Why engage JTP Buyers Advocate as your Buyer Agent?
JTP Buyers Advocate offers a seamless and stress-free experience when it comes to buying property. With our in-depth market knowledge and commitment to help you achieve your goals, we ensure that every step is handled with professionalism and expertise.
As your buyers agent, we support you from initial research to final negotiations We are here to support you in making informed decisions that align with your vision for the perfect property.
Buyer's Advocacy
Our team of experienced advocates understands the property market trends and can provide valuable insights to help you make informed decisions. Whether you are a first-time buyer or a seasoned investor, we are dedicated to ensuring that your property purchase aligns with your goals and budget. By entrusting us with your property search, you can save time, reduce stress, and increase your chances of securing the perfect property for your needs.
Strategy / Negotiations
When it comes to negotiations, our team leverages years of experience and market knowledge to ensure you get the best deal possible. We understand the intricacies of real estate transactions and use this insight to your advantage. By carefully analysing market trends and property values, we can confidently guide you through the negotiation process, making sure your interests are protected every step of the way.
Representation
Our team is dedicated to ensuring that you find the perfect property that aligns with your goals and preferences. We take the time to understand your needs and work tirelessly to represent your interests and secure the best deals for you. With our commitment to excellence and personalised service, you can trust us to help you navigate the complexities of the real estate market from inspection through to negotiations with your best interests at heart.
We take the stress and emotions out of your
Property Journey
FINDING THE PROPERTY
The process to find, assess and secure your next property is done through a number of stages. These are broken up into Your Needs, Search, Assess and Negotiate. Whether you are an owner occupier or an investor we can start of by discussing what your goals are, what type of property you want to buy and for what purpose are you buying. We are simply looking for a starting point at our first no obligation meeting. Before we begin trawling the internet and ringing all the local agents, we go back and look at sold data over previous months to help narrow down what can and will fit into your budget. Searching is not just looking up a property online and sending it to you. We need to calculate roughly what it will sell for. The selling agent isn’t going to give us any accurate information on price. We keep track of this on a client worksheet. Assessment takes both expertise and experience. It is not simply working out whether we can afford the property but also estimate cost of any changes. This can be done by simple estimate or if it is more complicated we can organise pest and or building inspections. Our property report is easy to read and extremely thorough. Negotiation is an art form. Only about 10% of properties throughout Australia will finish under the hammer at an auction. The vast majority of properties are sold by private treaty negotiation, including before an auction or after a pass in. Our advocates will out negotiate you every day of the week. THIS IS WHAT WE DO EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK! And how do you think you would fare at an auction with 100 people standing around waiting to hear you bid. How is your public speaking of late? Many people who bid for themselves at auction either get totally carried away and over pay or alternatively cannot find their voice at the right time. We have acted for clients at thousands of auctions.
Finding properties on the Internet is simple. Understanding “Agent Speak” is not. Spending all your time looking at the wrong properties means you can miss out on the right ones. There are also plenty of properties that first appear on the net as “SOLD”. Have you ever wondered who buys these ones? Before looking on the net or asking any agents we look at “SOLD DATA” In the first 2 days of signing on with our team, we will do a search of your initial needs by looking backwards for around 3 months at what has SOLD that would suit your requirements. Unfortunately in Australia almost all Real Estate Agents are extremely cagey about giving accurate information regarding what price they will sell the property for. So if we start looking at what is on the market we may find we are looking at properties that will eventually sell well above our budget. We can alleviate this issue by looking back at what other people have actually paid for what we are looking for. We can also use this refining process to funnel down on different locations and make sure we are not looking in areas that we have no hope of purchasing in.
