Luke and Sophie approached us as first-time investors looking to put their money into property rather than leave it sitting. Based in Sydney’s north-western fringe, they both work full time and had been searching for the better part of a year. But the search had stalled. They were looking Australia-wide, which sounded like keeping their options open but in practice meant nowhere in particular. Queensland one week, regional New South Wales the next. They had finance pre-approved with Westpac and a clear budget of around $1 million, but no framework for deciding whether any given property was actually worth buying. After twelve months of weekend scrolling, they had looked at hundreds of listings and bought nothing. They needed someone to narrow the field and tell them why.
We started by shrinking the map. In the strategy session, we worked through the numbers on a purchase around the $1 million mark and made the case for the Newcastle to Maitland corridor.
From there the brief got specific. A three to four bedroom freestanding house on at least 450 square metres. No flood zone, no bushfire zone, no main roads, no pool. Luke added two of his own: no retaining walls and no pump-out sewer, because he knew what he did not want to inherit as a landlord.
Over the search, we assessed 208 properties across 19 suburbs and dealt with more than seventy agencies in the corridor. One of the shortlisted homes at Kotara South went to auction in early May. We ran the full pre-auction process, engaging the conveyancer, reviewing the contract, and securing the vendor’s agreement to a five per cent deposit and a forty-two day settlement in writing before the day. We also asked Luke and Sophie for a firm maximum bid in writing, not a guide but a limit. They set it, the bidding went past it, and we walked away. Three weeks later they bought a better property for less.
The property was an unusually large family home in Thornton, listed with a guide of $980,000 to $1,050,000. It had been under offer at the top of that range and the offer had fallen over, after which the guide came down and the owners became motivated to sell. We recognised what most buyers would have missed: a home of that size is rare in the local rental market and tends to hold tenants for longer. It carried a rental appraisal of $750 per week. We negotiated the purchase at $980,000, the floor of the guide range and $70,000 below where the previous buyer had been prepared to go.
Luke and Sophie purchased the property sixty-three days after engaging Moove and ended up renting it out for $800 per week, significantly higher than the $750 per week estimate we had modelled.