What should first home buyers do first? I put that question to Sam Neville, a mortgage broker in Adelaide who runs I Am Lending, and I bring the Sydney buyers agent side.
I found Sam on TikTok, where she helps first home buyers get on the property ladder. Before broking she worked in real estate and then at realestate.com.au for about nine years, and she has a particular interest in making the process easier for neurodivergent clients.
Sam's five things: build your team, start with a broker and do your research early, buy what's achievable now while keeping your long-term goals in mind, treat AI tools and bank ads as a guide rather than the final answer, and plan your exit before you buy with a partner, friend or family member. We also get into the bank of mum and dad, gifts that are repayable on sale, how to tell whether a broker referral is a good one, whether first home buyer incentives help, and why I'm cautious about first home buyers buying brand new or off the plan in Sydney.
Buying your first home? Better Home Buying is my online course: betterhomebuying.com.au
I first released this episode on 12 November 2025.
Chapters
0:00 Meet Sam Neville, mortgage broker at I Am Lending
2:04 From PE teaching to real estate to broking
4:58 Making the process easier for neurodivergent buyers
7:59 Sam's five things, starting with building your team
11:03 Why buying what's achievable now can beat waiting
12:05 Be wary of AI chatbots and bank ads
13:35 What happened when I ran a strata report template through AI
15:39 Plan your exit before you buy with someone else
19:12 The bank of mum and dad: gifts, loans and guarantees
20:37 Gifts repayable on sale and splitting the loan
23:30 How to tell if a broker is the right one for you
25:44 Ask how a referral works
26:52 Using reviews to check a broker or buyers agent
28:39 Do first home buyer incentives help?
33:24 What price caps do to bidding
37:12 The risks of buying brand new
39:30 Does your broker need to be in your state?
43:00 How to get in touch with Sam
Listener FAQs
Should I see a mortgage broker before I start looking at properties?
Sam says it's a bit of a chicken and egg: you want to research the market, but you don't know what you can buy for until you see a broker. Her answer is to start with a broker so you know where you are, then research early, because you don't want to spend six weeks of a 12-week pre-approval just getting a feel for the market. She also suggests learning the processes, like how to put in a letter of offer, negotiate and bid at an auction.
Can I check my broker's recommendation with ChatGPT?
Sam says a chatbot will come back with plenty of information, but it may be out of date or not relevant to you, because a lot of bank policy sits behind a login for brokers and banks. She sees AI as a guide and suggests going back to your broker if it raises a question. Michelle adds that when she ran her own strata review template through an AI tool, it got it so wrong.
What should we agree on before buying a home with a friend or family member?
Sam suggests treating it a lot like a business transaction: know what each of you is putting in, what you want to get out of it, and set a time to review it, for example after five years. At that review you'd decide whether one of you takes it over and pays the other out, or you sell and buy separately, and what happens if someone brings in a partner. Talk to your broker and solicitor about your own situation before you sign.
Can parents gift a deposit and get it back when we sell?
Sam says a couple of banks will now accept a gift that's repayable on sale, while others may treat it as a repayable gift and not accept it, so the wording of the gift letter has to be checked against the bank's expectations. She sees parents using it to protect their child's contribution if a relationship ends. Your broker and solicitor can tell you how it applies to you.
Does my mortgage broker need to be in my state?
Sam says it's not crucial, because brokers have access to lending across the country. Some lenders only operate in one state, so an ethical broker will refer you to a broker in that state if they can't offer it. A local broker can also help when local agents know their finance is solid.
Speakers in today’s episode:
Michelle May - Michelle May Buyers Agents
Sam Neville - I Am Lending
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Please note that any views or opinions presented in this podcast are solely those of the speakers, and do not necessarily represent those of any business. These views and opinions are general in nature, and do not take account of your personal objectives, financial situation and needs. Please consider whether it applies in your circumstances and seek professional advice wherever appropriate.
