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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!
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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, and welcome back to the Smart Real Estate Podcast, the place where we break down smart strategies for buying and selling property on the Gold Coast. I'm Adam Bell, and today we're doing something that we love to do here on the Smart Real Estate Podcast, taking you behind the scenes of some of Brad's recent sales.
Now, every property sale has a Some go exactly to plan, while others come out. with unexpected twists. Now in this episode, we'll dive into a few standout sales, looking at what worked, what challenges came up and the key takeaways for buyers and sellers. Brad, welcome to the podcast. Let's get into it.
What's the first sale that we're having to look at today? Thanks Adam. Yeah. So today is a property at 62 Usher Avenue in Labrador, beautiful four bed, two bath, single story house on about an 800 square meter block. This was a property that we sold for Hayley and John, beautiful young couple just had a newborn baby and we went and saw them and initially They were talking to a few different agents to get a bit of an idea what they thought the value of the home was and what it would sell for, as most people tend to do.
Yep. Yeah. Get a few agents in. We did, weren't made aware that John's mom's actually a real estate agent. Oh, okay. Didn't on the Gold Coast. Or on the Gold Coast, and they didn't Wow. Didn't tell us that. Really. So, and then we did quite a good presentation, had really good rapport with them, and then they said, came back and said, oh, unfortunately we've decided to go off a different agent.
Mum? I said, who's that? And they said, oh, John's mum's actually a real estate agent, and I said, oh, okay. So anyway, I think, get through, I said, yeah, no problem, and We, I think the, John's mum was hoping to sort of sell that property for around 900, 000. It had a bank valuation, I think about 12 months before, for about 750, 000.
In this street, I think the highest sale was about 680, 000. Okay. 700, 000. This one was probably the nicer one in the street. Sure. Uh, it was valued by the bank at 750, 000. Mum was going to try and get 900, 000. Do it for cheap commission, cheap marketing, um, put as much money in their pocket as possible.
After having a meeting, a few weeks later, Haley gave me a call back and said, Brad, you know, I think we want to go with you, not ha not happy with Mom . And I said, I said, okay, yeah. Is John's mom okay with it? ? And they said, yeah. They said, look, we, we, we just think that you are the right agent for the job, and we believe that we're gonna get a better result with you.
And I said, oh, well, as long as. John's mom's happy. Um, look, we'd love to help you. So, that one, we ended up having, I think we had about a hundred and something people through, sort of, over about three weeks. Okay. So, I was on the market for three weeks. We ended up having 18 qualified buyers, and We had 51 offers, and it sort of started around 950, 000, which was already above what mum was going to try and achieve.
And then over that next, basically three week period, it went from 950, 000 to 1, 172, 500. Wow. So, that's around an extra 270, 000. On top of what mom was going to achieve. And, yeah, obviously, very ecstatic. And we loved it. We helped a lovely lady in her 70s from Miami. Yep. Move into the property. And then we subsequently ended up selling her property in Miami using the same method.
Because it was actually an offer subject to sale. Yep. And, uh, she said she'd like to use this because obviously you can get a good result in a quick time frame, which she needed to do because it's subject to sale. That's what I love. And look, I'd want to say here that every time we do this for anyone watching on, on YouTube, we get these lovely little printed reports from the open office method of sale.
And you can see every. Every bid, every offer, and the timeline and how the prices do go up and you can see the story emerging right in front of your eyes. And how long did you say this actual So that one took three weeks. Three weeks. So 20 days technically. That's about the max you generally go with, isn't it?
Yeah, so at that time we were doing most of our campaigns in three weeks because that's sort of where the buyers were happy. We've subsequently just recently changed that now to two weeks because buyers we're finding are not hanging around for the three week period. But for many years, yeah, we, the three weeks seems to be the sweet spot for that one, so, yeah.
Perfect. What a great result. Awesome. Okey doke, let's move on. Next one we're looking at here, it looks like it's going to be a, a unit, is it? So 40 of 12, Handel Avenue, Wurrungguri. Well, it's not Technically, it's actually a palatial mansion. Oh, okay. I just looked at the address. 40 slash 12. It's in a gated I've just, I've just seen the picture.
Okay. All right. No, it's definitely not a unit. No, it's not a unit. So it's in a gated estate in Wurundjeri. A beautiful estate there. And the client was a well known solicitor on the Gold Coast. I'll mention his name, but he had been on the market for about two years, I believe. He'd been on the market for two years.