Once we understand what you need, we coordinate our searches via the major Internet portals as well as directly with the selling agents in the areas we are targeting. When you are searching for a home, townhouse or apartment in a single area, you will face a list of 100+ properties. Information overload! What you need is somebody to go through that list and then present you with the few places that meet YOUR NEEDS. That way, your efforts and time can be used to consider only the good properties. We talk to you about the properties you want to see, not the properties an agent wants to sell you. We are relentless. Whether you are at work, away on holidays or just taking a break, we continue our search for the best properties for you. We keep track of this via our online worksheet. You can see what we are looking at and our comments. It allows you to easily comment on the property as well. But do not worry about looking at our worksheet every day. We will call or email you when we find suitable properties that need your input or inspection.
Do all properties we buy appear on the Internet? No. Many don’t, especially at the upper end of the scale. Why is that? A typical off market transaction can occur as follows: An overseas landlord gets a phone call from their property manager who explains that their tenant is moving out. The Property Manager asks if they should re-let the property for them. The Owner responds by saying if you can get $500,000 for the property then sell it, otherwise lease it out again. This sets off a chain of events back at the Real Estate office whereby the Property Manager runs out one door and the Sales Manager runs out another – First one to find a client wins the commission. The Sales Manager rings people like me – They cannot set up an auction campaign – by the time they did, the Property Manager would already have a new tenant. Other types of “off-market” transactions are: In some instances, the seller simply wants privacy from prying neighbours, friends, relatives and the public at large. The one common denominator is that they want a “quiet sale”. A vendor may choose an off-market approach to maximise the price and/or chances of a sale. In other words, the seller feels that a whisper campaign with an “isolated buyer” will result in a much better price than say, a public auction campaign. We may buy the property before the selling agent has had time to put together the description and photos, set the auction date, print brochures and publicly advertise it. Our excellent rapport with selling agents means we receive “heads up” notice of properties coming onto the market well before the general public will see them.
ASSESSING THE VALUE
Paying the “RIGHT” price should be your most important aim. To do this, you must have current sales data, not the outdated data anyone can buy online. You need to know what sold last week, not last year. You need to know what is really a comparable. What date did it sell, who sold it, what is the land size, the accommodation and garaging, what is the façade (age of dwelling) and what was the floor plan like. These are the questions to ask and responses need to be analysed in order to work out whether something is comparable. As a Licensed Real Estate Agency, we have access to up to date databases. As a Buyer Advocacy we can work out what is truly comparable and what is not. You also need to understand the market, what the vendor will be thinking, what the agent wants, what other people are likely to pay etc. The list goes on and on.
If we like the property enough to buy it we go over the property value report. Our property report covers all the main thought processes that go into deciding whether a property would be a good buy or not. We look at where it is, what it is, the land size, the suitability to matching Your Needs and also look at all the pros and cons of the actual building and floor plan. We then look at what it is worth and what our competition is likely to pay.
Most of us will have a strict budget when it comes to purchasing a property. Sometimes this is specified by what a bank will lend you and sometimes by the cash we have in our bank. It is a standard term that a vendor will require a 10% deposit upon signing a contract with the balance payable at settlement. You need to make sure you have this deposit available to you even if you are borrowing all the finds from the bank. The “WHAT” “WHERE” and “PRIORITY” can all be set by a budget limit, or of course the budget can be set by the “WHAT” “WHERE” and “PRIORITY”. There is a certain Grade 2 maths equation that I usually bring up with all my clients. The value of the Land (size and location) + the value of the house = the dollars you must pay. In maths we can adjust this equation but it must remain balanced. If we want more valuable land by way of size or where it is and we cannot change the dollars then we must reduce the value of the house. If we want a better house then we need to reduce the land size or find a cheaper location. If we want bigger land in a better location with a better house then the dollars must rise. Whilst this is very simple it is forgotten by nearly every home buyer! We are experts in showing you what you can purchase and where you can get it. We are not here to make decisions for you, we are here to give you the information and the recommendations so you can make informed decisions.