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Michelle May: And welcome to another episode of the Buy Your Side podcast, the property podcast to help you make smarter property buying decisions. Now, my name is Michelle May. I am the principal of Michelle May Buyers Agents here in Sydney, and we buy primarily properties around the metropolitan area of Sydney. Now, when I am looking to help you make smarter property buying decisions, I'm always trawling the internet and looking for people who think like me and are wanting to help first home buyers in particular make better decisions and get them on their property journey. And so one day I was scrolling on TikTok and I came across a really wonderful page by this mortgage broker called Sam Neville. Sam is a mortgage broker. She has her own business called I Am Lending, and with her trusted companion, Benny, her sidekick, and slash dog slash expert marketing specialist as she puts it, Sam helps people, particularly in South Australia, and she's based in Adelaide, but first home buyers, get on the property ladder. And I'm so delighted, Sam, that you are here today with me to talk about picking your first steps on the property ladder, which starts with understanding how much you can borrow and where to go from here. Hi Sam, how are you?
Sam Neville: I'm good. Thank you so much for having me today.
Michelle May: Oh, it's such a pleasure. I really enjoy your TikToks. You are a lot better at it than I am, that's for sure. A lot more consistent to start with. I really love the fun way you engage with the people on the other side of the phone, just little tidbits of information, but fun as well, because just from my perspective, I think when I'm meeting first home buyers, they're so wide-eyed and stressed and quite often don't know where to go, where to start. And I think your TikTok is a really accessible point to start from. So thank you for coming on. So I wanted to ask you a few questions, and by all means, give us everything you know, but your background is actually in real estate, years ago. Is that right?
Sam Neville: Yeah, so I actually started in education. So I went to uni to be a teacher, to be a PE teacher, to be exact. And I got sort of to the end of the first degree, it was a double degree, and my partner is a teacher as well. So he was halfway through his degree and I could tell at that point that he just loved it and I didn't. And so I finished the end of that degree and I sort of sat down and I said, is this what I want to be doing? And I looked at all the things that I liked doing, looked at all the things that I was interested in. And the answer to that was I really liked the real estate industry. I loved people and I wanted to be involved in that. And so being a broker at that point wasn't really a sort of a career option. I didn't really know any brokers. I didn't see it as a career path. And so I went into real estate because that seemed the most obvious path. When you are interested in houses and people, you go into real estate. And so I sort of toddled along in real estate for a while, not really making much of a mark. I was quite young and it was in the middle of one of the real estate downturns, so a perfect time to get into the industry. And after a little while in real estate at a couple of different agencies, I ended up getting a job at realestate.com.au. So the website, and that was like a marketing rep, sort of sales rep position eventually. So I started in admin and then moved into like a BDM role. And that gave me so much more understanding of the industry as a whole and what's important and myself as a person and what was important to me. And so I worked there for about nine years. And as I got to the end of that sort of experience and wanting to do more, I had that same chance to sit down and say, well, what is it that I actually enjoy doing? What is it about the industry that I really like? And what I really like is helping people buy houses. So at that point, the option of being a broker was a lot more visible for me. I'd gone through a broker once or twice for my own properties. We had brokers coming in because they were sort of part of the team at realestate.com with the Smartline brokers that came in as well. And so I had access and it gave me the opportunity then to say, well, this is a career path for me. So I got into broking about four and a half years ago. And yeah, I just love it. It's the perfect place for me. I get to help people buy houses. I get to be in the real estate industry, but I don't have to. I think when I got into real estate, I didn't realise that it was more about selling houses than it was about buying houses. And when you're young, it doesn't feel like there's a difference. But then as you get a bit older and you realise what parts of the industry actually make you tick and give you those warm fuzzies, for me it's very much the buying, not so much the selling. So I love being a part of that transaction. I love helping people buy their houses. And then secondarily, once they have their houses, I wanna help them pay those houses off, because no one likes spending more money than they have to, to the bank or to anything else. So it's a really nice circle for me that I get to meet these beautiful clients. I get to help them into their first house, and then I get to help them pay it off.
Michelle May: Yeah, and you mentioned before we started recording that you have a particular interest in people who are potentially neurodivergent and making that path easier for them. Can you talk to me a bit about that?
