🏡 Drawing on more than 40 years of combined Melbourne real estate experience, Lisa and Cate unpack the psychology behind buyer hesitation, media driven fear, confirmation bias and the danger of waiting for the "perfect" bargain. They reveal how quickly Melbourne property can turn, why buyers can misread quiet inspections and auctions, and why being market ready before sentiment changes could make all the difference.
🔑 Key Lessons for Listeners:
- Understand why media headlines can distort your perception of the Melbourne property market
- Learn how to distinguish a genuine market correction from the idea of a property “crash”
- Discover why waiting for property prices to fall further can mean missing the opportunity already in front of you
- Understand why current comparable sales matter more than yesterday’s market statistics
- Recognise the danger of assuming every property can be bought for another 10% below its asking price
- Learn how lowballing can backfire when other buyers are quietly circling the same property
- Understand why a quiet second inspection or passed-in auction does not necessarily mean nobody wants the property
- Identify confirmation bias and social proof, and how they can influence your buying decisions
- Understand why the best opportunities in a market correction can appear early, rather than continuing indefinitely
- Discover how falling vendor stock can eventually collide with pent-up buyer demand
- Learn why property markets can turn much faster than published statistics suggest
- Develop a strategy for getting “market ready” before buyer sentiment shifts
- Understand how future-tripping your fears can help turn uncertainty into a practical buying strategy
- Learn why having experienced guidance can help buyers separate genuine opportunities from fear-driven decisions
- Recognise why waiting for certainty could mean re-entering the market at exactly the same time as everyone else
[00:00:11] Melbourne will be hot throughout the day reaching a high of 38 degrees with a late change and possible thunder in the evening with a forecast low of 17 degrees. First time, second time, third and final time, it's solved!
[00:00:35] Hello Melbourne, I'm Lisa Parker and together with Cate Bakos we are bringing you a dose of our property market in detail. I'm Kate Bakos, Lisa and I are both buyer's agents who work on opposite sides of the Melbourne market and we've clocked up over 40 years between us in the property industry. Join us each fortnight to hear some exciting stories from our coalface, market trends and some juicy auction updates. This collaboration has been a long time coming, we hope you enjoy.
[00:01:06] Hello Melbourne and welcome to The Melbourne Property Hour. Lisa and I have a little treat in store for you today. We're actually talking about a client called Sally. Now obviously Sally's not a real client, we've made up this avatar Sally. Sally is a first time buyer but what we want to talk about is some of the challenges, the psychological and emotional challenges that a lot of buyers are facing, not just first time buyers.
[00:01:34] We're getting a lot of clients asking us all of the typical questions that people do when the media is talking down our market and when things are a little tougher out there. So without further ado, we're going to hand over to you to introduce Sally. Yes, well I think there's a lot of Sally's out there based on the phone calls that you and I are having with people and the conversations that are circulating online and in real life, IRL. IRL, love it.
[00:02:03] So Sally, she has actually been in the property market earlier this year. She saved $175,000 so she's got a nice healthy deposit. She had a pre-approval at the beginning of the year so she started looking for property and she'd done quite a few inspections, saw a few homes she liked. She attended some auctions to see what they're about and to see how they run and she was genuinely on her home buyer search. She lives at home with her parents.
[00:02:33] She's saving about $3,000 to $4,000 per month so she's adding to that deposit. So she's in a pretty comfortable position. She's happy at home and doesn't need to move out anytime soon. Sally was well into her property search when the media started talking about the property market pulling back. And I mean this was a pretty overt statement from the government that they wanted the property market to pull back and so the media has obviously taken that and run with it.
[00:03:03] And on top of that, Sally has her colleagues in the lunchroom when she does go into the office because she works from home a couple of days a week these days talking about the market crashing and she's also got Uncle Bob in her ear who has strongly advised her to wait because Uncle Bob's been around a long time. He lives in his own occupied home that he's lived in for 30 years and he is very certain that the market is going to fall by 20% to 30%
[00:03:31] because that's what he's read somewhere. And Uncle Bob has bought one property in his life so he's got a lot of experience. Absolutely. I mean he's been living in that house for 30 years so a lot of property experience. So, Kate, what do you think is going through Sally's mind right now? I mean she's decided to put her property search on hold. What sorts of things is she navigating in her mind? There's a bit of a bag of goodies here for Sally, the poor thing. She's living with her parents for starters.
