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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 market 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, everyone. Adam Bell here, back with another episode of the Smart Real Estate Podcast. Now, today, we're tackling a question that comes up all the time. I would imagine this is pretty common. You know, should you sell your home before buying your next one? Or, or vice versa? What, what happens when you you're wanting to buy and you haven't sold.
So it's a big decision and the right answer often depends on, you know, the market and your personal situation. So to help unpack it, we've got Brad Scott from smart real estate, the principal of smart real estate joining us again in the studio, Brad, great to have you here. All right, let's dig into the pros and cons and help people make smarter decisions.
All right. So what are the biggest advantages of selling before buying, especially in a market, you know, like we have here on the Gold Coast.
Yeah. So generally we will always recommend to clients to sell first, mainly because, you're going to know exactly how much money you've got to go shopping with.
So that's probably the biggest thing. We find probably most people do it vice versa. So, most people will want to buy first, and then go and, sell after they've found the right property. The only problem with that, scenario is, and I say to clients all the time is, you know, you'll be shopping for the right property, you're searching for months and months and months, and you're not in a position to buy.
So, They're generally going to have to put in clauses such as subject to sale. So, when they're doing that, they're what we term a weak buyer on terms. So, you want strong buyers, strong terms, cash, unconditional is the best, then subject to personability and finance is sort of, yeah. Your average sort of buyer.
Sure. Your subject to sale is the
weakest. So explain that to me in a, in a bit of detail. What does subject to sale actually mean?
Essentially that, so they've gotta sell their property in order to have the money to buy the next one. So it's kind of a domino effect. So the. Problem with that is, if, you know, we accept that offer and you don't sell your property, then our client, the seller, won't be able to sell their property.
So it's like a domino effect. So they're usually seen as a higher risk offer and it's commensurate with the price. So if you put a subject to sale clause in, you need to offer a higher price in order to secure the same property compared to somebody who's, say, cash unconditional. Very low risk, done deal.
Can happen straight away. Straight away. They can come in much more competitive on price, and secure the property. So that's why we say to sellers, you know, even if you do find the right property, then you put in your offer subject to sale. You might not get it. So whereas if we get your house sold first, put it on the market, then what we would suggest is probably doing a longer settlement.
Yep. So, sell your property, get a contract, wait till it becomes unconditional. So it's past pest and building and finance. That's when you start going shopping, you know exactly how much money you've got. It's just basically waiting for settlement. Then when you go and make an offer on another property to buy, you will put that subject to sale clause in there, but there are also varying types of subject to sale.
Meaning we've already got it under contract.
Yeah. So when I get a buyer and they say I'm subject to sale and I say, okay, well, where are you in the journey?
Yep.
Are you, have you selected an agent? They say, no. I'm like, okay, you're all like way back here. If they say, oh, we've got an agent. We've been on the market.
We've got a contract. It's now unconditional. I say, okay, wow. Like we're going to treat you, totally different perspective. And that buyer who's got the contract, it's unconditional. We treat them like a cash buyer. So they go from being the weakest type of buyer to the strongest type of buyer. Therefore, commensurately, they can offer a lower price to secure that property.
Because it's basically, it's a very strong termed offer. Sure. So that's something we talked about clients all the time. Is get your house sold. Or at least get
it unconditional.
Yeah, get it sold, get it unconditional. Instead of doing, the problem is people worry about being homeless. And there not being enough time to find the right
property.
Well that was going to be, I mean this is a balancing act isn't it? You know, it's not a one size fits all, but, cause you say, you know, get to that unconditional, you know, spot. Yeah. However, like that was instantly into my mind, well, what if I don't find the property I want to buy in time? Well, you're going to have to look at a short term rental or something like that.
Is that what
usually happens? Yeah, generally. So what we'll usually recommend is rather than doing the standard 30 day settlement, do a 90 day settlement. So give yourself time to find the right property, whether it be for sale or for rent. If you're moving to a new area, sometimes it's not a bad idea to, rent somewhere.
So you get a bit of a feel for the area, the street, the suburb, because sometimes you, you might go and buy somewhere you live there for 12 months and you hate the neighbours, you hate the area. And then you have to sell again, a lot of costs involved in changing. So you want to be settled and find that right property.
On the flip side too, if you, some people won't rent, they think rent money is dead money, so they'll always re buy, that's fine, just do that longer settlement, know how much cash you've got, and then make that, you'll, I say to clients all the time, they, they say, oh Brad, there's nothing out there, there's nothing for sale, and I'm like, how many did you go and look at last Saturday?
