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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.
Welcome back to the Gold Coast Smart Real Estate Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Bell, and today we're going to have a look at some of the sales that have been happening through smart real estate. And of course, with me again is our Principal of Smart Real Estate, Brad Scott. Brad, welcome to the studio.
Thanks for having me, Adam. Fantastic. All right. So we've got a few properties here that we want to take a close look at and basically just talk me through the sale, talk me through the property, the people and you know, everything that goes on when, you know, when that exciting time comes for selling a property.
So let's start with, all right, Ferniav in, uh, in surface 132 slash 138. Talk me through that one. Yep. All right. Well, this is a property that we've just transacted on just, uh, the last, uh, sort of week or so. , it was an interesting one. Probably one of the more difficult ones we get sometimes.
It's in a resort building in surface paradise. Had a lovely client, Dorothy, who was a past client we sold for a few years ago. She's been on the market for, I think about six months now. Right. So she originally had a, an agent who she went with and, unfortunately that agent probably overpriced it.
And it happens, doesn't it? Yeah. So it sort of sat there, and didn't really get a lot of traction. So then she moved from that agent and went to the second agent. And, The price went down a bit and we had a sort of similar circumstance where she's on the market for another three months, still no offers.
And then she gave me a call and said, Brad, I sold with you last time. I should have called you straight away and told me the whole story. And I said, look, let's see if I can help and get you to sold. So, makes it difficult though, doesn't it? You've had two agents before you and, you know, once it's been on the market a while that creates a whole set of.
circumstances, doesn't it? Yeah, and I said to Dorothy, I said, look, you know, we need to, it's a little bit harder for us because we're not going in fresh and new. Buyers have seen us be on the market for, you know, almost six months now. For sure. And I said, look, we need to basically revamp it, increase your marketing, do some extra things like 3d tours and videos that probably wasn't presenting the You know, as nicely as I wanted it to.
So we used virtual furniture to photoshop her furniture out and put some nice furniture in. Which we put a disclaimer there for buyers, just to let them know. And yeah, long story short, we did a, that was a two week campaign. Okay. So the results are now in. There are, another, Thing just quickly, there's properties in the same building, for sale and they're at 3.
95. This is a cheaper property. It's a one bed, one bath. Two other agents have got two properties for sale on higher floors with ocean views for 3. 95. They were not able to, well, they're still for sale. They're still on. Yep. This one's on the first floor. The views aren't the best, which makes it. A little bit more difficult too.
But with our unique selling method with open offers. That was going to be my question, was this an open offers sale? It was an open offers. So, during that two week campaign we basically did two Saturday open homes. We did a mid week inspection, so three open homes in total. Over that two week period we had 11 buyers come through.
We had 30 offers, uh, and we ended up selling it for 420,000 cash unconditional. Wow. done deal Fantastic result. So, the market feedback we had during the campaign was that it was worth around 420, 000. 360, 370, and this achieved significantly more with that 11 buyers competing for the property. So, there was a lovely Do you think the open offers method really played a role in that?
Being that it had the two agents prior, they weren't able to to sell it. I gather they were looking at private treaty sale, would imagine. Yep. Couldn't get there. Yep. So the main difference I think is with those other agents, they sort of went in, I think, told the seller, higher price that just wasn't achievable.
Buying a listing I think they call it. Buying a listing, buying the business. Yep. And that frustrates me a little bit in the industry, because at the end of the day, your property's worth what somebody's prepared to pay for it. Yep. You know, so, and I think as agents, if we list properties and we don't bring seller offers, we haven't done our job.
No. You know, our job is to bring the client offers, And then for them to decide if they're happy to sell or not. And that's sort of what we help facilitate. And, in this case, you know, Dorothy had been on the market for six months. She'd had no offers from two agents. We had 30 offers, in two weeks.
Crazy. So, two week campaign, three open homes. In this case, she actually had it. Do you have a. Open homes happening throughout the open, open offers period? Yes. Or do you do all them prior to the open offer period starting? So it basically starts on day one, offers come in straight away, sight unseen.
