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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.
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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 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.
Hi there, Adam Bell here and welcome to another episode of the Smart Real Estate Podcast. Now today we're tackling a topic that every seller dreads but needs to master and that's how to handle low ball offers and navigate the tough side of negotiations. Now hopefully it doesn't happen too often, but When it does, you know, we need to know how to, how to handle that.
So as always, I've got Brad Scott, principal of smart real estate here, joining me in the studio. Now, Brad, you've been around a long time. You would have seen it all when it comes to offers, good, bad, and downright unreasonable. So look, great to have you here. Thanks. Okay. Let's help sellers keep their cool and come out on top because I gather probably a motion comes in here a little bit.
What the hell am I getting this offer for? Have they even seen my property? So look, first of all, let me ask, why do buyers often make lowball offers and what might motivate them to do that? Let's get into a bit of the psychology here.
Yeah. So generally, Buyers will sometimes, when they're negotiating, try it on with a low offer to start off with, in the negotiation process, and sometimes that's to test the agent and test the seller, sort of see their motivation and, and, and, With the agent, how good they are at negotiating.
And that's why you employ an agent really is to do that negotiation process. And, there's a lot of skill that comes into it and, a good agent with good negotiated skills can really help. Get a lowball offer through to being accepted and through to settlement. So, there's some key strategies and, Dialogue that good agents will use and, you know, with that training.
Basically when we get lowball offers, we've sort of got to be careful how we handle those because at the same time, we don't want to, discard them completely. Because there are cases where lowball offers can end up being a great offer. It's more around understanding why they've chosen that offer to come in with.
Sure. So, well talk to me then. How do you determine why they've made that, that offer to start with?
So, yeah, if I get a, you know, what we call a lowball offer, I'll ask the question, like, you know, how did you ascertain that value? Like, well, why are you making that offer? Sometimes the response might be, That's all I can afford, Brad.
And I said, okay, well, you know, Thanks for coming.
I do have something in the three suburbs further west. If you'd like to have a look at that. You can go to Bow Desert
or somewhere. But yeah, so just because a buyer doesn't have enough money to buy this particular property, it's not really a reason for offering a low ball offer.
If they say, Brad, I've looked at. This one around the corner and this one and this one and can give me those examples and based on that we think the value sits around here, that's probably more of something that I can take to the seller with a good reason as to why it's a fair offer in their view.
Yep, sure. Okay. So, how do you then determine whether, you know, a lowball offer is worth, you know, countering or, you know, whether it is just rejected outright?
Yeah, so it's really going to come down, I guess, to , difference between what the sellers are expecting and what's, you know, reasonable, you know, how far that gap is.
If we're just too far from where we need to be, we'd probably just reject it outright. If we're a little bit closer, well that's where the negotiation comes into it to try and. Get that over the line. So sales will generally have three prices. They'll have their dream price where I say, you know, we're opening the champagne, you know, you're ecstatic.
Everyone's happy. And there's a few
of those in our last episode. If anyone, if you, if you are listening to this, go back to our last episode, because I can tell you there's a few of those in there.
So, so yeah, you'll have the dream price and then they'll have like what price they realistically think it's worth.
And that's probably a more realistic figure and then a seller will have their, will not sell under price. Sure. They're, they're absolutely, you know, they're, they're lying in the sand. If it goes under that, they're not selling. So our job as agents is to get above that and get it to that realistic expectation price and hopefully to the dream price.
Sure.
So, depending on where the offer is in relation to expectations. We'll suggest going back with a counter.
I'm going to be guessing here again. I'm not a real estate expert, but my understanding would be that, market conditions are going to play a huge role in whether a lowball offer even, even comes in now in the market, we've just been thrown the Gold Coast.
The Gold Coast there'd just be no point. It'd just be ridiculous trying to even put one in. But I gather where these become far more, I guess important is in a, buyer's market.
Yeah, correct. So in, we've been in a sales market on the Gold Coast for a few years now, post COVID. So buyers didn't really have an opportunity to present local offers.
There'd be no point because we'd have probably, sometimes we're having 20, 30, some cases we had 60 offers on some properties. So there's no point coming in with local offers in that sort of scenario. As the markets, It's going to begin to change, it's going to turn into more of a buyer's market. There's going to be more stock available.
Those buyers can, you know, make lowball offers. And the conversations we normally hear, and this is what determines where the market's kind of at, we get buyers saying, Brad, here's my offer, it's 100 grand under what you're asking. And I say, well, you know, that's a little bit low, like it might need to be a little bit closer to, you know, where we're, where we're asking.
