Are you brave enough to 'choose yourself' and take responsibility for your decisions in this ever-changing industry?
There is an art to 'listing what sells'. John McGrath , Tom Panos & Troy Malcolm reveal the process...
Plus, we take a deep look at the crucial role of timing and patience in real estate.
We weigh in on the pros and cons of listing a property now against waiting for the New Year.
Remember, in real estate, it's often about playing the long game.
Are you brave enough to 'choose yourself' and take responsibility for your decisions in this ever-changing industry?
There is an art to 'listing what sells'. John McGrath , Tom Panos & Troy Malcolm reveal the process...
Plus, we take a deep look at the crucial role of timing and patience in real estate.
We weigh in on the pros and cons of listing a property now against waiting for the New Year.
Remember, in real estate, it's often about playing the long game.
Welcome to another episode of Million Dollar Agent, the podcast coming to you weekly Troy, malcolm, john McGrath and myself talking all things real estate. I'm pretty excited today. I love short, sharp, practical podcasts and I got this idea, gentlemen, from listening to another podcast where they pick five quotes that when you dig deep, they have a profound lesson in them and they're very relevant. So we're going to go through five of these today and I'd love to get your views on what they mean to you and what they mean from a real estate context, since this is a real estate podcast. And but before we go on, I just want to ask you how you both going in this in this world. There's a lot going around the world as we speak. You know there's, you know, wars on. You know we had the referendum, so there's a lot going on real estate, wise Markets, sparing up pretty well.
Tom Panos:I don't know what the McGrath agents are saying. I would have thought to myself, with so much stock expected to come on in spring, that we would have seen maybe an inbalancing and that we would have had a bigger impact into pricing and maybe a lower clearance rate. It's a patchy market. I've never in my 37 years of real estate. I've never gone to do an auction with 10 bidders and then driven two minutes and there's no one at the next one. There's definitely a shift towards quality and there's so many submarkets in markets Like you can't. When someone asks you how the market is 30 years ago you sort of given an answer and you turn around and that would probably be a good summary of what's going on in Australia. But we now know that's not the case. You can actually have in one suburb different kinds of properties doing a lot better than others. Curious to hear what you both think.
John McGrath:Yeah, I agree there's definitely a flight to quality and I think that we've seen that probably on and off for the last few years. I mean, it's generally been a pretty strong market everywhere for the last few years, but whenever it takes a bit of a breather or gets a fright, we still have found that the people want to buy the good properties with the good views and the good aspects, in the good streets, the good suburbs, etc. And when people get a bit nervous, it's the B grade investor type stock on busy roads and in B grade buildings and so forth that get left behind. I noticed, tommy, on your I think it was on TikTok. I saw you 10 out of 12 on the weekend, which is a great clearance rate, and you did make mention, though, that a few of them were sort of like pulling teeth, but I think still, 10 out of 12 is 10 out of 12, whether it was one bidder or you sold it after the auction or not. That's a great result.
John McGrath:So I think and just back to the war thing, before you chime in on the market so I love your observations, but isn't it atrocious? It makes us, hopefully it makes us all realise, all our listeners and certainly, I'm sure, the three of us in the case makes us just appreciate that we live in such an incredible part of the world where our lives are not a constant threat, where we don't have bombs going over our head and missiles, where we don't have neighbours on our doorstep that we've had tension with for 50 years or more in some instances. And it's just. We have to keep, excuse me, reminding ourselves what a fortunate situation most of our listeners are in. And why do I say that? Because so often we whinge about oh, my buyers dropped off a bit, I missed the listing today. Oh, someone scraped my car in the car park All this non-important, trivial rubbish. And then you come face to face on the news at night Well, it's 24 hours nowadays, it's not at night and you see kids being killed and families being torn apart, literally and figuratively. It's just a reminder is how fortunate as a country, even as an industry you look at, there are people who say I had a bad year.
John McGrath:I did 500K GCI and you think, man, so 500K if you got 50%, that's 250. Do you know how few people in the world will probably earn that in a decade, let alone a year? And even in our country. Some people would be lucky to earn that in three or four years, let alone one year. So I just think the way, troy, our mindset, is what sets us apart and whilst it's always good to have a price maximization strategy and listing, the real thing that's going to set your part is you, your energy, your mindset, your kindness, your empathy, your care factor, your creativity or thinking. It's all about us. So very interesting, troy Back. That was a long answer to the short question. But what are you seeing in the market? Because you're out there like Tommy every Saturday auctioning in some of the better parts of Sydney and just some of the ordinary or sort of more common parts of Sydney.
