Chris Skurrie from C&M Property Partners joins us in the Soho Carpool hot seat talking about his investment journey and how it helps him as a buyers agent.
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Here’s the transcript of the video:
Chris Skurrie, thanks for joining the Carpool series with Soho. Welcome mate! Thanks mate. Thanks for inviting us. You're also a property investor. So you've been investing in real estate since 19-20? Yes, since the age of 19. So I guess you kind of use a lot of the learnings that you've had over the last 18-19 years and you, I guess, now kind of educate buyers on what to do or not to do. And probably leveraging a lot of the mistakes that you might have made and kind of helping people buy. But yeah, maybe tell me a bit about your property investing journey. Yeah, so as you said I first built my first property at the age of 19 years of age which is in Geelong in a regional town and has great benefits from that sort of you know, about 12 years ago, 13 years ago, built my own property. And that sort of going, you know purchased and built that for about $150,000 and then recently sold that a couple of years ago for about $540,000 So had some good gains from that one. Just about knowing, you know, the in-between sort of Geelong and Melbourne market, but I guess the important thing that I can really…a few tips from my journey is that having a really good first foundation platform of, you know, not going to the market and buying, you know, not heaps of property, you know, you hear a lot of these things about sort of, you know, buy 10 properties in 10 years is the way to go. Yeah. But, you know, it's also about having a balance and minimising that risk as well. So some of the things that I consider is, you know, first of all, get that base property down pat, whether it’s your first home or looking at you know, your second, sort of, investment property, looking at that balance of good growth in the area and a good yield that can cover the costs. The second tip that I would suggest is if you’re moving on to your second or third properties and looking at properties that really have the opportunity to scale up and what I mean by that is, is looking at opportunities to add a granny flat, looking at opportunities to sort of, you know, renovate the property and get greater value within your property and get capital gains in there as well. Yeah, gotcha. Any mistakes that you've made along the way? Yeah, so we’ve purchased property previously where you think you're going in there, you know, ist’ a bit of an emotional feel. And you don't sort of tend to look at every aspect of the property and one property that we bought a few years ago looked great, had the granny flat of the back, dual income and we later found out years down the track that, you know had lots of work to be done. So, yeah, it's really important you do your due diligence around the property that you're looking at and real estate agents will always say the benefits but sometimes you don't see the behind-the-scenes sort of cracks in the property that you might even miss yourself. Yeah, gotcha. Just touching on purchases. So you’re a buyers agent, so you represent buyers and you help them buy property which is different to a real estate agent because a real estate agent, they help the seller. But yeah, I guess what are some of the benefits of using a buyers agent? Okay. Yeah, so I guess buyers agents are a relatively new concept in Australia. So people are sort of so used to going to a real estate agent to depend on them for information. And I guess the benefits of having a buyers agent is they’ll do all the research for you, theyook at all the comparative data, they have the local, on-the-ground knowledge. So they're going in and sort of really looking at, you know, what is the streets…particular streets in particular areas are the best areas to look at? The other benefits I guess of a buyers agent is to really save people time and money. Everyone's time-poor these days with their jobs so, you know, doing all that research and presenting options to a buyer is really important whereas a real estate agent tends to focus on their own stock. A buyers agent tends to have a lot of relationships with many agents and quite often get information about deals that don't even come on the market. Yeah, gotcha. So I guess there’s a couple of things there. One is time thing. So instead of a buyer turning up every weekend for six months and kind of wasting the whole weekend. You can definitely kind of speed up the process, but then there's the..is it off-market properties? Yeah, so there’s pre-market. So the pre-market properties that where you know, properties are about to go market. And there's also off-market properties where the vendor hasn’t yet, you know, even, sort of, gone ahead with having contact with an agent yet. Gotcha and I guess before even someone would even decide on using a buyers agent. They would speak to you first and you would kind of see if it's a good fit between them and yourself as a buyers agent. Yeah, look, you know, a buyers agent might not be for everybody. But certainly I think if you are a new buyer, a new first home buyer and if you've never bought before, there's a good benefit in making sure that you have good understanding of what you're buying is actually the true value of the property. But also as an investor, there's some real benefits in using a buyers agent because you know, if you're investing in an unfamiliar area, you know, you might be actually buying the wrong properties. So it's really, really important that you’re sure about that. Yeah, you want the local knowledge, don’t you? You wnat the guys on the ground. I mean you've grown up in Newcastle haven’t you? So you kind of know all the streets in and out. So I'm born and bred actually in Victoria. In Geelong, which is another sort of regional area, which is booming at the moment. But I've lived in Newcastle for last sort of 18 years so I have really good knowledge around the area as well. Gotcha. Chris, contact details. How do I get contact with you if I'm watching this video and want to find out more? Yeah, sure. You can contact me through my website at candmpropertypartners.com.au I'm also on Facebook under Chris Skurrie and my mobile number is 0431 973 395 Too easy. Chris Skurrie, thanks for joining the Carpool series with Soho. Cheers mate.