Sam Neville: Yeah, so I noticed that, again, I take a lot of time to step back and look at my business and look at myself and sort of see what's working, what's not working. And one of the things I had noticed through a lot of the reviews that come in and a lot of the clients that I have is that a good number of them were neurodivergent. So they were somewhere on the spectrum. And a lot of the times their reviews or their feedback to me was how well, or how easy, I made that process for them. That it wasn't the kind of experience that they normally got when they went to a service provider of any description, that they didn't get the accommodations that they needed or they didn't get the information that they needed in a way that was easily digestible for them or easy for them to take away. And so I really leant into that. My son is on the spectrum. He's autistic as well. And so for me, there's a connection there that I want him to be able to have the same experience as everyone else, or to at least be able to advocate for what he needs when he goes to see someone, whether it be a mortgage broker or a job interview, or just going to get something from somewhere or buying something. And so I sat down with one of my clients, and she's also a service provider in the industry, and we sort of mapped out what are the things that I can do, that we can do, to make that process really easy and neuroaffirming so that when people come to me, they're not coming up against roadblocks that stop them from proceeding or stop them from having a good experience. And a lot of those things don't in any way negatively impact, or impact at all, someone who is neurotypical. A lot of it's just additional communication, being very clear, providing recaps after the meeting, that sort of stuff. That just takes a lot of the wondering out. And I find that works perfectly for everyone, not just, that additional support.
Michelle May: Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. I think that's something that people need to pay more attention to for sure. I think that even people who are neurotypical, as you said, it's such an overwhelming process, and having someone take the time to take the steps, because even though what we do is for us normal every day, we're just running through these things because we've done 'em for years. For someone who's coming to us, whether that's as a buyers agent or as a broker, we can't take that for granted. And having those steps in place for neurodivergent people or, regular, not on the spectrum, it's, I think it's an added piece of service that you provide, which is really good. So I wanna really dive into this, particularly because you cater very much to first home buyers. Obviously everyone is welcome coming to you for a mortgage, but when it comes to first home buyers, I wanted to know what are the top five things that you think first home buyers should think about, maybe even before coming to you or when they're with you, that would help them make the process a bit easier?
Sam Neville: Yeah, perfect. And you mentioned a little bit earlier, I've heard you mention before about building a team and making sure that you've got the right people in the right spots for you. So definitely building that team, having the broker, having the right conveyancer, or having the right buyers agent that's gonna support you. 'Cause a lot of the time, first home buyers lean on real estate agents and they don't know any better, because again, they're very new to the industry, right? This is the first time they've possibly looked at or even tried to buy a home. And real estate agents as a whole, as an industry, are lovely. But when they're doing that one-on-one negotiation with the buyer for that property, they don't work for the buyer, they work for the vendor, and it's their job to get as much money out of the buyer. And there's a wide range between really, really ethical real estate agents and ones that will get there by any means. And so, depending on what kind of real estate agent you're negotiating with, that experience can be wildly different. So if you need that extra support of a buyers agent, or you're buying interstate, that's definitely a really important one to have on board, as well as your building inspectors, your pest inspectors and things like that as well, knowing that they're going to be there within your cooling-off period or be there quickly and provide the report quickly, so that if there is something terrible there that you wanna walk away from, you are able to do that within the timeframes. I know they're slightly different from state to state. The next thing is making sure you do research early. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg, isn't it? Where you want to go research the market but you dunno what you can buy for, but you dunno what you can buy for until you go see a mortgage broker. And it's sort of this cycle where you don't know where to start. But definitely starting with a mortgage broker will help you know where you are in that cycle, and then making sure that you're doing a lot of research into the market from there. So not just in terms of the prices of properties, 'cause you don't wanna spend six weeks of your 12 week pre-approval just getting a feel for where the market is. But you also want to have an understanding of what those processes are. So things like how to put in a letter of offer, how to negotiate, how to bid at an auction. So having a bit of time to research some of those processes before is really helpful. Number three would be knowing what's achievable for them now, but also considering those long-term goals. So if your long-term goal is, for example, I've got clients that wanted to buy an acreage and they've wanted to buy an acreage for ages and ages and ages, but they couldn't buy an acreage when they first wanted to buy because they didn't have the money and the equity behind that. So they did buy something smaller and they stayed in that and they paid it down. And then this year they've gone and they've bought their acreage and they got a beautiful place and they're so, so happy with it. If they had just waited and tried to save more to get into this acreage as their first property, they would've struggled. But because they did what was achievable for them at the time and then they paid that down, it gave them so much more equity to be a bit more aggressive on that next purchase.
Michelle May: That's a really good point, because most people can't save more than the market moves. Right?
Sam Neville: Yeah. So you've gotta, once you're in the market, those movements in the market are working for you in the property that you own. They are somewhat working against you in the next property that you buy, but whether you bought in or you didn't buy in, that property is still going up in value. So you're always better off in the market than you are out of it.
