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Welcome to the Gold Coast Smart Real Estate Podcast—the ultimate guide to navigating one of Australia’s most dynamic and competitive property markets. Hosted by Brad Scott, Principal of Smart Real Estate with nearly two decades of experience, this podcast is your trusted resource for making smarter property decisions.
Whether you're buying, selling, investing, or simply wanting to stay informed, each episode delivers practical advice, innovative strategies, and expert insights tailored to the unique Gold Coast property scene. From market trends and maximising investment returns to insider tips for selling your home quickly and for top dollar, Brad covers it all.
Hit subscribe and join the community of "Smart" Gold Coast buyers and sellers transforming their real estate journeys. For more resources, visit www.smartrealestate.com.au or connect with Brad on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Your next smart move starts here!
Welcome to the Gold Coast Smart Real Estate Podcast. I'm Brad Scott, here to help you make smart moves in the Gold Coast property market. Whether you're thinking of buying, selling, or just staying updated, we deep dive into everything you need to know. From our marketing insights to our unique open offers method of sale.
A blend of auction and private treaty to give you the best of both worlds. Let's jump in.
Hello and welcome back to the Smart Real Estate Podcast. Once again I'm joined in the studio by Brad Scott, the Principal of Smart. Real estate here on the Gold Coast and today again, I want to start looking at more properties that you've sold recently and just talking through, you know, what they're all about, how it all happened, the story behind the sale.
And, so let's start. Sixteen Floyd Court, Parkwood. Now how long ago was,
Was this sale? This one was a few months ago. So, bit of an interesting story with this one. So essentially the, the seller gave us a call and wanted us to come out and have a look at the property. Beautiful. three bedroom single story house.
Okay. Parkwood's a nice suburb there. Yeah. I live in Arundel, just across the road. Yep. So a few little challenging, things with this property that it was a little bit lower down, and it also backed onto the Smith Street motorway, and the Gold Coast light rail. So a little bit noisy. There, when we went out to see the client.
We're looking at comparable sales and trying to ascertain value and, this one was pretty easy because directly next door at number 14, another agent sold a basically cookie cutter like for like property one year earlier for 750, 000. Wow, okay. So you've got that. That is a bit of a base to sort of compare with.
Our property had a pool which was worth about an extra 50 grand. It was rendered for about 10 grand. It had some solar panels for an extra five. So just a quick question on that if I
can interrupt for a second. Is that a standard thing for about 50 for a pool?
Yeah, it used to always be sort of 20 to 30.
Post COVID now it's about sort of 50 as a ballpark. Okay, I'm
just interested. I never really thought about what it actually adds. Yeah, so
they can go up to 100, 000 with landscape and everything like that. But ballpark, around 50 on average. So your, your render's about 10, solar panels are about 5. So, you know, we're sort of looking at it and going, okay, 750 plus 65 is 815.
With a bit of capital growth over the last 12 months, probably sitting around 850. Okay. Client said, I said, you know, what price would you like to achieve? They said, we'd like to get, you know, sort of 9. You know, and I said, okay, well,
stretching it, but
yeah, I said, they said, Oh, if you get nine 50, like, that'd be really good.
And I said, okay, well, in this street, the highest sale ever was 950, 000 and that was for a four bedroom house renovated up the hill. It was a sort of higher on the hill and wasn't backing onto the. The tram and the Smith Street motorway. So I said, look, just trying to manage your expectations.
Realistically, we're probably not going to get the same price. You know, like for like, so we explained the open office method of sale, how we did marketing a little bit different. We get buyers from out of state. Everyone knows how much I love the open office method of sale. And, yeah, so the results were in and basically, over 16 days.
We ended up having, I think it was about 63, I've just seen the
price.
Yeah. We had, 63 groups through over 16 days. We had 13 qualified buyers register their interest and we had 37 offers in that 16 day period. And we ended up selling the property for 1, 095, 000 cash unconditional. Wow. Done deal.
Very happy seller. And it was a bit of a unique one because we actually ended up having three offers. All around, we had a, we actually had a higher offer at 1, 098, 000. But that was subject to Pest and Building and Finance. Right. So I said to the client, I said, look, you know, if, We accept that offer.
There's a chance that could fall over. So we actually, negotiated a little bit with the, one of the lower offers that was cash unconditional. Use that offer to get them up a little bit. And then. We got the deal done. So that's
interesting. With this open Offers you don't have to take the, the highest profit.