Troy Malcolm:Yeah, I mean, listen, the last month has been very interesting. I think there's been a lot of agents that are dealing with buyers that have been searching for an extended period of time and are committing to properties. I spoke to an agent and a lot of last week and they were saying a lot of their buyers right now have been in the market for quite some time looking for that special property. So I think you're right, john, the better quality properties that are coming to the market are always in high demand.
Troy Malcolm:Interestingly, I've seen about 60% of my auctions and full days on Saturday sell prior, which normally indicates one, a lot of sell prior, one buyer that's heads and shoulders above the rest of the market or there is only one buyer that's really wanting to commit to that property prior to auction and the agents are very pragmatic in their approach right now and I think the realisation that we've gone through 12 interest rate rises over the past 12 months and we've seen a slight pullback on day to day and cost of living expenses. That's normally translated into those properties that are sub one million that you see in extended days on markets start to creep back into the market. I know a lot of the areas across the McGraw company own footprint anything sub one million. We're starting to see those creep up to 45 to the 60 days on market and a slightly extended time, and I think you're seeing that in the Southwestern suburbs, where you call majority of your auctions, days on market are starting to increase, which is an interesting observation. It's a real tale of two cities right now.
Tom Panos:Yeah, it's interesting because in the inner city. So I'll do inner city in the morning and then from lunchtime I'll do Southwest, west and you notice is even out West Southwest. If it's their second home and they've got equity in the property and they've owned it for a while, I find that those people are quite comfortable and you know they're not making decisions based on being distressed. The issues that you have is people that have got, say like yesterday was an interesting one house in in in Guilford, I thought 790,000 for a house. And I said to the owner I'm not, you know, my approach is, if I think to myself, as a chance you'll get a bit more, or that I'd just say to them look, you know, I reckon there's 70% chance you might get more. If you're not, you know. You know in the mood to do a dual today, I take the risk and wait. And he said to me I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm suffocating. And he goes I've gone from 1.9% and you know I don't want to be someone that's guided. I don't want to have someone having problems in a few weeks time not being able to sell a property because I've, you know, miscalculated what I think is going to happen in the future. But I think you're right, troy.
Tom Panos:I think people mortgage built people are impacted. When I talk to people like Gavin Rubenstein or any of the agents in double Bay, they just say to me I've got a line of people that are going to sell a property. I've got a line of people that want to spend 10 to 30, 40 million. I just got no stock right, so you got that sub market. Then you turn around and you know you've got the marketplace that is, brand new properties and generally they do very well, particularly the fact that if you get a foreign review approval you can get a foreign investor buying those properties. They've got competition and if you remember back, you know 30, 40 years ago I think there was less sub markets than what there is now. I haven't even commented on on South Australia and and WA, which is still going gangbusters. Nothing's changed there, still COVID prices.
John McGrath:Yeah, I think COVID changed a lot of things, you know, and at the time, for a minute there, we thought it was going to collapse the market and put us all out of a job because we didn't think anyone could buy or would buy property. It actually, for some strange reason, it sparked this incredible boom. That's kind of the wave has kept going right through now. I mean, what was COVID 2021? You know, and it's three years ago. Really, it's got a long time. Time flies. But yeah, and all of a sudden, people just wanted to buy property, they wanted to improve their property, they wanted to work from home, they had to work from home and they want to invest more money in their property. And with the wave of, obviously, these buyers which I think is a good thing for our country because we're a huge country with still a relatively small population yeah, that's just going to add more demand. So, yeah, interesting.
John McGrath:Two quick things, because I know you said we're going to do a short concise, which we're 15 minute timber and we haven't hit our five sentences yet, but we will. Two things Number one is just to assure you I haven't taken up drinking red wine Troy, because Troy knows I'm not a drinker but Black Brow Blueberry Juice. I've discovered this thing at this Whole Foods place in Lake Art and it's called I think it's called Eden Orchards. A hundred percent blueberry juice, something else in it organic blueberry juice, and you dilute it 50%. Damn good drink. It's expensive, tom $23.
Tom Panos:John, you know that if you're talking about that shop which is just behind a market town in Leichhardt, that is my favorite shop. That shop was one of the few shops apart from Kohl's that was open during COVID. It is a great shop, the stuff that's in that shop. Sometimes I go there for an hour. I'm just looking at things in the aisle and I'll only end up spending $20, right, but it's a great shop. It's a great shop.
John McGrath:It's a great shop, it's Eden Orchards anyway.
Troy Malcolm:So that's one of the benefits of blueberry juice.