Over a two week period. Okay. Because what we try and do is we try and think outside the square. So at Smart Real Estate, we're trying to be innovative and we're trying to get buyers not only locally, but also from Sydney. Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane. And there's some tools and tricks that we use to, , you know, bring those buyers in.
So we'll start seeing buyers come in pretty much from day one when we launch on a Tuesday. That'll give us a bit of a starting guide to go into the first Saturday. So locals can come and inspect on that first Saturday. We'll have a mid week inspection, we'll have a second Saturday, and then anyone who wants to fly up or come down from Brisbane, have a look at it, and it's all open and transparent and you can see what the other offers are, and the buyers get to increase their offer if they want to.
Perfect. Perfect. So, the buyer who actually bought that one was, from New Zealand, so Right, okay. She's Hadn't been to the open homes? Well, no, she's in, she's uh, I think she's in Auckland, and um, so she purchased, she looked at the 3D tour online, which is like Google Street View, looked at the video, looked at the floor plans, the photos, put an offer online, and then, um, she, she, You know, through, over a period of that two weeks, um, she increased her offer.
So, I think, uh, so Phoebe originally started at 380, 000, and then over that two week period, increased her offer incrementally and went up to 420, 000 and she secured the property. Fantastic. So she's very happy, so happy buyers and happy sellers. Dots happy, or I shouldn't call her Dot, she's probably listing, I mean, Dorothy.
So, for, alright, that's a good one. So that's in surface. Alright, let's, let's move on. Mary Beth Crescent, one of ten, Mary Beth Crescent Mollendyna. Yep. So what do we got here? We got a, is it two bed? Yeah, so this was actually a three bed, two bath, two car duplex. Presented very well, So I was a lovely young couple, got a young baby and sort of outgrown the home and they wanted to move in.
They've just purchased a new, five bedroom house in the northern suburbs of the Gold Coast. So our job was really to try and help them to, you know, maximise that sale result and get them as much as we possibly could. so they could move on to the next stage of their life. Yep. You know, this one we sort of.
Based on sales in the area, I thought it was probably worth around 700, 000 was sort of an indication. so I wanted a bit more than that, as they do. As they always do. But yeah, that's why, you know, we come in and our job is to see, well, how much more can we get? Than the market value, then the market, what the market's telling you.
Yeah. Yep. Based on sales and stuff. So that campaign went really well. We had, again, that was a 14 day campaign. We had 13 qualified buyers come through, with 23 offers, and we ended up selling that one for 770,000. Wow. Okay. So 10% above what you, what you originally thought. Yeah. Yep. So that was a great result.
I was very happy to, you know. Probably achieve that extra 70, 000 than what other agents in the area, had been achieving for. This was open offers again. Open offers again. Yep. So I think, you know, having 23 offers as agents too, like it's just so difficult to, like communicate with, you know, I had 13 buyers all negotiating at the same time.
It's just. And to be fair and transparent to everybody, it's just, you know, I don't know who's the best buyer. I don't know who's going to be the eventual buyer, who's going to want it the most. Sometimes I have a bit of an inkling based on the questions they ask and how many times they call me. And those buyers end up sometimes being the best buyer.
Sometimes I'll go to a certain point and then it goes above that and they say, thanks, Brad, but I'm done. I'm done. I'm out. Yep. So, but yeah, I mean, that's just another. Great result where, you know, we're able to, I mean, it's a, it was a team effort , so the owners, Chris and Sissy did a great job.
They probably spent about two weeks preparing it for sale. We came, we initially met them and we gave them a few tips about how to maximize the sale price. Sure. So one of the things they did was get the house high pressure cleaned, out the front, got all the gardens done. I think you covered this in one of your first episodes.