Yeah, and he'd had, I think, about six different agents try and sell the property. Some big names, well known names, weren't able to achieve the sort of price he was hoping to achieve. He wanted, yep. The highest offer he'd had to date, I believe, was 2. 2 million. He was Wanting a minimum of 2. 5 million, right?
Previous agent who had it prior to us had had it for probably for about 12 months and that only had About 20 odd buys through over that 12 month period. Yep So we explained to the seller the process of open offers and how it works He's quite intelligent obviously understood the process he's like Yep.
Let's do it. He was a little bit skeptical at the start. When we first went in, he said we've done auction. We've done private treaty. I've had the best agents. I've had the local agents. Nothing's worked. What are you going to do that's different? Open offers is what you're going to do that's different.
We'll do open offers. I explained the process. He said, yep. Okay. I get it. I love it. Let's do it. Still a bit skeptical. I think in the first open home, we had about 35 groups of buyers come through that one. Which was more than what the previous agent had over the previous 12 months. Why do you think you got that many?
How were you able to get so many more than the numbers? Yeah, so it's a mixture of both pricing and marketing. So if you're probably not selling, it's either generally overpriced or it's under marketed. So sometimes you've got to ramp your marketing up a little bit using some different tools. Also the good thing with open offers, it's sort of similar.
In that it's like an auction where people will put starting offers in low. Yep. And then we say it's open offers above whatever that current price is. Sure. So that allows people to come in and see the property. Yep. They will have budgets higher than that. Yep. But that's sort of what drives the demand as opposed to putting a really high price on it.
Yep. And then it taking months and months and months and then you got to drop the price, drop the price, drop the price, drop the price. And then. By that point, it's already dead in sale and you end up selling it for less than what you could have. Sure. So, that's sort of the background on that one, but that property was on the market.
That took a little bit longer. So, that took us 42 days. Well, we're in a different segment of the market there. Yeah. A little bit higher priced property. It's, it was a very, very large home, triple story home, uh, very palatial. The marketing we did for that one was really great. And my son and daughter actually were in the video and jumped in the pool and had a bit of that lifestyle factor.
We ended up having a qualified buyers on that one with 10 offers over that sort of month campaign. And we ended up selling it for 2. 7 and the end buyer ended up being Cash Unconditional. Wow. So it was a cash unconditional deal, done deal, it was about half a million dollars more than the previous highest offer from six different agents.
We did it in one month and it was around 200, 000, almost 10 percent more than what the owner was expecting. You know, hoping to expect for the property. Amazing. So Amazing. And you'd have to put that down to your marketing and Marketing and method of sale. And the method of sale. Yeah. The method is what allows buyers to come in.
It doesn't exclude anybody. It gets 100 percent buyable. Transparency, isn't it? It's transparent. Great marketing with the right method. Gets them all in there. And There's no BS, the buyers can see what the other offers are, and if they want to go higher they can. They can be conditional, they can be unconditional, and the seller's under less pressure because there's no reserve price, they don't have to sell, and they don't have to take the top offer.
They can choose a lower offer if it's got stronger terms. In this case, the top offer, he really wanted it. I actually was, I was actually in Tasmania at the time, and I was in the airport, doing the deal on my laptop while I was waiting for the plane, at Easter. So, yeah. People say that real estate agents don't work hard.
Don't, don't know sort of what we do to get deals done sometimes. Yeah, absolutely do. All right, okay. Now this looks like a, uh, decent size property from the, from the picture that I'm looking at here. So we're, we're up in Yatla, 109 Sandy Creek Road. Describe that property to me. So what am I looking at?
Yeah, so this was a, This is a completely, this is a different one. Not residential. So, not really my cup of tea. This was actually a, what they call a high impact industrial block of land. Okay. Out there in Yatla, where all the industrial industry is. This was a lovely couple. They're actually carnies in the circus.
Okay. Alright. They do the circus tour. And they had all these big trucks and stuff there. There was a little three bedroom house on the, on the block, which was, Almost a knockdown, essentially. Sure. The value was really in the land. And this, there was a local agent that sold all these industrial blocks out there in Yatla.
He had had the property on the market for about 90 days, about three months. And the highest offer he'd had was 3. 9 million. And then the sellers heard about myself and our team and what we do. Gave us a call and said, Brad, we want you to sell this. You know, property for us in Yatla, and we've had an offer of 3.