John McGrath:Well, blueberry is a big antioxidant. Well, number one is almost better than drinking anything else, maybe including water, it's just. It's good to have natural, organic juices, and blueberry is very high in antioxidants, so that's a good thing to have. Anyway, I'm not drinking red wine, troy, I'm drinking blueberry juice. Number two is I'm going to become an honorary Kiwi for the next week or so during the World Cup. Go the Kiwis. One of many listeners from the Kiwis. We've got a few Pomis as well, a few English. Not sure if we have any South African and who else is in the Argentina. Good for Michael Checkup, tommy Paul's brother.
Tom Panos:He's the coach of.
John McGrath:Argentina, isn't he? He's the coach of Argentina. So go go, mick, checkup Troy. Tommy, why don't you kick off with your phrases, quotes, sentences or the things and what they mean to you, and why?
Tom Panos:Okay, I'm going to move on, but I'm going to say I've told Paul Checkup this. By the way, I think Michael Checkup should become part of the West Tiger's team. I just I just got this funny feeling having him there. I don't know what it is. Then Michael Checkup there, those boys that he's got there, that you know doing, he'll get total control. He had them in the Lebanese national team and they did very, very well.
Tom Panos:But let's move on to quote number one. Quote number one and actually I sent you three quotes before we came on there, but I've just changed one of them and this is a very good one because I think it's relevant. Someone had said to me when I was very younger he said list what sells. I think that's a that's.
Tom Panos:If you really look at it, it's essentially saying that in any market, no matter what the market's like, there's always this type of property that will always have demand. It's pretty much what we were talking about before quality. But it could be a pocket, it could be and, let's be honest, any property that's got a motivated vendor would fit into that category. Right, list what sells. But list what sells essentially means that you should have a higher list to sell ratio, lower days on market and really a more enjoyable, effortless, fun life in real estate because you're trading the kind of property the market wants and you're not sitting there at an open home for 180 days waiting for a buyer Love to get your views on what lists what sells means to you, yeah.
John McGrath:I think Michael Pallier said something a long time ago. Could have even been Eric, or maybe just said to me. Probably it was something around. Every action and activity that precedes in exchange of contracts is valueless. It's only until you get the deal done and a lot of agents forget that you don't get paid for listing them. Tell me, you get paid for selling them. So I think that's a really good one. I think you've definitely got to be a little bit of a curation expert. You can't take on everything Now. I think you've got to be a bit flexible too, because everyone starts off, every vendor wants a little bit more money and every property has got its drawbacks. But no, I think that's a really good one.
John McGrath:I'm going to throw a couple in here quickly, because these are favourites. One, troy, they won't be novel to you, but I like them. First one is what got you here won't get you there. So I just like the fact that. That talks to wherever you are in your life now. Every action, habit, activity, conversation, whatever skill you've had in your repertoire up in a lab moment got you there. But most people aspire to something more, a better life, a better result, to whatever it could be, and therefore you've got to actually be prepared to change. A lot of people they got this resistance to change and if you don't change you're not going to get to the next level. Just by keeping your turn up at the office every day is not going to to extra business, so that's one for me.
Tom Panos:You've used, john, that quote. I've heard you at presentations before and the first time I heard it, what I remember thinking to myself is it's a very powerful quote because it's essentially saying you've got to take responsibility, that you're in this spot for every thought, decision, attitude that you've brought to place. You've got to accept that you're in this spot and that you've impacted and your decisions have got you there, and it's going to have to be a different level of thinking, decision, action taking that's going to get you to the next spot. That's what I remembered it was. It gave you responsibility and gave you power.
John McGrath:Very true, what got you here, what got you there, what get you there? And the other part of that, troy, often I say, is if nothing changes, nothing changes. Same sort of thing, just mixing it around, because sometimes you give different message and people pick it up. The other one for me was it's only two words, not really a sentence, not even a quote. But the concept is choose yourself. And I often say choose yourself every day.
John McGrath:You can choose yourself every day if you will, if you want to put in that context that people often think oh, that's just who I am, that's just how I am. I'm just boisterous, I'm just loud, I'm just shy, I'm just negative, I'm just whatever. And they sort of attach whatever their limitations or their flaws or their shortcomings are and they often just say well, that's who I am. And yet the reality is you can choose. If you're not a punctual person, you can choose from tomorrow onwards to be the world's most punctual person. If you're a negative, cynical person, you can choose to be optimistic and positive in your mindset every moment of every day going forward. So I just like the concept and I think I might have stolen a choice from Tom Peters, who I love very much. Just choose yourself.