And they say, well, none, but we've seen everything on the internet, Brad. And I say, well, look, when you've got a deadline and you have to find some, somewhere by a certain time period, and you jump in the car and go and look at ten on Saturday, ten on Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, you, you'll get a really good feel for what's out there, and you will make a decision, because you have to make a decision.
It's a very different mindset to somebody who's just You know, looking at ReelSMU and just flicking through, it's like flicking through the paper. When you've got a deadline and you've got that motivation to find it, you will find something.
That's it. So Bit like, you know, if you're needing a job, isn't it?
I mean, if you've got a job and you're just looking around, you, you, there's no urgency and you Yeah. However, you got, ain't got no income coming in, you'll start, you'll, well, I'll take that one. That's it, you know, and,
and, you know, like when, I think when people are not in the right mindset, like they have to find somebody, they're looking for the perfect property that ticks 100 percent of the boxes.
And I say to clients, it's like finding the perfect wife or the perfect husband. They don't exist. Don't start me on that one. So if it ticks 70, 80 percent of the boxes, you know, usually that's sufficient. So you're not going to tick all the boxes, you've just got to tick the majority. And again, when you got that motivation, you know, it's like nobody's perfect, no house is perfect, but you will find a house that you will be very happy in.
Sure. Now, before I move on to a few other different subjects, maybe like bridging finance or things like that, just want to just talk this through a little bit again on the Gold Coast market in particular. Now, we, we did an episode recently and we talked about, you know, what this, this high flying market that we've just.
Come off and, and that it is looking like that, you know, there are signals that are starting to, to turn. How does this play a role in what we're talking about here about, you know, buying first or, or selling first with where the market is right now? Yep. What factors are at play with making that de that decision?
Yeah, so right now what we're starting to see is there's a lot more properties hitting the market. so supplies increasing. Therefore buyers have more options, more choice. So days on market are sort of blowing out a little bit
and they're starting to
take more time to sell a property. I guess that's looking at the averages and sort of from the data.
Sure.
Personally, in our agency, we're actually finding, one of the things we've found in the last few months is buyers are being quite selective quite quickly, so we normally do a three week campaign, we've actually shortened that down to a two week campaign now, which is working well because we were finding that there were too many buyers with, now that they've got more options, if they will go with
something else, if yeah, we were losing
quite a few buys in that third week.
So we had to sort of pivot and adjust, and now we're bringing it back to two weeks. So we're just doing like two Saturday open homes, getting them all in there
and it's,
it's sold on
open offers, which we've talked about. Yeah. If this is your first episode and you haven't heard about open offers, go and have a listen to a few of our earlier episodes that you don't want to miss them.
Great. So, and also, I guess with, With what you're saying there, because having a cash on, sorry, and, having your own property at an unconditional, , contract would have been probably a lot more important in the market. We've just come off where things were selling, you know, like, like hotcakes.
If you back, back at that market, I gather if you basically, if you weren't cash unconditional or had a. Yeah,
that's right. So, I think it's just before, especially in 2024, there was such a shortage of supply of properties to sale on the Gold Coast. Buyers were prepared to wait and hang around. So, but now as we're seeing supply increasing, we're just starting to see people being a bit more decisive quicker.
It's, it's funny because they're sort of, they're not I guess, paying, they don't have that, they don't have that fear of missing out as much.
Sure.
As what they did. Yeah. So they're sort of like just standing back a little bit. They're sort of considering all their options. They're still making offers, which is good.
But they're more, yeah, they're just, looking at all their options, there's a lot more stock for them to look at. Yep. So, if they find another deal that comes on the market next week, they'll pull out and jump on that one. Sure. So, that's where we've just got to be. Careful in that sense.
Absolutely. All right.
Now, bridging finance in, in the scenario that we're talking about this balancing act of sell first, buy first, you know, trying to get it as right as you possibly can, where does bridging finance fit into that? Oh, actually, you know. There might be some listeners out there who don't know what bridging finance is.
Can you explain bridging finance and where it fits in?
Yeah, so bridging finance essentially is just finance that helps you get from one property to the next in simple terms. It's generally short term lending. Sure. So it's, you want to avoid it. That's the long and short. First
bit of good advice there.
Avoid it if you possibly can.
Avoid it if you can. Because you're taking a large sum of money and because it is short term lending, the rates are very high. Like you're paying like credit card type rates. Wow. Probably not quite that high, but very, yeah, it might be double or triple what you're paying on your home loan.
