Working with me

What it is actually like, before you commit to anything.

Fees and process are easy to publish. What is harder to find out, before you have already committed, is how someone actually works with you.

So: how much of the detail you see, what happens when something doesn’t make sense to you, how I am paid, and what I will and won’t tell you.

People arrive here from quite different starting points. Some are buying interstate and want someone standing where they can’t. Some already own a block and don’t know whether it should be built on, subdivided, or left alone. Some are buying their first home and have been handed a package they have no way of checking. And some arrive certain they want a dual occupancy and leave with something that suits them considerably better.

How much of it you want to see is entirely up to you. Some clients want to understand every planning control and every line of the feasibility, and finish knowing how to read a block themselves. Others have a job that already takes everything they have, and want the work done and only the decisions that matter brought to them. Neither is more sophisticated than the other, and I have never thought less of anyone for either.

Property has a vocabulary built by people who use it every day, and it can make capable people feel out of their depth. If something I say doesn’t land, tell me and I’ll explain it a different way. Nobody has ever looked foolish to me for asking a question. In my experience it is the people who nodded who got hurt.

The judgement is the thing you’re paying for.

How I am paid, exactly. I never take commissions, rebates or kickbacks from builders or developers selling to my clients. On every purchase, I’m paid by the client I act for. That sits in my engagement agreement rather than on a page like this one. When I introduce you to a solicitor, a building inspector or a quantity surveyor, it is because I would use them myself. If any payment is ever connected to an introduction, you are told in writing before you go ahead.

It is also why I will always be personally involved with every client. The business may grow to a small team one day, but the personal piece is the heart of it: someone in your corner from the first question to the keys, and for years after. I don’t want it measured by how many properties I can put in front of you. I want it measured by the quality of the decisions that make it through the process. I’m also one of relatively few women working independently in this field.

So I won’t always tell you what you want to hear. I’ll tell you what I can substantiate, what I think is uncertain, and what would concern me if it were my money. My job isn’t to convince you to buy. It is to get underneath the opportunity far enough that when you decide, you know exactly why you are saying yes, and if the answer is no, that you know that just as clearly.

If you want the mechanics, the four stages, what each one costs and what it produces, that is how it works. If you want to know why any of this exists, that is the longer story.

Who this is for.

This work only goes this deep because the focus is this narrow, which does mean it fits some situations and not others. If yours isn’t one, you’ll hear it from me in the first conversation, before you’ve spent a cent.

And the harder version of that question, which is the one worth asking: yes, it includes telling you the whole strategy is wrong for you. If the honest read on your position is that you should buy an established house instead, pay down debt, sell something you already hold, or do nothing for two years, I will say so, knowing it ends the engagement. A specialist who can only ever recommend their own specialty isn’t a specialist. What I focus on →

Likely a fit

• Buying from a distance, interstate or in-state, and wanting someone trusted on the ground
• Building your first investment property and wanting it done right the first time
• Already own a home or a block and unsure what the next move should be, or whether there should be one
• Professionals and business owners who value disciplined process over speed
• Weighing up a new-build dual occupancy, meaning two separate self-contained homes on the one block
• Building a single home and wanting the same land, builder and contract rigour on a simpler product
• Buying an established home or investment and wanting it run end to end: strategy, search, due diligence, negotiation and settlement
• Done being sold to, and wanting a straight read on the deal

Probably not, if

• You want a high-volume agency measured on how many properties it can put in front of you
• You want someone to project-manage your build
• You want fast, high-volume deals with a deadline attached
• You want financial, tax or legal advice from me. That advice belongs to the professionals licensed to give it, so I coordinate your own instead