Michelle May: Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends what market you are in as well. Like, for example, New South Wales, with the cost of stamp duty and purchase and sale. Like for us here, you need five to seven years before you're actually starting to be cash flow positive again, particularly if you buy something new off the plan that really initially just drops in value for a certain period of time. So it's important to understand that that differs significantly in which market you are. But I think it's good. Yeah, that's a really excellent point to make, that you've gotta take bite-sized chunks sometimes to get to where you wanna be. Yeah. Perfect point.
Sam Neville: Beautiful. And then look, number four is probably quite topical. It's to be really wary of AI and also advertisements from the bank. Because I've had clients that will take my recommendation and they'll just drop the whole thing into an AI chatbot and say, can you check that this is correct? Can you check that this is the best deal for me? It will absolutely come back with a bunch of information. Whether that information is correct and whether that information is relevant is where it all falls apart, because the chatbot is already gonna be behind. Because most of the time those chatbots are running off of slightly outdated information, or they're running off information that they can find on the internet. And a lot of bank policy is not accessible directly on the internet. It's behind a login to the brokers and to the bank. So if a chatbot comes back and says, oh, this bank is doing this amazing deal, why didn't your broker talk about this? It may not be relevant at all to what their actual needs and requirements are, or the policy that sits behind the decisioning. So there are some wonderful things that AI can do, and there's some really great ways that you can ask it to write your letter of offer for you, or if you're sending something on that you want to have checked, or if it's got a building inspection, you want to go through the building inspection and ask it questions about what does this specifically mean? Fantastic. But just keep a bit of a wider lens on. It's a guide, and you want to go back to your professionals to get the final answer, because they're the ones that are in the industry and know exactly what's going on.
Michelle May: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Like, I'm getting this pushback already as well, where people are coming to me and saying, well, I've had a look at this strata report. I put it in a, AI, ChatGPT, and this is what it's telling me. I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. There's a whole lot of nuance that the bot isn't getting. I did a little experiment myself where I fed it our template that we use to review strata reports, and wow, it got it so wrong. It got it so wrong. So, and anybody who doesn't have the resources that we do and the experience to read through the reports would just take it as gospel, right? Which is a very dangerous thing. So, yeah, I take on board your point about using the real professionals as opposed to a little bit of computer programming for sure.
Sam Neville: It's a bit like Jeopardy too, in that your answer is only gonna be as good as the prompt. And so if you haven't prompted it correctly, if you've asked it questions about buying a property or putting in offers and you haven't specified, this is for Australia, or this is specifically in South Australia, you might get, I know I see a lot where someone's come back to me and they've asked me a question about closing costs and I'm like, ooh, you've either been reading American articles or you've asked a chatbot, but you haven't specified that you live in Australia. Like, it's not a term that we necessarily use here. You're not gonna go into escrow. It's a different type of structure. So definitely there is a place to have AI do some of the background work for you, if you wanna chuck it in there and maybe get it to double check something. But I think the final answer on the double checking should come back. So if you pop it in and it gives you a question, you're like, oh, I do want the answer to that. Why didn't my broker talk to me about that? Absolutely come back and say, hey, why didn't you talk to me about this? But just be prepared that we'll be like, yeah, this is why we didn't talk to you about this, because it's completely not relevant to your needs and your goals and your structure.
Michelle May: Yeah, absolutely. Have we gotten to number five yet, or?
Sam Neville: I got one more.
Michelle May: Here we go.
