Plus, find out how being proactive—whether it’s with due diligence, understanding local regulations, or reverse engineering your property purchase—will set you up for a smoother and more confident buying experience!
For the full Q&A episode, tune in here: Episode 186 | Q&A – Should You Pay Down the Principal Loan When Interest Rates are Low? Are Multiple Offset Accounts a Good Idea? PLUS The Step-by-Step Process to Buying an Investment Property!
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Additional Resources on How to Buy Property in Australia
FREE Book: If you want to learn more about building a successful property portfolio, grab a copy of our bestselling book The Armchair Guide to Property Investing.
FREE Property Report: Our comprehensive 39-page property report is a treasure trove of data insights! Pick a suburb of your choice and learn all about the dynamics of its properties PLUS 20 vital key statistics covering long-term growth, market cycle timing, days on market, and more.
FREE Initial Consultation: If you’re looking for a buyers agent, property investment advisor, mortgage broker, accountant, or financial planner, book in a free initial consultation with our sister company Empower Wealth Advisory.
If You Enjoyed TPC Gold | How to Buy Property: A Simple, Step-by-Step Process, You Might Also Like:
- Ep 187 | How to Inspect Property Like a Pro! Chat with Andrew Mackie-Smith, Expert Building and Pest Inspector
- Ep 203 | How to Choose the Right Property Manager – Chat with Lauren Robinson
- Ep 402 | Do You Need a Buyers Agent in Today’s Market?
Transcript
Ben Kingsley
Now, Bryce, your last one.
Bryce Holdaway
Now, the process for the purchase is very simple. You’ve got to overlay a couple of the frameworks we talked about, Ben, the five steps. So we’ve got: Clarify, Evaluate, Plan, Implement, and Manage.
Ben Kingsley
Yes.
Bryce Holdaway
That’s still the same. So first of all, if we go way back, we clarify what it is that you want. Because people say to us, do you buy just capital growth properties?
Ben Kingsley
No.
Bryce Holdaway
No. We are not a one-trick pony. It is whatever you require. Do you need a growth asset? Do you need a balanced asset? Do you need a yield asset? And the only way we’re gonna know the answer to that is if we clarify what you want first, okay? So when you’re buying an investment property Ben…clarify, evaluate, plan, implement, and manage.
I’m gonna go straight to implement here because that’s what we’re talking about. In terms of the implement, I’ll tell you what a buyers agent does. They do four things. They further clarify the brief, they go and find it, they then go and assess it. Then they go and negotiate it. So what they do is they clarify what it is that you want based on what we just talked about.
So is it a: Do I need a higher yielding brief? (Or) I’ve got land tax issues in New South Wales, I need to buy outside of that. There’s a whole range of things that form the foundation of what we do. We then go and find them – whether they’re on market, Ben, which is easy through the portals, and then the other one is off market, which comes from relationships. And buyers agents have relationships that the general buyer doesn’t necessarily enjoy.
Then we’ve got to assess it, Ben, against what we’ve found, against what we’ve clarified. So, okay, sure, this is a great property that will grow in value, but is the shortfall so great that I won’t be able hold the property longer than 18 months before I tip over? Or vice versa, am I a shoo-in with the cashflow that I’ve got? And then the final thing is, do you then negotiate whether it’s at private treaty or at auction?
So if we flow that through, all right? So first of all, we always say to the client, we’re never in a hurry to find a property, but when we find a property, we are in a hurry, all right? Because there’s a window of time where the anxiety is really high, where the agent’s back and forth, we might be up against competition. So anticipating that there’s two parts of anxiety in the whole timeline, that’s one, and one’s a bit later, which I’ll talk about in a sec. So what we need to do is reverse engineer all of the things that are going to happen in that 48-hour window and make sure we’ve got it prepped.
What name’s gonna go on the contract, Ben? Have we asked our accountant? Is it in our trust? Have we got our pre-approval in place? Is our equity released? What are we gonna do for a deposit? Are we at high LVR, which means we’ve gotta be conscious of the fact that if we’re at LMI, are there certain properties that we need to avoid? So we need to be asking lots of key questions that are happening during that anxiety period, way back nice and early to make sure that we’ve got that sussed.
Once we’ve got the equity released, once we’ve got the finance pre-approved, we are in a very strong position of strength, Ben. So for example, in Melbourne you have to be pre-approved. In Brisbane you don’t, in Adelaide you don’t. So it’s important to know, if you’re buying in Melbourne, you need to have your ducks lined up beforehand. If you’re buying in Sydney, you need to have your ducks lined up beforehand. If you’re buying in Brisbane, you can do your due diligence afterwards.
But in a competitive market, we would say bring Melbourne and Sydney paradigms into that market, because you wanna be able to make an offer on a property, make it attractive to the vendor, because if you’re one of three offers, make sure you do that.
In Adelaide, for example, you make an offer, and you don’t even have to make it subject to any conditions, because they give you what’s called a Form 1, which means you have a certain period of time on the spot; you have like three days, you’ve got midnight on the third day. If it’s not three, it’s five, because there’s so many around the country, I’ll double check that. But as soon as you’ve been issued that Form 1, Ben, that’s when the cooling off period starts. So what they normally do, it’s actually two days, Ben. It’s two days. Two days. That’s just come back to me.