John McGrath:Whoever you want to be, you can be, and recognize that whoever you are choosing today to be is either propelling you towards a wonderful life or your goals and dreams, or is holding you back. If you're someone, just the difference between abundance mentality and scarcity mentality is going to hold you back. The difference between being perpetually late or perpetually on time will hold you back. The difference between sort of being shy in a business networking session versus going out there and meeting people and getting to know them and sharing your story and listening to theirs. So anyway, that's one of those two that came to mind for me and Troy, no doubt you'll top us all. What are you saying?
Troy Malcolm:Well, ryan Holiday spoke at Erica Toplet years ago and he was talking. He did a fantastic presentation. But those that have kind of followed his work and the Stoics work for quite some time will be familiar with this one. But I actually think it's very relevant.
Troy Malcolm:In real estate it's think progress and not perfection, but I think that's something that's really powerful. And when you think about the opportunity, every single time you go and speak to a client list, a property, do an open for inspection, you should be trying to do incremental improvements with that and progressing the people, but also the way you do things. And so it doesn't always have to be perfect to get the outcome, but you've got to take the lesson from that and constantly be on that path of improvement and progress to get better, which is kind of similar to what you were saying, john, very early on in your first quote. But that one really resonates. And Ryan Holiday I've been a big fan of Ryan Holiday for quite some time, but that one just I always think about that every situation. How do we progress? It doesn't have to be perfect, let's just keep moving forward and make it better next time.
Tom Panos:You just reminded me, too, about Peters. What's his first name? Again, john, tom Peters, tom Peters. I ran into someone on the weekend and he said to, I've forgotten all about it. He asked me about Eric. I said yeah, and that'll be at the Gold Coast, and I said what's your favourite, eric? He went on, he said a few things and then he said my favourite conference of all conferences, the one that you guys put on called Mastery, and I said oh, it was that he goes.
Tom Panos:Oh, you had Rupert Murdoch, I forgot all about it, and it had Tom Peters. Do you remember that conference, john? It was Troy, you were there. Yeah, it was in Sydney. Yeah, I mean, I took this day. A lot of people were shell shopped that Rupert Nerdok was there, speaking like he. I mean he obviously he's older and he has retired from the role he's rolled at News Corp in the last two weeks. This was about 10 years ago, I think might have been a little bit less eight years ago, but you know we had all the big leaders of real estate companies there and it was just such a great conference. But he was a very passionate and all I remember he's aggressive, he's a very angry sort of guy, tom Peters, you know she said was a good, good, good event. Let me finish off on one one, on one last quote. The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit. What does that mean to?
John McGrath:you. Well, you've got to play the long game, don't you? I mean, you know, trying to rip your rewards five minutes after you've started a business, started a relationship, invested in something, is not the right time. You know you're going to rip it out and cause damage. What you've got to do is be prepared to have a bit of I mean, have a sense of urgency about taking the initial action. But then I think Tommy had saying play the long game and have a sense of patience about reaping the reward. And it was Tony Robbins that often said you know, we always overestimate what we can achieve in a month, but we underestimate what we can achieve in a year. That's such a similar sort of thing. So I really love that one. Really love that one.
Tom Panos:Roy, what's it mean to you being a crossfitter? It means you won't get a six pack on your first session, probably. Is that what it means, roy?
Troy Malcolm:Correct. Yeah, no, patience. Patience is everything, and I relate it back to real estate and agents. Not every time you speak to someone as a prospecting call, they're going to tell you they want to sell their property. But every time you go and sit down with someone about a job interview or about a potential recruit coming into your business, they're going to say I want to join straight away. You've got to read the play a little bit, but you've got to have that patience to understand that we deal with people. It's a people industry. So having that connection, having that patience, having that understanding of the way people think and feel, is going to set you up for a very, very fruitful there you go, pun fruitful relationship in the future.
Tom Panos:Can I? Go on John, there you go.
John McGrath:No, no, you go first, you go please.
Tom Panos:I just wanted to ask before we leave today, because I did get someone sending me a private message. As he said, when you do your podcast this week, it would be useful to ask Troy and John what their honest opinion is on a good listing that an owner wants to put on the market. Are they better off to start a campaign in November or go early next year Because it's coming to that time of the year. Let's face it. We're in the middle of October. I'm just having a look here. We're in the middle of October, so let's assume that you start doing open for inspections if you list something in the first week of November. What are your views on going? And this will happen more and more with some vendors. I'll ask the question over the next couple of weeks on whether to make a decision and pull the trigger now or do it in the new year.