Correct. Alright,
so actually we had two higher offers than that one by an extra three grand. Yep. But I said to 'em, I said, look, the reality is these offers won't go through on valuation. 'cause it was, it would probably val at about 900,000 I think best case. And we're 200,000 more so, you know, that's why you have to be, smart with, it's not about just getting the highest possible offer.
It's about getting the best offer and the highest offer that's going to go through to settlement. Because at the end of the day, you know, you can have it for 10 million. If it doesn't settle, it's not worth the paper it's written on.
For anyone watching on YouTube, I'm not sure if you can actually see that, but, this is so, so interesting.
And this is why, you know, I'm such an advocate for the, the open offer. method of sale, you can see as and when what offers coming in and at what time. And, so you can see as you look at through this, you know, the date and where it started and how quickly, it's risen, you know, how, how much interest is there early in that, that 14 day period.
And of course, like any auction, it, it, it starts to go. You know, they all come in towards the end, don't they? So,
and it's sort of, it's a sort of a hybrid between private treaty and auction because it's not technically an auction because we don't have a reserve price. No. And in an auction format, you have to be cash unconditional.
Yeah. 10 percent deposit. Yeah. So no pest and building, no finance. So this allows buyers who want to have finance and pest and building. Participate. Yep. The seller has no reserve price, so they don't have to sell. They're not obligated to sell. And at the end, we don't have to take the top offer. We can look at the top two or three offers, sit back, talk about it, and then decide on which is the best offer for the seller.
Yep. So, that was also a bit of an interesting one too, because they talked about five different agents that one, and yeah, so they had five agents in. I think I was the most expensive one.
Okay.
You know, probably
the only one with open offers.
We were the only one with open offers. I think our fee was about 1 percent more.
And I said, Brad, you know, like that's going to be like an extra 10, 000. That's a lot of money. And I said, look, I, you know, I appreciate that and understand that, the, I said to him, I said, look, you know, if we got you an extra. 15, 000 than what the other agents who have come in have got you. Would you see value in doing what we do?
And do you think there's a chance that we could achieve that? And they said, yeah, sure. Like we think you're going to get more than what the other agents are going to get. And I said, well, look, that's, that's why you pick an agent. You know, an agent is to deliver value above and beyond what others can do.
So at the end of it, we got. Two hundred thousand more than what they want. Yep. And I said, was it worth spending the extra ten grand? Yep, and I said, yeah, definitely was.
Fantastic. Great result. Yeah. All right, let's move on. Okay, three Lanty Street, Southport. So how close is that to the Broadwater?
Lanty Street's kind of just off Okay, so in
around that area, yep.
Yeah, so not too far.
Lovely looking photo. Yeah, beautiful. Nice pool.
Yeah, it was like a, a renovated three bedroom house with a pool, little Balinese hut. Okay. I actually, yeah, really great clients and they actually came and saw us at a property, another property in South Portabout. And,
Yeah, yeah. And she, she called me
up, Ali.
And then she said, Oh, bro, it's Ali here. And we went through this property with you like 10 or 12 years ago or something. And she's, and then I actually remembered the property and, And then I, she said, oh, when I wanted to sell, I always remembered you and I wanted to come back to you. FI was like, fantastic.
I was like, okay. Wow. Yeah, like that's , but that long too. Yeah. I was like, I thought it was incredible. And I said, okay, great. So we went and had a look at the property and then we talked about marketing. We talked about commission, and we talked about method of sale. Again, went through the differences between private treaty and auction and open offers.
We said, which one do you wanna choose? They said, let's do open offers. I think it's gonna get us the best result. I said, all right, let's do that. I said, look, what's, what's your dream price? We sort of valued it probably around a mil, mil 50, something like that. They said, Brad, if you can give us 1.
1, we'd be open the champagne.
Right.
And I said, okay, I said, well, based on comps in the area, you know, 1. 1's probably achievable, but it's going to be at the upper end. Still a stretch.
Yeah, a bit of a
stretch. I think at a mil 50, I'm comfortable. I think we can achieve that. I just want to be honest with you.
Yep. So yeah, we did the open office campaign. We had an enormous amount of people come through, great market campaign with 3d tours and videos and great photos. We're on the market for 16 days. So two weeks, two open homes, two Saturdays. Done, dusted, really good for the sellers. They didn't want to be on the market for months and months and months.