Because it's only for a short term. So, the downside is, like my mother, She sold her property and then she was on, so she, she purchased first. Then she was on bridging finance until she sold. Now she was down in Victoria in a rural area. It ended up taking her about 12 months to sell that property.
And she lost, I think it was like 150, 000, 200, 000, because of the amount of time it took to sell that property. So, that's one of the big, risks. If you buy first, and you go on to bridging finance, you can lose a lot of equity and a lot of money quite quickly. You really gotta, it literally is just for Like one month, you know, you really don't want to be on it for more than a month.
It's I call it kneecapping race. You know, it's like boring. It's like, it's legal. It's like loan sharks. Can you
give me an example where you would do it? Maybe you can't. I'm just interested to know. Well,
it's, it's, you know, again, you have people who are worried about being homeless and nowhere to go.
So they will generally buy first and then they sell. And that the difference between when they buy and sell, they need that bridging finance to overcome those two transactions. So, I guess where people don't. Take our advice and they insist on buying first. Again, you got to make sure you're going, it's, it's not as prevalent where your days on market is lower.
, definitely like if you're in a, a rural area where, you know, I feel like you're on Mount Tambourine, like they have significantly higher. They can take three to six months, 12 months sometimes, quite regularly up there. But if you're in a suburban area, our, we're averaging 14 days on market at the moment.
So, it's not as big of issue because you're not going to be on bridging finance for. Yeah, months and months and months, but any situation where you may be potentially still for sale, after purchasing for more than two months, you would probably want to avoid again. That's why it's always best to sell first, do a longer settlement.
You avoid the need of that of bridging. But look, even
in you saying that Brad, it's coming to my mind that, you know, if you are weighing up, you know, risks of this and you. You, you know, you are that person who wants to, you know, or found that perfect property that you want to buy and, oh, you know, crap, I haven't sold or I'm not even in a position to yet you're probably, you know, yeah, far better to be, you know, to be renting for a little bit of time, you know, the, the, the costs involved in that, versus the risk of what could go wrong in bridging finance, but yeah.
Bridging substantially be much more expensive than renting somewhere short term. Even if there's like websites like stays that do, you know, one and three month holiday rentals. One of the other strategies too, I say to, to clients is let's get you sold first. And they say, Oh, what if we don't find somewhere Brad?
And I say, look, you can actually, have a staycation. You know, we've had clients who actually go and. Stay on the beach. Yeah. Live in, live in surface for a sec. Yeah. Have a, have a holiday for a month. Yep. You know, have the waves rolling in. Walk on the beach. Just have a bit of a break, you know, between properties rather than moving from one to another.
Have a month off, have a bit of a staycation. You can still work and everything like that. Because
those, you're looking at them being fully furnished and things, and so all you've got to do is, is pack up your gear and get it all out into storage for, you know, for that period of time. We have a remover
that will help and put it all into a storage container for them, doesn't cost that much, and then they go and have a bit of a staycation, and then they, the remover will take it all out of storage and move it to the new house a month later or whenever it be.
So we went through it personally too, so we sold our property. And then the wife was like, you know, do we find the right property first and then do we sell? I said, no. I said, we're selling first. Then when we're unconditional, then we'll go shopping. So we sold our property. We ended up probably getting about 200, 000 more than I was expecting, which was great.
So that allowed us to then also look at a different type of property. So it might be the case where. Yeah, I thought it was worth X, but we got 200, 000 more, we were then starting to look at waterfront properties, and we were looking at bigger houses, you know, with theatre rooms, and pools, and Yeah,
good point, you know You know?
No, we'll come back to the very first thing you said in this podcast, is you know what you've got to spend, and I love the example you're giving here. Wow, you've just sold yours for far more than you thought, suddenly you're looking at something totally different than you would have been. And it can
also work on the flip side where, you know, sometimes we've got sellers who think the house is worth three million dollars and it's really only worth 2.
5. Can I ask you, overall, because this is interesting, as an average, overall, when you, I mean, you get new listings all the time, overall, do, do most sellers, In your experience, when they first say, when you first say them, this is what I think it's worth or, or, or, however that conversation goes, overall, are they expecting more or less in your experience over, over how many years you've been doing this?
99 percent of the time they want more.
I would have thought so. So, there's an old saying in
real estate, if you, if the seller, tells you a price and it's, less than you've expected, you've stuffed it up. So, yeah, 99 percent of the times, everyone will have a expectation of price. Actually, one rule that's pretty accurate is that the sellers will generally want almost exactly 10 percent too much.