Sam Neville: So one more is really to think about what happens when it all goes upside down, right? What happens when it doesn't go to plan? What happens if you get sick? What happens if you have babies? What happens if you break up? Which is a big one, if you're buying with someone, a partner, and then you break up. What happens if one of you wants to exit that property and the other one doesn't? What happens if you both have to exit and now you're like, you mentioned, maybe you bought off the plan and your property's actually gone into negative equity. Now, will you need to split and take losses on both sides? So having a chat to, if you're buying a property with either a partner, or if you're buying with a friend or a family member, having a solid understanding of your exit strategy, because while you're buying it now, 'cause you can buy something bigger together than you can separately, you need to have a good understanding of, well, what happens if that other person gets a partner? Hopefully not if it's your partner getting another partner, but if it's your sister or your brother getting a partner and they want to live there or they want to live somewhere else, how do you exit out of that purchase? And I think especially for deals that are not done between partners, so deals between family members or deals between friends, it's treating it a lot like a business transaction, in that you know what you're putting in, you know what you wanna get out of it. You have a set timeframe where you're gonna review, like after five years we're gonna review, can one of us take it over and the other one gets paid out? Do we sell it and take our gains and buy something separately? What happens if someone brings in a partner and we wanna look at that? So having all discussion beforehand will really help with not finding out at year three that someone else wants to do something different and you can't afford to keep this property that you've purchased, 'cause you will lose that stamp duty in buying again. And in the short term, it is hard to make back what you spent on your stamp duty if you did pay stamp duty. So definitely having a good understanding of your exit strategy and what you'd need to cover if one of you's not working or something goes wrong, or if the market, even if there's a market downturn, especially here in South Australia, we've seen sort of record growth year on year. The market does historically staircase in Adelaide, where it just goes up and then it plateaus and then it goes up again. We don't see the ups and downs that you get on the eastern coast areas, but there's potential for prices at any point in the market to come down. It's important for people to understand, if they have a mortgage that they can comfortably repay and they're not selling, it doesn't matter if the price comes down as long as they're comfortably able to make their mortgage repayments. If it's uncomfortable when the price comes down and they're forced to sell because of a breakup, because someone gets sick, because someone wants to exit their agreement, then you could be selling a property for far less than what you bought it for. And those areas that everyone thinks that real estate is this incredibly safe market that you can get into and you'll always make money. But there are definitely downsides, that if you don't buy smart and you don't have a good team behind you to take you through those questions of what happens when it goes wrong, that you could leave yourself in a position where you end up worse off than you were if you hadn't done it.
Michelle May: Yeah. Oh, and I have had these conversations on the podcast many a time, that your asset selection is crucial. You make your money when you buy, not when you sell, particularly. But also the conversations with buying with other people, asking those difficult questions upfront. I've very much advocated for that, because it's all rose-tinted glasses at the beginning. And also with the bank of mum and dad, which I imagine you're seeing more and more of as well. What are mum and dad expecting, and what if you are buying with your partner and you break up with your partner, like, are mum and dad wanting a piece of the pie? Or is it a loan, is it a gift? All that kind of stuff. I imagine you are seeing more of that as well.
Sam Neville: Yeah, so we see a lot of assisted deposits, and whether that's in gift or inheritance or guarantee, because it's very, very difficult, even as a couple, like two people with a good wage, to save a 20 to 25% deposit. It is very, very difficult to do that unless you started a long time ago. And with the changes to the first home buyer scheme, even if you started a long time ago, you probably took the opportunity to jump in with a 5% deposit, 'cause why wouldn't you? I see a little bit more of, and a couple of banks have written this into their policies, gifts which are repayable on sale.
Michelle May: Okay.
Sam Neville: Let's say mum and dad say, well, here's a hundred thousand dollars, when you sell this property we expect it back. And so there's a couple of banks now that will accept that. Others will look at that as a repayable gift and may not accept it. So if that's written in to the specifics of the gift letter, we just need to wash that against the bank's expectations. But that's a good way, and I think the intention for a lot of those is not necessarily to have it be repaid on sale, it's to protect them if there is a breakup. So let's say you've got two people buying a house and the gift is coming from the female applicant, and then when they break up, the parents who provided that hundred thousand dollars want to know that that's protected for their daughter. So that's again, when we talk about what could go wrong and the exit strategies, it's important to have those conversations about who's putting in more. Maybe one of them is putting in a higher gift, but the other one has a higher income level, so they're covering more of the loan. So making sure it doesn't always need to be purely 50/50. But I have set up loans where we've done two splits of the loan and one loan was slightly bigger and one loan was slightly smaller, to better reflect the contributions that were being covered by each of the parties in the loan. And in that way, that was very easy for them to say, well, if I pay extra into my portion of the loan, you can see that 'cause my loan has gone down. If the other person's just paying the minimum, then they're just paying the minimum. You can see that on their loan. So there are ways to structure it, to, I guess, protect each party a little bit more. If it all goes terribly horrible and it goes to court, it's not going to stop them from making their own decision. But it will. As with anything, and we see this with, like, tenancy tribunals and things like that, it's the person with the most paperwork that tends to come out on top. So if you've got proof that, well, hey, I put in a hundred thousand, that's why my loan was this, they put in 50,000, that's why their loan was that. It's really hard to argue with that. Whereas if it's all just in the pot, it's a little bit easier for them to say, well, we contributed equally. Therefore, when we split the profits, we split the profits evenly.