Ben Kingsley
48 hours.
Bryce Holdaway
So then what happens is what you do is you ring up your builder and you say, right, I need you to get through in the first two days. It’s a culture over there. They know. And if there’s something wrong with the building, you cool off, Ben. So you’ve got to make sure that during that window of time when you’re about to buy, there’s lots of anxiety. So you need to reverse engineer lots of key questions back at the very beginning.
Are you someone that likes detail? Are you someone that likes to get it done? Are you comfortable with auctions? You need to know all this sort of stuff. Once you’ve got a deal done, Ben, you gotta have your builder lined up, because if it’s in Brisbane, it’s subject to building and pest. If it’s in Melbourne or Sydney, you gotta have the builder lined up beforehand. You gotta have your solicitor in place to make sure that you get the contract checked out beforehand. If it’s in the other cities, you get the contract done afterwards. So making sure that we have these things in place so that we know.
Now, you need to know how to put some clauses in and in some states you need a licensed person to put some clauses in, so make sure you’ve got that in place. Then as you get closer to unconditional, the property goes unconditional, you’ve satisfied building and pest, you’ve satisfied finance…you then move into overdrive, which becomes the second most anxious part of the whole timeline is, okay, we’ve got an unconditional, Ben, now I’m nervous about whether we’re gonna get a tenant. What happens if we don’t get a tenant?
So you need to be interviewing property managers in advance of settlement. If you’ve done the negotiation well, you’ve negotiated to get access to the property prior to settlement with the property manager so they can get a bit of a run-up in, so that you can minimise the window that you have as a vacancy. You need to interview property managers. You need to ask them key questions to make sure that they’re not just giving you lip service as to the fact that they are going to give you a good service. What you do is you give them a call and wait for how long it’s going to take for them to call you back, because that’s indicative of their service levels.
So you’ve got the property manager in place, you’ve got that lined up before you settle. Ben, you’ve put out the call to make sure that you’ve got landlords protection insurance in place. So that’s in place. And you’ve given the guys, the quantity surveyors a heads up and say, hey look, I need a depreciation schedule done. Now the reality is a depreciation schedule doesn’t need to be done until 24 hours, it doesn’t need to be in your hand until 24 hours before you’re gonna meet with your accountant and lodge your tax return.
But I always say get it in early Ben, because it’s a nice little surprise if you’re a first-time property investor to see, wow, I’m getting all these non-cash deductions. It’s pretty cool. I can actually get some tax back from paper deductions, which is nice. If you’re an experienced investor, Ben, keep the money in your offset account. Get it at the last minute.
Ben Kingsley
Love it. Just make sure you get it before 30th June. Because that obviously will give you that year or the year that you bought it in will secure that so that’s a good one.
Bryce Holdaway
That’s about lodging a tax return not when you get the report.
Ben Kingsley
Yeah, that’s right. You can get the report but as long as it’s before that end of that financial year it helps you because it can go two years backwards depending on how long you’ve had it for.
So I’ve just made some notes whilst you’ve been going through that, but I’ve also been listening intently in terms of what you’ve been saying, right? So in different states, it’s obviously different timing for different things, but I’ve just gone and said right.
Step one: Cash flow affordability, that’s the first thing you wanna make sure. Step two: Get your finance in order. Step two: Get your finance and borrowing power sorted out. Step three: Know which name you’re gonna put the title on. So if it is an investment property, there might be tax consequences around that. So you wanna have a chat with your accountant in terms of what their views are in terms of ownership and what that looks like. Step four is effectively finding the property in terms of making sure that once you’ve found it, you also talked about a building inspection there.
You also talked about a contract review with your conveyancer or legal person. You’ve also talked about when you’re negotiating, you wanna have those contract terms to make sure that they’re in the contract before you buy it. After you buy it, you’ve then got the property manager, and then you’ve got the defence, which is the insurances around that property, and then you talked about the depreciation. So there was, and some of those are slightly nuanced in different states, which is what you were trying to highlight there, but that’s probably not a bad little framework in terms of stepping through that.
Bryce Holdaway
Love it, and between step two-and-a-half and step three on your page there, it’s location does 80% of the heavy lifting. Make sure you focus on suburb first before you go to property. If you’ve made the decision, I’m going to buy a house and I will buy a house that no matter what the cost is, I think you’re..
Ben Kingsley
…you’re barking up the wrong tree. Thank you…
Bryce Holdaway
Kyrillos.
Ben Kingsley
Kyrillos, thank you for those questions. They were terrific.
Folks, we hope you find that helpful. If you want to learn more about building a successful property portfolio, grab a free copy of our book The Armchair Guide to Property Investing at www.thearmchairguide.com.au. Of course, please know that everything we said in this show is general advice only, so please consult an experienced professional before making any investment decisions.
If you are looking for an investment savvy professional and not sure where to go, check out our award-winning company Empower Wealth. The details are in the show notes and remember, knowledge is empowering but only if you act on it.