[00:04:01] And so, even if they haven't contributed financially to this, there's a debt of gratitude and the problem with debts of gratitude is you tend to take their advice or follow their rationale because you don't want to offend them. You don't want to worry them. You also have a little bit of blind trust in them. So, if Uncle Bob is telling her mum or her dad that he's deeply worried about it and they're saying, well, you know, you can keep living here, keep your search on hold, there's already that willingness to just, you know,
[00:04:29] make the softer decision and not worry your family. So, that's the emotional bit. But if Sally's really thought about these threats and she thinks that they're genuine, which most people do, they're scared, she'll be wondering, well, is Uncle Bob right? You know, could this market fall 20% even if it falls 15% or 10%? If I wait, I'll be in front. You know, she's thinking about that. She's also wondering, you know, if she's out there and she buys something now
[00:04:58] and secures it, you know, she's not going to have the help of her family. They'll be a bit disappointed or scared about her doing this. So, is she going to upset them? And lastly, well, she's worried about the market falling further. And Lisa, I think we should talk about this because in our time as buyers agents, we've had in Melbourne, we've had about seven or eight corrections.
[00:05:23] And I don't like using the term downturn unless it really is a significant, you know, change of values over a period of time where it's not a blip. So, we should unpack that because I know all of the periods that we've had corrections and downturns and it really pays to look carefully at them and put them into context because a 20% drop in our property market is not something that we've had in our lifetime in our markets.
[00:05:53] No, it's not. If we're living in Ireland during the GFC or if we're in America during the GFC, that might have been different. But Australian property and legislation is very, very different. And I'm not saying that everyone's immune or anyone's immune, but 20% would be unprecedented.
[00:06:14] It certainly would, but what's not unprecedented is industry chatter or the headlines in newspaper and every day on the news, throwing these big numbers around. You know, we hear things like free fall, crash, market falling through the bottom, you know, all of those big words. And we see numbers like 20 and 30% thrown around a lot in the media. But let's look at the reality.
[00:06:44] Kate, we've got a lovely graph that we can refer to here. And somehow I think we can get this on our social media so people can have a look at it. If you head over to the Melbourne Property Hour, we'll pop that up on our feed. Well, I do want to chat about this. I love this chart and it's a core logic chart so everyone can have a squeeze. But if we cast our minds back, for those of us that are old enough to do so, to 1989 and 1990,
[00:07:12] for a lot of our listeners, their parents will have dealt with this era. They won't have necessarily been even alive, but probably not working through it. And I didn't work through it. I was in year nine, year 10 when this struck and my dad was in business. And it was very, very tough. It was the recession that we had to have, if anyone's heard that term, Paul Keating. And the dollar was floated. We had a horrible downturn and a lot of businesses struggled.
[00:07:38] Our highest interest rate, the variable rate was in the 17s. And I remember my dad locking in at 18.9 because he was worried that interest rates would go into the 20s. So, you know, that's unthinkable at the moment in this day and age. But even when we look at the downturn there, the depths of that downturn in terms of property values was minus 4.4%. Puts it in perspective, doesn't it? And that was an official recession? It was. It was.
[00:08:08] And that went for 17 months. So the depths of it was 4.4% down and the length of it was a pretty horrible almost year and a half. Yeah. Then if I look at all of the downturns that we've had, you know, from the dot-com crisis to the GFC to COVID, we've got a lot here to look at. But I'm looking at the worst one. It was down 8.4% and that lasted for eight months.
[00:08:38] That was our most recent one before what we're in now in 2022 to 2023 when we had consecutive interest rate rises after RBA had said that we wouldn't see any interest rate rises until probably 2026, which, you know, was a mistaken thing to say. And it just goes to show that no one can predict the future, but we had inflation repressures and our Reserve Bank decided to put up interest rates pretty aggressively.