John McGrath:I reckon for most properties, tommy, you've still got two cycles. You could list a property today, get it sold and then sell the buyer's property this side of Christmas as well without any rate rush. I think that from mid-December to mid-January is that kind of softer period Not everywhere. There are some markets that come alive over Christmas, but I think for most people having a property where you're anticipating actively marketing it mid-December to mid-January, there's some risk attached to that because there are a lot of people that have clocked off for holidays, but I think it's way too early. The other thing is now, I guess, in a world which is full of fluxes we spoke about early and I know there's plenty of problems today, but we don't know what other problems might be around the corner as well. What we do know now, despite these horrific problems that people are having in different parts of the world in Ukraine and in Israel and Palestine and Russia, all of the warring between those factions what we do know is you sold 10 out of 12 last Saturday. We're clearing about 75% of our stock as well at all before auction.
John McGrath:I think there's always throw another quote in here, tommy make hay while the sun shines. I think you've always whilst there's a good market there and it's selling, if you've got a good property. I think I'd be going now. If we're having this conversation in a month and we were nearly at the end of November or three-quarters away through November, I'd say, well, tell me about the property, who are the buyers, what's the demand right now? And maybe I'd be saying I'd do an early February auction or a mid-January launch. But I think it's way too early to be clocking off for next year at this point. I think there's lots and lots of selling days and selling opportunities left between now and New Year's Eve.
Troy Malcolm:We've roughly got eight full selling weeks left, tom. That takes us to the 16th of December. I have had a couple of agents inquire about the 23rd of December auctions. It's tight to Christmas, but listen, I'll be working if there's opportunity there. So yeah, john's right, there's two cycles, eight or nine weeks to go. I would be looking as well at what the competition is on the market. If you've got a property that's unique in the market right now and it is what we were talking about earlier, that price point that people really are aspiring to I'd definitely be going now. But again, it's a fine line between knowing what the competition is doing, what's on the market, what's competing, also what's sold. That determines that outcome as well. So Troy.
Tom Panos:all it takes is there is an element of risk, because right now we know what we're playing with. The truth is, we don't know what we'll be playing with in the New Year. I have a feeling it's going to be good, but all it takes is an unexpected rate rise that actually changes the mood of people, and I think right now, go on Troy.
Troy Malcolm:Or a global event, like John was saying. Global event, global event happens. I haven't forbid it. It happens in December or January. We don't know those circumstances. We do know where we're at now. We do know that in most metropolitan cities we're sitting around that 70% clearance rate In days on market are still quite good in the majority of markets. I wouldn't hesitate if I was them right now.
Tom Panos:We've just got a text message from Matty Steinway. He's going well.
John McGrath:Yeah, investors Unbelievable. So is his team, by the way. We often give Matt the cuteness, which he also deserves, but you got Trevor and Geordie and there's several others on his team, ash, and they're all good people and they contribute. Matt would be the first to say, hey, don't just congratulate me. I've got a team of five people that are just every single day doing it. But no, he's killing it. It's going great. Just that little baby.
Tom Panos:Yeah, he's her baby, tara, and yes, I'm interviewing. He rang me up last week. He said to me you've got to interview this guy. His name's Peter Morris. I don't know if you've run into Peter. He works at Matt's office. He was many years ago.
Tom Panos:A few years ago he was taking substances, got off the rails, left the industry, came back, transformed himself, has been working quietly away. And Matt, he said to me Tom, he's going to write, I think, close to a million bucks. He's the most process driven agent I've ever seen. He aims before. He thinks he's just doing Sorry, that's come out of my mouth he doesn't overanalyze, he just acts. But he's got good processes in place and to me it's a great story because I think it doesn't matter where you've come from and what's happened to your life, it's where you're heading direction over speed, as Troy said, patience, and it's paid off for you. So I'm going to be interviewing him. Actually, I think I'm interviewing him potentially tomorrow. I just have to look at the diary. So anyway, gentlemen, yeah, good luck.
Tom Panos:So we've got to go for New Zealand. That's our team. Congratulations also, new Zealand. You're going to get a lot of listings coming in. I know we've got a lot of listeners. Your election is over. I know that you had the election pause. That often happens where Vendor will say let's wait till see what happens to the election. I think most real estate people would be happy with the outcome of that election. I presume from what they've told me. And it's funny how we missed that election with so much going on. There was actually a federal election in New Zealand on the weekend.
John McGrath:Yeah, it slipped through. You're right. You're right. I did shout out to all our key listeners Good luck next weekend, All right team.
Tom Panos:Yeah, aura.
John McGrath:All right yeah aura, thank you. Thank you.
Tom Panos:I just want to thank the whole�.