This seems like a very easy question to answer but it is usually the hardest. Where is the quintessential question that is dependent on what you want, how much your budget is and when you want to be able to buy your new property. In a perfect world we would like to name the street we wish to live in, the type and style of home and also be able to find three of them so we can pick one. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! When choosing the geographical area to look in you need to take into account a number of things. Where do you work How do you get to work Where does your family live Where do your friends live Where will the children go to school Do you have a hobby you need to get to every weekend Does the area have the type and style of home that you are after Can we purchase in this area within the budget limits Is there enough turnover in the area to meet you time requirements Quite frequently our clients will adjust their location requirements simply because they didn’t know you couldn’t get a certain type of property in the area. Or that the budget would not stretch far enough in certain locations. Part of our job is to open your eyes to what is possible and probable just as much as letting you know what is not possible or plausible.
What type of home are you after. Start with the basics: How many bedrooms do you have to have? How many bathrooms do you HAVE to have and How many do you want? What level of quality are you looking for? Will you improve the quality of the property to meet your needs? Do you need Garage for storage or for a car? Is a carport sufficient? Just off street parking? Are you looking for specific features? Victorian? Edwardian? Californian Bungalow? Are these types of properties available within your search area? These are just some of the questions that will get answered throughout the search process. Very few people would be able to answer all of these questions at the first meeting.
NEGOTIATING THE PURCHASE
Do you know what all of these selling options are? Do you know what rights you have? How many auctions have you participated in and how many pass in negotiations have you closed? Negotiation begins from the moment we come into contact with the agent. We are usually fishing for information the moment we decide the property “may” be of interest to our client. However the serious negotiation begins after the property discussion and a decision is made by our client to attempt to buy the property. We need to have an idea of what we are happy to pay. We need to calculate what our competition is likely to pay and we need to estimate what both the vendor and the agent is trying to achieve (these can be different) and all the numbers are rarely the same. Terms: most people forget that when buying a property it is the best “deal” not the best “price” that a vendor will take. Negotiation of terms can be a good way to close a deal. See our “how to” series article settlement for more info. The walk away point for our client will usually be a mixture of our property report recommendation mixed with their emotional attachment to the property. How much the vendor “wants” seems like a stupid question (it is the quintessential question that once it is answered you have finished the negotiation) The vendor rarely gets what they want. It is simply a starting point. People forget the obvious question to the agent: What do you think it is worth? You would be surprised how many agents can be more honest than you would expect. We need to discuss whether the property requires a pest inspection or a building inspection. Have the contracts of sale been checked by a solicitor. If we place an offer will we have a three day cooling off period or not. If we make a conditional offer; how will it affect the vendors’ thoughts? Once we have all the information we require we use our extensive experience to secure the property at the best possible price. WE NEGOTIATE PROPERTIES ON A DAILY BASIS! SO DOES THE AGENT YOU ARE ABOUT TO NEGOTIATE WITH! THIS IS WHERE WE EARN YOUR SAVINGS!!
What are our engagement & buyer agent fees?
We are unique in that we offer a great range of services to our clients. As such we tailor our packages based on the services that each clients needs. Pricing for services is discussed in the consultation.
For those who are looking solely for a buyers agent we do offer some standard terms, as per below.
Buyer’s Agent Engagement Fee
JTP Buyers Advocate has a once off engagement fee which is payable at the commencement of services. The engagement fee includes:
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Access to our local research, knowledge base, and list of property listings and opportunities.
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Unlimited phone and email support with our team.
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A commencement meeting with you to develop your personal property brief, research, and sourcing of properties to match your brief and a property proposal showcasing properties to meet the brief updated throughout the agreement period.
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Continuous updates and property information for the period of agreement, or until you find your investment or dream property.
To find out more about engagement get in touch with our team.
Buyer’s Agent Success Fee
When a property meets the brief, under your instruction we will commence negotiations on your behalf. The negotiation phase:
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We will manage the negotiations between the seller, seller’s agent, and client.
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We liaise with selling agents and legal reps to make sure you are fully supported all the way through to settlement.
A buyer’s agent success fee is payable, on the successful negotiation of your property. This fee is in addition to the initial engagement fee. This fee can be a set fee or a percentage of the purcahse/sale price of the property.