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, what my independence means in practice, 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.

Discernment isn’t a feature of this service; it is the service.

Independent is a word every buyer’s agent uses, so here is exactly what it means here. Nobody pays me to put a property, a builder or a professional in front of you. There are no referral fees in either direction: none paid, none received. When I introduce you to a solicitor, a building inspector or a quantity surveyor, it is because I would use them myself, and I earn nothing from the introduction. When another professional sends someone to me, they aren’t being paid either — they do it because they know their client will be looked after. That is the only kind of relationship worth having, and it sits in my engagement agreement rather than on a page like this one.

It is also why the business is small on purpose. 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 investors and not others. If you’re not one of them, 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

• Investors buying at a distance, interstate or in-state, who want someone trusted on the ground
• Investors who already understand the market and its cycles, know the outcome they’re after, and want someone to execute it properly rather than sell it back to them as a dream
• Professionals and business owners who value disciplined process over speed
• Investors weighing up a new-build dual occupancy, meaning two separate self-contained homes on the one block
• Investors building a single dwelling who want the same land, builder and contract rigour on a simpler product
• Investors who are done being sold to, and want a straight read on the deal

Probably not, if

• You’re after established property or a generalist buyers agency
• You want someone to project-manage your build
• You want fast, high-volume deals with a deadline attached. The projections behind those tend to be built on the best year the suburb ever had, and quietly leave out the vacancy, the holding costs and the exit
• You want financial, tax or legal advice from me. Plenty in this industry will give it to you without holding the licence for it. I won’t, so I coordinate your own professionals instead