And they're like, Brad, if you don't want it, I've got five others I'm looking at. Right. So when we start having those sort of conversations, we know the market's definitely sort of more a buyer's market. Yep. Because buyers have choice. So we have to be. I guess, in a seller's market, we're a lot more direct with buyers.
And, uh, we just sort of, if we get a low ball off, I'd say, thanks, yeah, thanks for coming, see you later. When we turn into a buyer's market, we have to play the game a little bit more, negotiate a bit more. We have to be a little bit more conducive to, because there's less of them. And unfortunately they hold the power a little bit more than in a seller's market.
So, and that's the beauty of being in the real estate game for almost 20 years now. You see the ebbs, the flows, the ups, the downs. And you know, When to, to push and when not to. Um, and that's the biggest issues with new agents and agents with not enough experience. They don't know the difference between.
Push and pull scenario. Yeah, you have
to be careful because, you know, if you treat a buyer like you were 12 months ago. Um, you're going to turn a lot away and, you know, in this market, you can't afford to be doing that.
Sure. So can you talk me through a scenario where you've had a, a low ball offer come in and you've been able to turn that around?
This is a question without notice. It's, it's not here on, the, the stuff we've prepared, but, do you have a, a scenario you can think of and maybe talk me through, even if you can't remember the exact numbers, but how it, how it played out?
Yeah, look, I mean, I've probably done a thousand deals over the years, but, there's one I remember where they came in quite low and the seller was a little bit, , upset by the offer.
I imagine you, you sometimes get ones and they say, why don't you go tell them to, Yeah.
That was kind of the conversation and it was kind of, it was, it was, it was so funny cause you, you, you made a couple and then we had the wife who was in business and she had her own business and the husband wasn't.
So,
he understood she
didn't know she understood because she, she had made big financial decisions and the husband didn't, so he got quite upset, quite angry about it. And, I said, look, let's not, you know, don't get emotional about it. It's just an offer. It's just where we, doesn't matter where we start, it matters where we finish.
Yep. So, and, you know, the wife was like, you know, calm down, calm down, it's okay, it's, it's just a written piece of paper. And that's where, you know, and that's why you get ages, because we help, you know, mediate. And we sort of take that emotion away from it, because it can be quite emotional for a homeowner.
Especially when they're living there and they've had memories over the years, they take offence to it sometimes. I can understand. You know, and it's not about where we start, it's just like, hey, this is where we're at, let's go back with a counter, and we'll find a middle ground, and we'll get this property sold.
So, we don't want to You know, he was basically tearing up the offer. Long story short, we worked it over about 48 hours. We ended up getting to a price of more than what they were expecting. And we've got that property sold for them.
Fantastic.
So yeah, that's, you don't want to discard, lowball offers and just try and be unemotional about it, as emotional as it is.
You want to take that emotion out, and I say look, it's just business, don't bring emotions into business. Treat it like sheaves. You know, it's
just, you wouldn't, you wouldn't go and start crying and tearing up an offer if someone tried to try to give you a lowball offer on your, on your BHP shares, would you?
Yeah. So it's just, it's just business.
Yep. Sure. So, you've talked about, you know, a An experienced agent having, you know, more finely tuned, honed skills in negotiation. Can you tell me maybe where a less experienced agent might go wrong? What are some of the mistakes, an agent maybe early on in their career could make with negotiation around a low ball offer?
Yeah, so that's, that's probably one of the risks. So, choosing an agent with less experience, less training. Yep. They probably haven't been involved in enough negotiations to know what a lowball offer is. And sometimes too, some agents I guess, are what I call got commission breadth. So, they're not, they're not doing a lot of transactions per year.
So, every, this might be the only sale they've got for the month. So, they're really relying on it. So, And probably not representing the seller as best as they could. Makes sense. Makes sense. You know, because obviously, you know, they've got to try and make a payday and survive the same as everybody else. Of course.
So they're really focused on getting that lowball offer across the line. Wherever
that comes through at. With their clients, yeah.
As opposed to, I guess, a more successful agent who does a lot more transactions. If I'm negotiating, I'm coming from a point where I don't care whether this still goes through or not.
Yeah. Like, I'm still gonna be okay. You're still, yeah. You know, so I guess I'm not as emotionally involved. We're still negotiating the best outcome for our client, and that's the position you wanna be in the head, head
space, you wanna be at massive point there, I think, for everyone to, to. to take away that, you know, an experienced agent such as yourself, you don't need this to happen.