9, there's a few buyers hanging around, but the agent, we won't sell it under 4. If you can't get 4, we'll just keep it. And I said, okay, no problem. Found out more about it, and I said, look, I don't really do high impact industrial blocks of land. Not my bread and butter. It's not really my cup of tea. It's not, you know, something I do all the time.
But I said, look, you know, no matter what it is, whether it's a penthouse or an industrial block of land or a unit, we're It's the same process. So I said, look, again, no guarantees. I'm happy to give it a crack, but I just want to manage your expectations. You know, hopefully we should be able to get that extra hundred thousand.
I think with our results we can. So it's sort of quietly confident. And she sort of said with the previous agent, there was a few offers made. Now I didn't know if that was the agent just trying to keep it alive or, you know, always, whether it was genuine. And I said, well. That aside, if that previous agent is genuine, there are buyers, this system will basically throw them in there against each other, and it should drive us up to that four million, and you'll be happy.
So we Let's have a look. Yeah, so we ended up starting off with one of those buyers at 3.7 million. Good start. Then we had a new offer from another age, another buyer at 3.8. Then we had another offer from a different buyer, 3.9. So within about six days, we'd achieved the same outcome as what the previous agent did over 90 days.
Yep. But you still had a good 5 or 6 days to go. Yep, and then we ended up getting another off at 3. 95. Then, interestingly enough, we had this gentleman come in at 4 million. And then it went up and up and up. So over the next, so it, on The fourth, we were at 4, 000, 000, 24 hours later we did the final offer stage and the price went from 4, 000, 000 from that buyer to 4, 315, 000 in 24 hours.
So that was over that final offer stage at the end. Yep. And ended up having sort of three buyers fighting it out. There was a buyer from Sydney. The red buyer, and a local buyer who had like a, sort of a demolition business. Needed big trucks and stuff like that. Funnily enough, we subsequently found out that the buyer who had offered the 3.
9, with the previous agent, and couldn't get him to come up to 4 million, was the same guy that paid 4, 315, 000 with us. Really? So you'll see there, he started at 4 million. And the only reason he offered the four million was because he could see the four other buyers there before him, leading up to that level.
And then, out of those, I think there was five buyers we had in there? Yeah, we had five qualified buyers. And, three of them ended up fighting it out at the end. And that same guy, ended up essentially paying 415, 000 more than what he had offered with the previous agent. And we got it done in three weeks.
So we had 13 offers in three weeks. Five qualified buyers. And essentially 415, 000 more. So about 10 percent more. 10 percent more, which seems to be about what you're generally getting. Yeah. That or a bit more. Yeah, that extra, that extra, you know, like. Agents commissions two or three percent that extra ten percent that we're getting that's the value of your real estate agent Yeah, that extra seven percent clear of fees.
It's it makes a big difference to the sellers. Absolutely Absolutely. All right last one for for today. We're looking at one Shoothaven Close, Shoot Harbour. Now hang on, hang on Brad. This, this ain't on the Gold Coast. I haven't heard of Shoot Harbour. Yeah. Where's that? So this was a another interesting case.
So this was a lovely lady, Sandra, who called me up and she's in Airlie Beach. Airlie Beach, okay. Airlie Beach. So she said, she said she's got this property. It's a little three bedroom. Property overlooking, with Sundays, Daydream Island. I wouldn't say it was a spectacular home, it was a nice home. Yep. And, locally in that little pocket there, she'd been trying to sell off the local, I think it was a Ray White agent there in Airlie Beach, or, one of those agents.
They were on the market for about three or four months. The highest offer she'd had was 800, 000, and she said she wants me to do open offers, and I said, okay. I had a look at, there's a lot of sales in that area, it's quite easy to appraise. And I said, look, I could probably realistically get you 850, 000, Sandra.
What sort of, you know, figure were you thinking? And she said, well, I want a million dollars, Brad. And I said, okay, well, nothing else is really sold for a million dollars in that area. She said, oh yeah, but if you can get a Sydney buyer or a Melbourne buyer. I said, well, that's what we do and specialize in.
Whereas I think a lot of the local agents were focusing on local buyers. Right, sure. And they were only bringing in offers around that. So we ended up doing the open office campaign, Oh, and I said, well, obviously I'm not going to drive to LA beach to show the property. I can't do open homes. You're going to have to show it yourself.