We did, we did. So, it doesn't cost a lot, things like mulching gardens, high pressure cleaning, the roof, stuff like that. I said to him, I said, look, let's get rid of the apricot orange out the front. Nice call. Probably not the, the greatest, most modern. Yep. And I said like, nice. You know, clean white is in, it'll go with the apricot tiles on the roof.
I came back, and he literally just painted it himself, painted the render, and, I was like, wow, it looks like a new property, so. Little things can make all the difference. Yeah, like the inside was great, they'd renovated all the inside. It was just the, the front facade on this case need a little bit of helping hand and that's where we had those 13 qualified buyers come in over two weeks and again 14 days yeah so the thing was too because they'd actually purchased this larger property they ended up buying a five bedroom house with a pool in the northern suburbs so they when you're buying Subject to sale.
You only have a 30 day time period. Yep. So Try to get it done. Yeah, you're on a bit of a time lapse. So this was a case where I usually tell clients to sell first and then buy, do a longer settlement. Sometimes a better strategy. Unfortunately, most clients sort of want to always buy first. Yep. And that's what these guys did, and they put themselves under a bit of pressure.
But the good thing is, most, our standard, we're averaging 14. 1 days anyway. And we got a little bit extra, another week or two there if we needed it. But we got the deal done in 14 days. Probably a good thing for us to do another episode on another time, just the, all the ins and outs of buying or selling first.
Yep. And, you know, what goes into that. Fantastic, great, another great result. All right, so, Ashmore this time, 33, is that Lawana? Lawana? Lawana? Lawana, yeah. Lawana Drive? Yeah, so, that was, a bit of a unique one. It was, it's only a three bed, one bath, one car house. Ah, three bed, one, okay, yep.
One bath, one car. Pretty original, original, style, I guess you could say. Built in 1980, same as me. Good year. Yep. And nothing really, you know, modern or special about it. Sure. It's a pretty run of the mill house to be fair and honest. So again, you know, I said to Taja, lovely, lady, in her 70s, and, really wanted to help her.
She's I think going into, assisted care. So we really wanted to help her and maximise that sale price. So this was a case of again, just sort of polishing it up a little bit and making it as nice as we could. So again, we did the high pressure cleaning, the mulching on the gardens. When we first got there, you couldn't actually see the front of the house cause it was so much overgrown garden.
Shrubs and things. Shrubs and stuff. It was tenanted. Yep. So we got all, we got a. We got our gardener in, got all that cut back. I could actually see the house when we got there. The high pressure cleaning was a massive improvement because all the concrete and the pebble crate, the roof, it was just black.
Yep. So getting our guy Dale in, he spent, you know, best part of a day there. Yep. And we came back and it was like, brand new. Back like it was in 1980. So, yeah, it was a great campaign. Again, it was tentative. So. Wasn't necessarily the easiest when you're tenanting properties. As you said that, I thought, we've probably got another episode there around selling with and without tenants.
But, yeah, you've got to work around them. And yeah, owner occupiers are definitely easier because they want to work with you. They present it well. Tenants sometimes, you know, there's no They can make a trick, you can't. They can. Reason for them to help you. So we work with a lot of tenants all the time, so we try and work with them and, it's, it's about open communication and working together.
And so yeah, we did that in this case and got it all cleaned up, presented beautifully. And, the results are in the, when we first went and saw Taja, I said, look, you know, realistically probably around seven 50 to 800 mm-hmm . Was sort of where I saw that property. Getting it all cleaned up, great marketing campaign again.
We use virtual furniture to basic, you know, for the privacy of the tenant also. Sure. Is that a common thing to do, especially when you've got tenants? Yeah, tenanted, that's something that we really, I guess it's just a little thing that sets us apart from others. So most agencies will just shoot it with the tenant's furniture in there.
Okay. And it doesn't present that nicely. Sometimes too. There's a law that. Tenants can actually refuse having their furniture used in the marketing. When I had one case a few years ago where. The tenant wouldn't let us use any inside photos at all. So by allowing, by using the virtual furniture, you can just dress it up, keeps the tenant happy.