[00:09:06] That at minus 8.4% was our toughest and shortest downturn in all of these downturns since the mid-1990s on my chart. So, what that's saying is we haven't even seen minus 10% across our national markets at any time in the last 30 years. And Kate, in the graph, it shows the recovery period.
[00:09:36] On average, after a downturn for each of those times, how long has it taken for the market to recover? Well, I haven't got an average figure here, but I'm looking at all of these. It looks like it's around 10 months. Some are as short as four months and the longest was 20 months, but most of them are hovering between eight and 10 months.
[00:09:55] That's a really interesting statistic because, and this does go into the psychology of buyer thinking and what we see on the ground, which we're hoping to unpack through sharing Sally's story today. But an average search for a Victorian homebuyer is 10 months. An average unaided. We're horrified if it takes 10 months. Yeah, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen.
[00:10:20] Yeah, I think our average does change depending on stock, but I think we've been averaging six weeks to seven weeks for quite a while. So, and it can happen as quickly as a week or two. So, like my longest is 12 months, but that was because it was a really particular brief. And I did say at the start buckling because the property that we're looking for, its frequency of raising its face is twice a year. And if we've got a 50% success rate, it's going to take us a year. Yeah.
[00:10:50] So 10 months. So it takes a whole recovery period for people to actually find a home. So that's an interesting thing to note. The other thing that I'm seeing online a lot is people actually saying, well, no, don't buy yet. Wait until property prices come down further. They haven't had time to adjust yet. And I really want to address this because that's, in my opinion, just simply not true.
[00:11:18] People think that the property market takes a very long time to respond. Whereas in our experience, the property market responds overnight, immediately. It doesn't take 12 months for the full effect of things. But I think people's perception who aren't in the market think that it takes a good six months to 12 months for the effects to take place.
[00:11:44] What actually happens is it takes six to 12 months for the statistics to start showing the data and the stats of what has actually happened. But in reality, right now, we can buy properties for 10% less than what we did the same property at the beginning of this year or late last year.
[00:12:07] And so that 10% drop, which is the drop that I'd always expect if we're going to have a market correction, I always think it's 10%. Absolutely fantastic properties or certain areas might only do about 5% or 6%. Really bad properties are going to do about 15%. But on average, it's a 10% drop and it does happen overnight.
[00:12:30] So for everybody who's thinking and if, you know, Sally's sitting there thinking I'm going to wait for properties to drop further, it's not going to happen. It's already happened. You just don't know it yet because the news isn't telling you. And this goes into another issue because we know in these times that when people like Sally go out into the marketplace and start looking for a property,
[00:12:57] they're going to be looking at the price guide of a property and that price guide may have already been adjusted to account for the drop and that vendor might be realistic. But in Sally's mind, she's thinking, no, no, I need to really get that price down to account for future drops. And this is where people get stuck not buying property because they haven't valued the property correctly in the first place.
[00:13:25] And because the media is telling them that property prices are going to drop, they're factoring in a drop, a further drop from the ask price. And then they're missing out on properties because they're completely off the mark. And that's one of the biggest mistakes that we see in this property market. And it doesn't mean to say that everybody should be going out paying ask price or within the range because it really depends on how realistic the vendor was in the first place
[00:13:50] and whether or not the agent has put the property on at the right market price. But you can't assume that it's higher than you should be paying and you shouldn't assume that it's also accurate either. I think that's a really good point. And I agree with you that that's one of the critical things that's stopping buyers by successfully in this market, not just first time buyers either.
[00:14:13] A lot of people are blindly assuming that they can get a further 10% off and they're not asking the right questions and understanding where the campaign's sat. I mean, we're very fortunate because we've got portals that we pay for with our data subscriptions that show us what the listing changes are. I can look at price drops that have been consecutive. And when we do the analysis, we look at recent comparable sales.
[00:14:37] And when I say recent, I mean compare things that are selling in this market, not stuff that was selling at the start of the year. That tells you where the value really sits now. And when you lowball, the worst thing that can happen in a market like this is you're not aware of the other buyers who are feeling a bit the same as you and floating about. You know, they're waiting for a signal to buy, but they might be circling property.