We can send you all the marketing materials. And she said, Brad, I don't want anybody in my house. God, I said, right. So you want a million dollars and you don't want anyone to step through the property. No open homes. Yeah. So I said, well, that's not hard. Is it? And I said, sure. I'm up for the challenge. So again, I just said, look, So, you know, I don't want to, I want to manage your expectations.
I'm not sure if you're going to get a million dollars, but we'll give it a crack. Yep. As long as you don't put pressure on us to achieve that and you're open to the market and see how we go. So that one we had, we ended up getting a marketing team up in Ely Beach, did great. Great marketing for that property.
That one went for three weeks. We had 12 qualified buyers, all sight unseen from all over the country. And we had 21 offers. Were any of them local or were they all from outside? So you'll see there, so we actually had a silly starting offer at 51, 000. I saw that. So, and then the price sort of went quickly from, you know, it sort of jumped to 500, 000.
And then we had a lot of local buyers there. in that sort of sevens and eights, they sort of got up to about that 800 price point, which the other agents were able to achieve. Then once you go above that, they were mostly similar. This was over Christmas, New Year too, that I'm looking at that started on the 24th of December.
So I was over that Christmas, New Year's break. So, you know, which is generally a little bit harder to sell, but we ended up. Getting a lot of Sydney and Melbourne buyers come in from interstate through the marketing and the 3d tours and the videos and all that and we actually There's a bit of a story but quickly the one of the buyers who bought it was actually on a boat down in the water below the property and The seller actually had some artwork up and the artist was the lady in the boat Down in the water below the house.
Yeah. Wow. So, somehow there was this connection. Yep. And they ended up buying it. And they ended up buying it for 1, 250, 000 cash unconditional in three weeks. So, we ended up having those 12 buyers all sight unseen from all around the country. Locally, Sydney, Melbourne. As a Brisbane buyer. And we ended up achieving 450, 000.
More than what the local agent did over there. You know, three month period. So, I was going to that. We then, the neighbor across the road called us and heard what we did. And we ended up selling that one at 2 Shoothaven. Then we sold another one at 6 Nearum. Then we went in, we had Probably is in Mandalay Bay, in Ellie Beach there, then we had some in Dingo Beach.
And then we ended up getting some, we sold in Atherton Tablelands, all over Queensland. So our license allows us to sell anywhere in Queensland. I get people in, over the border trying to get us to sell down there. Unfortunately, we're not licensed in New South Wales. Yep. Uh, anywhere in Queensland. So we had a real run there at one stage where we were selling properties.
We sold one up in Townsville on Magnetic Island. Yeah. Affen Tablelands. Toowoomba. So I guess your two key advantages there, obviously again, open offers and your, your expertise and being able to market to the, to the Southern States. You know, and I say to sellers, you know, they talk about having the local agent and I say, well, I sell properties in Shrewd Harbour and Townsville and.
You know, you don't need the local agent with the You know, the office next door, especially in this day and age with open office, cause it's all online. It doesn't matter where we had buyers from Sydney, Melbourne. I think there's one guy, I think in Hong Kong from memory. And they're all online and the sellers can see it.
So the sellers love the transparency. They know exactly where it sits, creates a bit of competition, creates transparency with the buyers and yeah, gets a great result for everybody. Ah, fantastic. That's four amazing stories with the prices, all of them, aren't they? Well and truly over what, well look, two things, what the previous agents were able to, to be achieving and over the, over the seller's expectation.
That's right. Smart, smart real estate. Smart real estate. Well look, that, uh, that wraps us up. We're, we're going to do, continue to do these episodes regularly because I love, I love hearing these stories and, um, seeing the the success that you're able to achieve for, um, you know, for your clients. I mean, every sale is different, but the big takeaway today, smart strategy, the right pricing, open offers, being able to market far and wide and expert negotiation can make all the, all the difference.
So Brad, thanks for, for taking us behind the scenes. Always great to hear that the real stories behind the deals. Look where. Yeah, sure. So if people want to get in contact, they can give me a call on 0408 338 605 or shoot me an email to brad at smartrealestate. com. au. Fantastic. So look, if you want to stay updated on the Gold Coast property market or chat with Brad about buying or selling, you can reach him at at those places that he just mentioned.
Remember, www. smartrealestate. com. au. And look, if you have enjoyed this episode, which I certainly have, make sure you follow, rate us, and share it with anyone interested in real estate. And Brad, I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. See you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning into the Gold Coast Smart Real Estate Podcast.
Remember, if you're thinking of selling, be smart. Explore your options and consider the power of open office method of sale. To maximise 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.