Just
a question there. Things keep coming to my mind now about open offers as we go through this. So you've got the open homes during the open offers period. Yep. People are coming through and they know what it's at. Yeah, right at that time. Yep. Yep. At the open home. Yep. So we'll, I'm featuring people sitting by their computers, you know, watching this thing happen, but that hadn't clicked to me that you walk in, even if they don't know, because most of them probably don't even know that this is there when maybe they turn up.
And no, like we
do, we do advertise online.
We explain the process actually in the description. So most that walk in know where it's at, at that time. They've got their phone open even. And you can
be on the phone and you can go to the open app and you can see all the current offers to date and where it's at right now.
Do you get some turning up not knowing?
And then you can say, they're saying, so what, what's it, what's it on? You know, and you said, well, I can tell you exactly
where it's at right now. So we'll, we'll, we'll actually with the way we do it. Will have offers coming in. So we'll launch it on a Tuesday.
Yep.
Planning for the first Saturday. We want to sort of build it up to that first Saturday. Most people will plan to book in the open home sort of Wednesday, Thursday at the latest. Friday's too late. So again, there's a bit of a strategy, around the time, around the timing cycle of the, yeah, because I, you know, I see some agents listing probably on a Friday and doing the Saturday open home.
It's a big no, no. Like it's not enough time for people to find it, see it. Book it in. They've already booked in what they're doing for Saturday, because they usually go on They're planning the week, aren't they? 10, yep. You know, and then you throw a new one in the mix on a Friday. And it throws them all out.
They're probably not
even looking by that stage. They've locked in their
itinerary. Usually, about mid week, we find people are generally booking in the Open. So, we want to go have all our Opens online on Tuesday. Yep. In ready preparation for that Saturday. Get as many people through as we can that first Saturday.
That's the biggest one. We'll generally start getting offers rolling inside unseen before the first Saturday at home. Oh, I love it. I love it. And then ending
up knowing exactly where it's at.
Yeah. And we will increase the price as those offers come in to update the marketplace because we want to be transparent about it.
We want to make sure that. You know, if the current offer is at, you know, a million dollars, we don't want buyers who are looking with an eight and nine hundred thousand dollar budget to come and waste their time. So, we See,
even that sort of
stuff,
you know. There are people doing that every weekend with, with, with, you know, private treaty sales.
Yeah. Isn't it? Every weekend, they've got no idea.
Yeah. So, we want to be, you know, as transparent as we can be. So, the, as soon as, as the As soon as we get higher offers, we'll change the asking price and say open offers above whatever that current highest offer is. So again, we were quite clear in the, you're not going to buy it for that price, but if you've got a budget above that,
so many come through and have a look.
Knowing as you look, we've just talked about, buyers doing their itinerary of open homes and they know where that's at. They can even just on the morning, knock it off the list because it's hit beyond their budget.
That's it. So it's 24 7. You can be in bed 10 o'clock at night. You can see, and you get, if you're registered as a, as a buyer.
You'll get notifications. Or if you're, you can actually be an observer and just sit back and watch. You don't even have to have an offering. So. I'm going to
jump on and have a look at this. Yeah, and then you can, you can,
you can get notifications and yeah, like there might be an offer that comes in on the Friday and it goes above their budget.
And exactly like you said, they'll just say, Okay, that one's above our budget, we'll just cross that one off, and don't waste their time. You know, so it's about as transparent and as fair as we can make it for everybody. And that's why we love it, and buyers love it, and sellers love it. So it's a, it's a win win win for everyone.
All right, let's get going. So we're, so back to this one. Yeah, so we were hoping to get we praised it around sort of a million and fifty, the dream price was 1. 1. Over 16 days, we had 21 qualified buyers, we ended up having 69 offers come through, big number, and we ended up selling this one for 1, 225, 000.
Fantastic result.
And that was also a cash unconditional buyer. So, the, it ended up being two buyers, you'll see there, that sort of, Forwarded out at the end. Yep. So out of those, 21 qualified buyers, we found the two best. And interesting enough, there was one, there was a local doctor, at the hospital, 'cause it was oh, close five minute drive to the hospital where he works.
And we had an interstate investor from Sydney who wanted to. for capital gains reasons. Yep. And those two ended up fighting it out. And I think it was the local doctor that won that one. So that was, a great outcome. Oh, for sure. And, about 125, 000 over the, the client's, their dream price. Well, well, their expectation.