Really? Yeah, so, you know,
I'll usually ask clients, you know, what price they would like to achieve or what's their dream price. They might say, you know, 1. 5 million, say. So then if I sort of look at it and I'll do my appraisal and say Okay, realistically, it's probably 1. 3 to 1. 4. You know, if you get 1. 5, take off 150, 000, you're at 1.
35. So, it'll be within that band so I can work with that person. If they say they want 20 percent or 30 percent too much, I'll generally decline that business. Very, very occasionally you'll have somebody who's realistic and think it's in the band that it should probably be selling for. Yep. So, but 99 percent of people unfortunately, in behavioral economics, they actually call it the endowment effect.
Right.
I won't go into that right now, but, it's just, it's just human behavior. We all think our house is the best. Of course. We all think our house is worth more. And, yeah, like, years ago, I actually had this lady, she was a, a pink lady, and, she, it was crazy, it was, you know, she had this house, and she just, everything was pink, you know, one of these old, she was a Barbie, loves Barbie, she got a pink car, she got a pink house, got the pink kitchen, it was terrible, it was, it was the most horrid thing I've ever seen, I was like, oh, how am I gonna sell this?
And this lady genuinely thought her house was worth an extra two or three hundred thousand dollars because it was pink. When really it's probably dropped
that, that amount. Yeah, exactly.
And it was very hard to convey that to her. Cause she was obviously very emotional about it. And I said, you know, here's some other properties.
And she was sort of saying, yeah, but they haven't got pink kitchens, Brad. And I said, no, they don't. So I just got to factor that in, but yeah, you, you hear some, some great stories in real estate.
Sure. All right. So, look back to what we're talking about here in terms of, you know, managing, managing that balancing out buying or selling first, I gather this becomes.
A bit emotional for some people at times, have you seen a bit of that and how do you help when it comes to balancing those emotions because it would be quite stressful.
Yeah, look, it's it is very stressful and it's very emotional. The probably the biggest piece of advice I can say is, is. Generally business people are more decisive and they can look at it without the emotion.
They're used to making more financial, big financial decisions. So
at the end of the day, it is a house, it is a home. Especially if you've got somebody who's living in the property, they're more emotional about it because There's memories and the kids have grown up there and stuff like that. So that's a little bit more of an emotional journey and that's where picking the right age can help you sort of get from, you know, from point A to point B and being sold.
Whereas an investor's usually less emotional. They're more business like. It's just, it's an asset. They've got to get it sold like a share. You know, nobody gets really emotional about their BHP shares. It's just an asset. Gets to a certain price and they sell it. So, and that sets the thing. It's like at the moment I'm helping a lady.
She's a single mum, lovely lady. But she's very, you know, every day she's calling me. She's like, oh, I'm distraught, Brad. And she's got a few issues she's working through with Body Corporate. So, we're there as a bit of a, to sort of help get through this process and she's freaking out almost on a daily basis and I've sort of got to just Give her that confidence, have that conversation, bring her back to reality and say look, it's not the end of the world, all we need to do is A, B and C and we'll get the property on the market and you'll move on from this and that weight will be lifted off your shoulders.
And that's what good agents do.
Perfect. Alright, sum this up for me Brad, the entire episode. I come to you and I say, right, I'm, I'm ready, I've got a house I want to sell, I want to find a new home. Brad, do I buy or sell first?
Sell.
Okay. Why? Always.
Always sell, because then, like we've discussed, you're going to know how much you've got to spend.
You avoid bridging finance, and it's going to allow you to, make a more decisive decision, and you're going to be in a better position to buy your dream home, and you're going to have a better chance of getting it accepted at a lower price.
Okay, so to sum up, sell first and avoid bridging finance. At all costs. Perfect. Excellent. Well, look, thanks for tuning in everyone. A big shout out to Brad, sharing his tips and strategies on managing this, sell before you buy balance.
Hopefully today's chat, you know, gives you more clarity if you, you are facing this decision, which, you know, I would say 90 percent of, of, you know, People looking at, at real estate are so, now, and if you've got any questions or need guidance, please reach out to Brad and his team at smart real estate.
They are just a phone call away, visit them at their website, www.smartrealestate.com.au and as always, please hit that subscribe button, jump in so you don't miss any more of our episodes. Give us, give us a five star rating and, uh, take care and we will see you at the next episode. Thanks once again, Brad.
Thanks Adam.
Thanks for tuning into the Gold Coast Smart Real Estate Podcast. Remember, if you think you're selling, you're 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 so you never miss an episode. And if you found today's insights helpful, feel free to share with a friend.
Until next time, happy house hunting.