[00:15:03] Now let's, for argument's sake, say there's a property that's now on the market for $740 and originally they were hoping for like $820. They've had a few price drops. It's now on the market for $750. It's worth $740 and you go in and offer $700. The vendor's actually thinking, you know, it's not ideal. I don't really want $700, but I'll have a good conversation with my agent. I might be prepared to take $730.
[00:15:29] The agent comes back to you and says, look, they're not at $700, but they'll take $730. Now you already know that that's good buying for this property. It's priced right, but you're holding out for a bargain. And so the agent lets all of the other buyers know, hey, we had an offer of $700, but the vendors now, you know, they're probably prepared to do a deal at $730. And you turn around and there's a $730 offer on the table and you've missed out on it. That's what I'm seeing happening.
[00:15:53] There are very motivated vendors out there, but I think a lot of buyers are assuming that they're the only buyer that's willing to part with their cash. And it's not actually the case. It's a really difficult market and people are tentative and they're nervous, but there are buyers out there and buyers who recognize when it's a fair deal. They're the ones that snap it up quickly because the vendor is screaming at the agent saying, well, just get me an offer. Get me a reasonable offer. I really need to sell.
[00:16:18] Yeah, well, I'm actually in that situation myself right now where I'm looking at a Renault flip for myself and I want to buy it for $485 because that's where the profitability makes sense for me to actually do a deal. I don't think I'll get it for $485, but what's going to happen is that after my $485 is likely rejected, they'll put it on for $495.
[00:16:47] They'll get a ton of interest because right now they've got nobody. So if I came in and paid $500 today, I'd get the property and it will be a bargain. It would be a bargain for somebody not looking to flip the property. I want to get it for $485 so that my profitability works well. And if I pay $500, it's becoming a riskier deal. It's not as good deal for me. So it will go on at $495. It will get a ton of interest or probably sell for $520. So that's a real life situation that I'm in.
[00:17:16] And if I was a home buyer, I'd be moving on that property immediately at $500 and I'd be stopping it, getting it going to market. Like I'd be stopping the agent from lowering that price to $495 basically. Yes. I love it. Well, that's the question for people when they've got an opportunity, recognising when it's a good opportunity and recognising when it's a bad opportunity. All of that can be worked out with a bit of homework, but you've also got to have confidence.
[00:17:44] So I guess the other thing that would be happening for Sally is that she's kind of keeping a little bit of an eye on the property market and she might be going to some inspections. Now, if she's going to a second or third inspection, she's likely walking in and nobody else is there. So her perception will be that there are no other buyers. Whereas in reality, that first open for inspection probably had 20 groups through.
[00:18:12] But she's missed seeing that because she's gone through on a second or a third inspection because she's not really serious about buying right now. And so she didn't bother racing out to see it the minute it hit the market. And then she might hang around when it goes to auction. She might show up to the auction and she watches the property pass in. What do you think Sally's thinking at this moment?
[00:18:35] Well, there's a bit of confirmation bias going on there because the voice in her mind to herself is saying, see, no one else wants it. So there's no other buyers. That's the first confirmation bias. The other one is social proof. She's standing at auction, no one's bid. So all of a sudden, she's not just saying no one else is here. She's saying what's wrong with the property. Might be the wrong price. It might be that there's something, you know, sinister about it. Social proof can be really damaging.
[00:19:03] And the challenge for Sally is she's a first home buyer. So she's looking at properties that probably attract other first home buyers. So her cohort are jittery. If she was going along and having a look at a four bedroom family home and gauging how many people walk through the door and what sort of bidding is going on and where the offers are pre-auction, she'd have a very, very different take on the market because that stratification really kicks into gear between first home buyers and upgraders when the market has a downturn.
[00:19:32] And the reason for that is first home buyers are notoriously nervous. So Sally's in an echo chamber that's just her and her cohort, and she's also applying social proof. We'd love to hear how some of our tips are helping you on your property journey. If you'd like to get in touch with us, jump onto our website, themelbournepropertyhour.com.au. You can either leave us a written message or you can record it as a message.