I'd much rather, you know, get the best result for my, my client than, you know, doing everything I can to make sure I get a paycheck.
Yeah. And you don't, you don't want to just get the first offer sometimes like, you know, we've got to give the right advice. Like if I think that this is the best offer we're going to get.
I will give that advice. If I don't think it is, I'll say, look, I think we can get more than this. Let's reject this and let's keep going. Because again, you know, a good agent won't be in that mindset of having commission bereavement and having to sell. On that one offer. They're happy to wait, be patient, right, wait for the right buyer who might offer an extra 20, 30, 40, 50, 000, you know, so that's really important.
Sure. Have you ever seen a scenario where you've gotten a few lowball offers come in all on the one same, same property?
Yeah, so then if you're getting these lowball offers. You've got to then say, okay, well, is this a lowball offer or is this the market? Yeah.
You know, because, and how do you, how do you know the difference?
Yeah. So, well, it's, it's through repetition. So the market is, you know, where we see offers coming in. It's probably the hardest part of our, you know, job, because every property is unique, every seller's unique, every buyer's unique, every buyer and seller has different motivations. So you'll get those outliers that Yeah, more motivated sellers, more motivated buyers.
But you'll have a, a middle ground where you'll see a lot of offers coming in quite compact. Sometimes at the start that's less or more than we expect. Yep. But in this scenario, if we're getting all these low ball offers, well. Yeah, that might be not lowball, that might actually just be, that's the market.
The state of the market.
Yeah,
and you know, the market may have changed. The market can change. We've seen the market on the Gold Coast change just in the last few months. So, I've got a property at the moment I'm negotiating on. I've got three offers on it. Unfortunately they're all, a lot lower than the seller's expecting.
It's a, it's a prestige property. You know, prestige will generally take a bigger hit than your lower properties. And, but they're all coming within a hundred thousand dollar band, but it's about. Half a million dollars, unfortunately less than what the seller was expecting. But through, and these, buyers are all doing private trading on this one.
And they are all pretty close together, around the sort of 2 mil mark. Right. And, it's like, okay, we'll. You know, this is not a coincidence, that they're all around the two. Maybe the seller's expectations being in the mid twos was probably just a little bit too high, unfortunately.
Can I ask, you've, you've, we've talked about this at, you know, we, we are in early 2025 at the time of recording here, and you've, you've talked about the market changing with this particular property that you're talking about.
Would you have seen, do you feel as though two and a half could have been realistic three, six months ago dropped? Or is it, or is, or is this, seller's expectations just continued to rise as with the market over the last two years?
Yeah. So. Probably 12 months ago, I'd say, you know, we probably would have been getting offers around the 2.
2, 2. 3. I think now looking at it, now we've been on the market, we can see where the market's at. So we're getting a lot of offers for this one around 2. Yeah, had they sold 12 months ago, we'd probably be 2. 2, 2. 3. And the market's taken a bit of a, it's pulled back a little bit. And I guess the sellers haven't probably adjusted their expectation to where the market is So they have to make a decision whether they want to sell now You know because the market may not get much better over the next one two three years in the short term Yeah, you know or do they hold it for ten years and try again in Sure.
Now I do want to do a full episode with you on what I'm about to mention here, which is on the, the upsurge of buyers agents that are out there now helping buyers. And look, you've explained that the benefit of having yourself involved in negotiations and you're representing the seller and I do want to really delve into this.
I think there's, there's more than a full episode on, on how a buyer's agent does that. And, you know, on, on behalf of the, the, the buyer. And, and that would be a great negotiation that I'd love to look at cause you're both trained. Well, hopefully you're both trained in, in doing that. But, but the question here is.
I would imagine when there's buyers agent involved, that sort of takes out the low ball offering all together.
So I'm actually an advocate for buyers agents. Most agents
are, I believe. Yeah.
So generally like I'm what we call a seller's agent. So I represent the seller and my job is to get the highest possible price for the seller.
So generally, typically in Australia, we've just had that model for. You know, 100 years where the seller's agent represents the seller and the seller's agent deals directly with the buyer. Yeah. So they, the buyer has no representation. I hadn't heard
of a buyer's agent until about two years ago. Now they're everywhere.
Yeah. So in America, their system's a bit different. They have buyers and buyers agents and sellers and sellers agents. And the. The buyer's agency is where, essentially the same as like, I'm employed by the seller to represent them to get them the highest possible price. The buyer's agency is employed by the buyer to negotiate on their behalf to get the offer as low as possible for them to secure the property.