Yeah. Because there is no asking
price with open offers, obviously. It's what the market determines. That's it. We, we, we always end up talking about this in, in detail because it, it just is so interesting to me. One question I probably did have as we were going, going through that was, you obviously, they've still got the option with you to do an auction or to do private treaty.
Do when you explain this, how many do you still get doing one of those two? It's pretty rare. So, there would have to be a specific reason, wouldn't there?
Yeah, so we sort of, we go through the pros and the cons of each of the different methods. Auctions are good in that they're transparent, they have a defined deadline, and you're dealing with the best buyers.
So they're cash unconditional, they're ready to go, and there's no out.
Yep,
so some properties where you some properties will be better for an auction where you sort of definitely need to sell it. Yep And you need that You know if you if the sellers motivated or there's reasons behind why they have to get it sold might be building issues, too So if there's termites or stuff like that, yeah doing a pest and building on a property with termites is not good Yep, so it's better to be transparent about that and just say like we're selling by auction.
It is what it is So, that's pretty rare, those sort of cases, but, with private treaty, you generally have a lot more buyers. So, with auction, you know, we probably have about 5 percent of buyers in the market that are cash unconditional ready. Yep. So, You'll get a stronger buyer, but they generally won't, you know, compete and pay a higher price.
Cash buyers want a good deal. Yep, and that's why they're cash. Yep. And they'll sit back and I'll just let you, I'll let this one go and they'll negotiate because they kind of hold the cards. They
know that that's what a seller would love ideally to have. Yeah, and
if they're just like, if it's them and one other party And they're both cash.
Well, they don't really need to go crazy on the price. They can sit back and say, well, you know, I'm kind of in the sweet spot here. With private treaty, some of the good things is you'll have 100 percent of the buyer pool. So you'll have buyers cash unconditional and subject to pestability and finance.
And subject to sale sometimes for the highest risk buyers. And you'll have all them parties competing for the property. So that will generally achieve a higher sale price. The downside to it is there's no defined date, so it will just take a bit longer. Yep. So instead of it being done in two or three weeks, it can be two or three months.
I was talking to another client yesterday, they've been in the market for six months. Yep. Two different agents still haven't sold, they've had one buyer and they've had one offer. Wow. So, you know, whereas you sort of look at our numbers and the difference of what we're achieving. So the good thing with, open offers is it kind of culminates the two.
With Private Treaty 2, because it's private in nature, buyers are not legally allowed to know what the other offers are. Because once you have multiple offers Yep. Two or more offers, which most of our properties are. Yep. You have to put in your best and final, blind.
And it's blind, yep.
And it's blind.
So we can't legally tell you, tell you what the other party's offering. That puts them at, you know, you know, that would, it's called gazumping. It's illegal. Yep. It's not fair to the party. So whereas with open offers, it kinda, gets the two cons of those two systems. It puts a sort of perfect system together, has the transparency, buyers can start low, they don't have to put in their best and final, sort of similar to like an auction, you know, with the bidding process, they're allowed, they're allowed to have person building and, you know, conditions.
The seller doesn't have to sell it, like an auction. There's no reserve price. So it's very flexible for buyers, for sellers. Sellers love that they're not under that stress and pressure. There's not this big hard push at the end of the four weeks. They'll see over the two, three week period, like, where the offers are coming in at.
And into that three weeks, I just say, look, if you're happy, sell it. If you're not, totally okay.
As I've said before, it's the perfect system as far as I can see. And I don't know why the industry as a whole hasn't, for you, I think, very good thing. But, it's bizarre to me that that's, that's the case.
But look, we've probably come to, the end of, of this particular episode. We do have more properties that we'll go through in, in future episodes. But, look, if you're interested in the open offers method of. of sale, which it'd be crazy not to, jump in and talk to Brad and his team at, , at smart real estate, www.
smartrealestate. com. au is where you can, you can get in touch, reach out to Brad directly. Look, make sure you hit subscribe to, , to make sure don't miss an episode. Give us a rating. We want to know what you think. Anything you've got any
comments or anything they want to. you know, hear about on future episodes, just let us know and we'll do an episode on that.
Perfect. Excellent. Thanks for coming in, Brad. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Adam.
Cheers.
Thanks for tuning into this Gold Coast Smart Real Estate Podcast. Remember, if you're thinking of selling, be smart. Explore your options and consider the power of open offers method of sale to maximize your result. Don't forget to subscribe.
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