[00:20:02] Let us know what you'd like to hear more of and tell us a little bit about some of your successes. If you're enjoying the show, please tell your friends and click the follow button on your preferred podcast platform. What else do you think Sally might be thinking as she's sitting there wondering when she should jump back in the market? Well, she could be thinking, I need to wait for six months and watch this get worse. Or she could be thinking, well, no one bid,
[00:20:31] so I'll offer 10% less than what the agent passed the property in for. And that can be dangerous because typically agents pass properties in for a figure that's well under the actual reserve. They don't usually run it up on vendor bids all the way to the vendor's reserve. So they might have passed this property in at 690 and the vendor wants 750. So on Monday morning, it's on one of the portals advertised as a private sale for 760.
[00:21:01] That's how it works. So there's some of the mistakes that I think Sally could be making. What about you, Lisa? What do you think? Well, I think with all the chatter that's going on, I think Sally's probably thinking that it's a ghost town and nobody's actually transacting. She's not seeing it happen at auction. And if she's going through inspections on the second or third inspection and there's nobody else there, or there's only one or two other people there, she's probably thinking nothing's happening and that vendors are going to become really desperate
[00:21:31] and that they're going to start dumping their properties at insane prices. Now, I don't know what, you know, when a buyer's sitting there waiting and they perceive that the market is in freefall because that is the perception because the media is alluding to that or trying to sensationalise it and make people think it's in freefall because they sell news based on alarming emotion. I don't know if buyers sit there and think,
[00:22:00] well, what does a bargain look like for me? What does it actually look like? Because I know that when we help buyers during a downturn, we're extremely effective. We push it extremely hard and we really have the upper hand in our negotiations. We can get some great deals. But I know that sometimes buyers still don't think it was bargain enough because they haven't seen the price go from, say, for example,
[00:22:29] $1 million to $600,000 because that in their mind, I think that's what buyers are thinking. I think that's the kind of... I'm certainly in the interstate ones. Don't you think, like, what is the gap? What is the bargain? What's a good gap? What do you think the bargain is that people think? Say, for example, it's a $700,000 property. It's worth $700,000. You and I know it's worth $700,000. It's on for $680,000 to $750,000.
[00:22:54] What's the bargain that would make a nervous homebuyer decide to move forward because they're like, oh, yeah, I've got the bargain of a century? How low does that property have to go? Well, it depends on how opportunistic they are. You know, if they're motivated and they need a roof over their head, probably 5% is a bargain. If they're living at home and Uncle Bob saying that the market's going to drop 20%, they probably won't do anything until I see it eclipse a 10% discount, which they'll be waiting a long time.
[00:23:23] I want to step back to when bad news breaks or a market, you know, fluctuates or gets a significant change, whether it be a pandemic, a GFC, a legislative change around negative gearing, whatever it is, when we have that announcement or that event take place, and it usually is an event and quite often it's government-led, you know, it's legislative change that can create market movement. So when we have a shock to our market,
[00:23:51] typically those really good bargains, you know, the juicy 10%ers, for me, happen in that first three or four weeks. And the reason I say that is they're the vendors that have unfortunately got stuck in that situation, that, you know, they've got caught in that spider web. They have to sell. They're on the market. They have to sell. And you'll see a bunch of vendors during those times pull their property off the market because they're the ones that don't have to sell. They might've been planning an upgrade.