So they've got a professional trade negotiator that they pay a fee to. Now, as listing agents, we like dealing with because it takes a bit of that emotion out of it. And their job and both our jobs is to meet in the middle and we're negotiating with other professionals who aren't emotional. The buyers who I'm dealing with directly are quite emotional and you will have different levels of, expertise and negotiation of those buyers.
And, sometimes you'll, you'll, you'll get the, stubborn dad who's a bit of a peacock and, you know, he's like, this is my offer and that's it. And that's generally not the best way to, keep a negotiation going. So they think it is in their head. Of course. But they don't do this every day for a business.
Yep. So, whereas when we're dealing with , a buyers agent, I guess it takes away a lot of that. You know, that emotion, and that stubbornness,
or even, the, the smoke and mirrors that goes on, I, you, you know, we
don't have to, you know, play hardball and this and that, like, we, we, we really, both professionals doing what you do, and, trying to bring two parties together, the buyer wants to buy, the seller wants to sell, our job is to You know, find an outcome for both parties.
Yep. Sometimes one wins, one loses. And, you know, that, that varies on deal to deal. But we're all there with the same, the same goal. So it's a little bit different to, you know, say 10 years ago. Yep. There wasn't really buyers agents in Australia. And what used to happen was we'd have conjuncting agents.
So other agents would bring buyers. Bring buyers, yep. To Australia. listing selling agents. Generally those agents are, you know, the mediocre, the new agents, the agents that weren't able to get business themselves. So they would meet a buyer at an open house and then they would run that by around to 20 other properties.
And contact those selling agents and say, I've got a buyer and they want to buy your property. And they, it's called running buyers from property to property to property. Now, as listing agents and good listing agents won't want to deal with that agent because all they're doing, that buyer will come and see me anyway.
Yeah. And we would have to split the commission. Especially in today's
technology, everything's out there on the internet. It's, yeah. So it's.
kind of a, you know, it's a, it's a, again, it's, it's on a case by case basis, but, generally speaking, I wouldn't be conjuncting with other agents too much because I'd have a lot of buyers.
But if it was a hard property to sell, then I might have to get agents bringing their buyers. But, definitely with the buyers agents, it's sort of, we're not splitting commissions. They are getting paid their own
commission,
so we're happy to welcome them in. And we have like a good relationship with a number of, I've actually just had a missed call from a well known buyers agency on the Gold Coast, and he's got buyers, he just calls me up and says, Hey Brad, I've got this buyer, they're looking for A, B, C, D, have you got anything that meets that?
And I say, yeah, look, have a look at this. And we work together to do more deals. He's got happy clients that. He's finding those properties for, who are generally time poor, and we're happy to work with them because we're doing deals, we're finding, you know, buyers for our clients who are the sellers.
Look, I've got a hundred more questions to go through on, on buyers agents, but I think I will leave that for, we've got definitely a full episode there, but, look, before we, before we wrap up today, your final word on, on low ball offers.
Lowball offers, I would say, to a buyer, generally try and avoid them if you can because what can happen is, by presenting a lowball offer, it may hinder the process moving forward because, like that one I was telling you before, It was very difficult because the seller had a mental, I don't want to deal with this guy.
I don't want to deal with this guy. I don't care if he comes up a hundred thousand more And I
can get that. than what I want. He's out.
You know, so that can hurt you more in the process. You're better off coming in a little bit, you know, coming under the arse, but not low ball, as we say. And on the flip side to sellers, I would say, if you do get that low ball, Again, just take the emotion out of it.
Don't get too disgruntled. Definitely worthwhile counter offering back. And, just let your agent work through the process. And at the day, if it doesn't come together, it doesn't come together. And, you don't have to accept the offer.
Fantastic. All right. Well, look, that's it for today. A massive thanks to, to Brad for walking us through the art of navigating lowball offers and these tricky negotiations.
Look. Selling a home is, is really easy, but with the right mindset and approach, it can be a smoother ride. Don't forget to subscribe and like the Smart Real Estate Podcast and share with anyone who's thinking of selling or buying or just anyone who wants to keep up to date with what's happening in the market and getting great advice.
So if you are looking for expert advice, Brad and his team at Smart Real Estate are always here to help. So the website www. smartrealestate. com. au also follow on all the socials and of course, leave us a rating, a like, depending on what, you know, what, what. Platform you're listening on, they're all different, like, share, do all that.
But, look, thanks for joining us and, Brad, thanks for coming in and I look forward to, um, catching on, on the, on the next episode.
No worries. Thanks, Adam. See you next time. 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 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.