I haven't seen this before. I'm going to jump online as soon as we're finished here and have a look at this. Yeah, If you have a look at the befores and the afters. Yep. You know, we can make something that looks pretty average. Yep. Look like a Hampton style, beautifully, like, slide me into a house, and it's just through furniture.
So, we have stages who will do professional staging, but that can be This is the future though, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It was just, it's about being using tech like open offers and virtual furniture to market a property to its best, um, to ensure that we get the maximum possible price for the seller. And we'll usually have those photos blown up onto an A3, have them laminated.
And when we go there, we actually put them, set them down on the floor on that position. So buyers can walk in and, they can sort of, sometimes they look at the furniture and go. Yeah, you know. Yeah, well it can put you off, can't it? Yeah, if it's not, you know. And it's like, and I say to buyers, so look, you're not buying the furniture, don't worry, this will be all gone.
But it's hard, it's hard as a human being isn't it, to visualise. It's hard for them to visualise. Yeah. And, and you, you would, I, I actually really like this because it, it takes the imagination work out of, because you do, you want to imagine it as your home, as the best it can be, if you're wanting to buy, don't you, so, and this, this does that.
Yeah, and we sort of like, very quickly and easily and, and relatively cost effective, make it look like a display home. When you go to see the RSL. You know, display homes. Yep. People walk in and they get all emotional and they're like, Oh, wow, look at this. And they start talking about whose bedroom that's going to be.
And, the dog would sleep there and, it's mostly all the knickknacks and the furniture that, you know, really sells it. But when you win that RSL Art Home, sometimes they include it, but most of the time all that goes. So, it's really just about setting the scene and making people emotionally connected to make sure they.
You know, and they can go and buy all this furniture and put it all in there and set it up like that. And that's what it would look like. For sure. So, yeah. So anyway, back to the results. Now I'm looking here, Brad, 54 offers. That was, yeah. 54 offers. The first, first Saturday, we ended up having three agents come cause we had so many inquiries and, The street was full of cars.
We had a lot of people getting in. It was a bit like a nightclub. Yep. So we have to check them all in for, to get all the details. And yeah, over 16 days, we had 29 qualified buyers who submitted 54 offers on this one. And yeah, we thought we'd get 750 to 8, we ended up selling it for 885, 000. That was a buyer subject to finance, but the finance all went through and, property successfully sold and settled.
So. Perfect. Buyers are very happy. They've got a great home that they can add value to right in the heart of Ashmore there. And yeah, it's a, it was a great opportunity for the buyers and they'll make great capital growth over the next, you know, 10, 20 years. For sure. But for the seller right now, she probably got an extra, 80, 85, 000, more than we were expecting to get for that one.
So fantastic. Excellent. Well, look, we've got a lot more to go through here, but, I think that's probably us us done for this. We'll save those for another episode because, what I'm actually really looking forward to is, you joining me in here again next week, where we're going to do a bit of a review on, on the year that was 2024 and what's happened in the market.
So, looking forward to the episode. We're going to let drop. Right on New Year's, I think it's either New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. So, but look, plenty here. I'd like to do this again with you. This is great. So, but look, you know, if you're, you're out there and you're, you're, you're wanting to buy, you're wanting to, to sell or just get some more information, talk to Brad and his team.
What's your, your website, Brad? So we're at Smart Real Estate, www. smartrealestate. com. au. Fantastic. So jump online there, talk to, talk to Brad and his team and look, thanks for tuning into the Gold Coast Smart Real Estate Podcast. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, leave us a comment, leave us a, you know, tell us what you want to hear.
Give us some ideas for some episodes. So if anyone's got any questions, just, you know, send it in and we can go over different, topics. Anyone that, you know, anyone wants to know anything about buying or selling or. Any sort of topic, just let us know and we'll, we'll do a show on that.
Absolutely. Fantastic. Once again, thanks for joining us, Brad, and look forward to chatting next week. Thank you. 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 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.