[00:24:19] Let's get our house sold first and then we'll upgrade. And then suddenly they think, hell no, this is awful. I'm taking my property off the market. But you've got the vendors who've bought something or have committed to whatever. They have to sell. And so they're caught up in it and they're desperate. They're very motivated. They will meet the market. You tend to find that happens in the first three or four weeks because an auction campaign lasts three to four weeks. And going forward, the only vendors that come on the market
[00:24:49] after that when things are really tricky are again, the vendors that have to sell. But you see far fewer of them. And if you look at an awkward period and push it out two months after the event, you'll see that stock levels are far lower as well because vendors are sitting on their hands saying, I don't really want to sell in this market. I'll wait until it's a bit healthier. So Sally has to recognise that, that all of these bargains, they won't just keep going on forever because vendors have choice. Vendors won't make decisions
[00:25:18] to do something that will trigger them needing to sell if they feel that the market conditions are horrendous. Well, I was actually just about to touch on that too because I think it's really something that buyers miss but they don't understand that if they're hearing all the negative news then potential vendors are as well. And people don't like to sell when they perceive that the market isn't good. They love selling when the market's thriving and doing well because they know they can extend
[00:25:46] their sale prices out and get a great result. Whereas in these market conditions, people, like you said, if they don't have an absolute reason, like for example, divorce or moving interstate, things like that, they're simply not going to sell. And so stock on the market does retract significantly. And it's really interesting because if you think about in a normal market where everything's balanced and you think about how things work, you have say,
[00:26:16] say for example, you'll have 20 new buyers hit the market every month. For example, in a particular pocket of Melbourne and they'll come to the market, they'll commence their search. And then every month we have, you know, 20 more people come in and you've got circa 20 listings. And so we have listings come in, we've got the new buyers come in. It hits homeostasis. Everything's just humming along very nicely. There's not a lack of stock. There's not a lack of buyers. Everything's just harmonious. It's wonderful.
[00:26:46] I love those market conditions. And then you hit times like this and you have buyers sitting on the sidelines waiting for amazing deals to come by. And then you've got vendors who go, well, I'm not selling at that price. So I'm just not going to sell. And so all of a sudden, those 20 homes stop coming to market every month. Now, the 20 buyers that would have come to the market, they're still preparing to come to the market. They're just not prepared to do anything. And so on the sidelines,
[00:27:16] six months passes. We've got six months worth of buyers built up. So we've got, what have we got? 120 buyers now sitting on the sidelines waiting to enter the market. Every month we have less and less stock coming to market. And so we end up with, once everybody starts to feel certain that the market has dropped enough for them, then they're all going time and initially
[00:27:46] there's going to be a lack of stock because it's going to take a little while for vendors to see that there's a lot more buyers around. It's going to take a while for selling agents to convince them that it's a good time to come to market because we've got a lot of activity now. That property is going to start coming to market but those buyers, those 120 buyers are going to be competing for 20 homes. That's what's going to happen. And it happens every single cycle without fail and it doesn't matter. We can sit here all day, every day and explain to people
[00:28:15] what we see in the market over the last 25 years of us both doing this but people are still going to do what they're going to do. So they're all going to enter the market at the same time and then prices are going to start moving because there's suddenly a lot more demand but there's still an undersupply of properties because vendors aren't convinced yet. And that's how the cycle perpetuates and you and I text each other at the various stages through the cycle. You know, when the buyers are back and the vendors are still thinking
[00:28:44] the market's been terrible so the vendors are still willing to accept, you know, a price that they've got their heads around and then all the buyers are competing and vendors start seeing a few really good auction results and they start seeing a recovering market and then all of a sudden the vendors get really greedy and then agents don't know how they can have a grip on their vendor. It's just such a self-perpetuating cycle, isn't it? So if Sally was to come to you, Sally's circumstances have changed, she's needing some help now. What would your advice
[00:29:14] to Sally be right now if she rang and said I don't know whether to wait until spring or start looking now or wait until early next year? What would you advise Sally? I would like to sit down with Sally and talk through previous market cycles, the facts as we understand them, the statistics and also talk about the media and the role that fear can play and the adverse effects that that can have on people.
[00:29:44] I mean a lot of my Sally's, they're referring to ChatGPT and they're getting on forums so they're getting advice either from, you know, Claude or Chat or Siri or they're looking at, you know, doomsayer predictions and some of those echo chambers where people are negative about property investing. I mean it's very easy to find fearful information when you're feeling fearful. If you look for it hard enough it's there, you don't need to look very hard at all.
[00:30:14] So the biggest challenge for Sally is separating the stuff that she's reading in an echo chamber from actual data and it's important for us to always talk about the good and the bad and the patterns that we see, the opportunities that can come about but if Sally is serious about buying a property she's got to think about what her timing looks like and how important it is to get the right property and also how important it is to make sure that she doesn't
[00:30:43] get caught up in the next upswing because none of us can predict when that day is. You said earlier that property markets turn really quickly. They do. They're very, very responsive. By the time you're reading about it it's already happened. We both know that and I'm sure that you and I could look in the rear view mirror. Let's cast our mind back to COVID. I remember picking the week where it went from doom and gloom to oh my gosh this is a hockey stick and it's about to take off. I remember the week that that happened and I wrote this blog
[00:31:13] and Pete Wajent put it on Twitter and you know a hundred people thought I was insane but I'm in the trenches you're in the trenches we can feel when the market turns. Yeah it's it's very evident and sales agents immediately jump on the phone with us and say what's going on like our phones have been running off the hooks and we're like yeah our inquiries exploded overnight. That's how responsive it is and I think we've spoken before about the different levers and I think I may have shared in one of our previous podcasts
[00:31:42] or I've done it on a reel or something so I'll say it again in case it was a reel and not the podcast that I went to a luncheon with a local politician to talk about I think it was the rental reforms it was to talk about something to do with property and it was about seven or eight years ago and we were all very stressed and concerned about the government decisions as many of us are right now as well and I asked the question I said you know all of the industry is saying this we're concerned
[00:32:12] you're consulting with industry we're telling you it's a bad idea aren't you concerned about the ramifications of x y and z and I can't remember the circumstances and he said no we're not because we have several different levers that we can pull at any time to switch the property market on or off overnight we can stimulate it and we can shut it down by pressing one lever and we've got many levers and that really
[00:32:41] changed my perspective on property markets and property cycles it made me realize that none of us have any control and at any time the government can switch a switch on or off to get the effect that they're trying to achieve and so over the next couple of months as the changes continue to roll out and the property market does what it's going to do there's every chance that the government
[00:33:11] can switch another lever which may stimulate things again and when that happens everything's going to take off very very quickly just with that one switch that we don't know is coming we can't predict it it's a government decision and once it happens everything unfolds very quickly yeah couldn't have said it better do you remember you would have been working in the industry in 2009 I was and in
[00:33:40] response to the GFC our government did a lot of things to stimulate the market we had at the time interest rates dropped to emergency levels which were nothing on COVID but I remember thinking oh my gosh you can get a variable rate under 5% let's go and we saw boosts and grants and first home buyers were so very active it took a while to shake them because they're all a bit
[00:34:35] she's afraid of whatever thing she's afraid of we're going to future trip and pretend it's happened and then what we're going to do is create a strategy for overcoming that thing and we're going to talk about the timing and
[00:35:05] all of the buyers all decide now is a good time to buy and they all come into the market at the same time and they do it's the sentiment shifts and everybody moves they make the same move at the same
[00:35:35] factor here is with the help of somebody who has lived through these market cycles many times over is the difference because Sally on her own is probably not going to get herself out of the fearful thinking and so she DIYs her property search she will jump back into the market the same time everybody else is because fear is going to hold her back yep that's right and social proof will push her back in yep wow so that's Sally we've got a lot of Sally's out there at the moment
[00:36:05] so that kind of gives you a bit of an insight as to how people are thinking about the current market conditions and the opportunities that there are for people to move separate to the crowd if they want to so I think that wraps up the session quite nicely today unless you've got something else as soon as we masterminded the Sally avatar I knew we'd have a really good chat because we've both
[00:36:35] got Sally's we're both talking to a lot of Sally's right now so yeah all right well good luck Sally's all of our Sally's out there we wish you the best start preparing get yourself into the market get market ready obviously if you want help both Kate and I are here to help and our podcast isn't about spruiking our services you know that we're available for those who want us but there are times in the market where I think it's a
[00:37:14] good questions and have some real people not avatars that we can solve some problems for thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Melbourne property hour we hope you've enjoyed the show and we look forward to you joining us next time