Michelle May: Gosh, Sam, so you're not just a mortgage broker, you're a counsellor as well.
Sam Neville: Oh, we wear lots of hats. Lots of hats. Yes.
Michelle May: Marriage counsellor.
Sam Neville: We try. We do. We stay mostly in our lane. When it comes to things like financial advice, mortgage brokers generally, unless they are also qualified as, can't give financial advice or tax advice. So we will send you back to your associated professionals. We mentioned building the team. I did forget to mention accountants and financial planners. I deal a lot with first home buyers, so they tend to be more of a conversation with second home buyers or people who are looking to start downsizing. We'll send them back to their financial planners or we'll send them to their accountants for things like self-managed super funds, if that's the tack that they're taking. We can enact the plan and we can tell you what's possible within the plan, but we can't give you the plan.
Michelle May: Yeah, no, it's, but a good financial adviser, they're hard to come by, like good brokers, good buyers agents, everybody's calling themselves an expert nowadays. But really, this leads me to my next question. How do you determine that the person that's been recommended to you by your aunt's neighbour, childcare person, or your butcher down the local Woollies is actually the right broker for you? Are there any telltale signs or other things that perhaps people can ask their broker up front to sort of determine whether they're working with the right person?
Sam Neville: I think when you get a referral from someone within industry, so if a mortgage broker refers an accountant or a mortgage broker refers a conveyancer, that carries more weight than a friend, only because that friend has had one transaction, maybe two, with that person, right? They've bought a house through that conveyancer and they had a great experience, but the mortgage broker might have referred 50 clients to that conveyancer and 50 times they nailed it. And if they don't nail it, we stop referring to them. Because for us, we are responsible from the very, very start of that process, that house buying process, to the very, very end, and beyond even the parts of it that aren't our responsibility. So something like a delayed settlement, which is the responsibility most times of the conveyancer, as long as it wasn't something that the broker didn't do or forgot to do, but something like a delayed settlement because of the banks or because of the conveyancer sits with the bank or the conveyancer. But it still reflects back on the mortgage broker. So we are very, very hot on making sure our conveyancers are on the ball.
Michelle May: Yeah. When you're getting a conveyancer recommendation, the one that you get from the broker is gonna be rock solid. And vice versa, I guess. If your conveyancer or your accountant refers you to a broker, that's a great referral, because you know that they've dealt with that person more than once and they're not just saying, oh, I spoke to a broker on the weekend, they sounded great, or I saw a couple of TikToks and this broker seems amazing and so I've sent you there.
Sam Neville: It happens.
Michelle May: Yeah. But I would caveat that by saying that it is important to understand the referral structure there. So for us, for example, we have a really fantastic referral list that we give to our clients once they've exchanged. You're talking painters and movers and the whole list is there. But also when people come to us and they say, well, I don't have a conveyancer, I haven't got a pre-approval yet, have you got a broker? We also refer them to people that we know and trust. But no money changes hands, no gifting, no favours, no nothing. We refer purely on merit. So it's really important to understand what that structure is. There are some, like business, what do you call them? Groups, where people have to refer within the network. And I've been to those and I would be like, I'm sorry, but I'm not referring to any of these people, 'cause I know they're not up to scratch. So I think you would have to take that next step as well, just to make sure that it's actually completely independent. Yes, these guys are great because I've seen the work that they do, and no, I'm not financially incentivised to do so.
Sam Neville: Yeah, and that's where your reviews come in. So having a read of the reviews can, I mean, that's where you probably could use a bit of AI. So you could ask your AI to read all the reviews, 'cause you don't wanna do that. That's a long piece of work if there's lots and lots of reviews. You can ask the AI to read the reviews and come back with what they're really good at based on their reviews, what they're not good at based on their reviews. Is there anything that is of concern based on the reviews that you've seen? Does this match with what we're trying to achieve? And that's a really good way to quickly filter out whether someone's gonna match. A lot of the times, I'm similar to you, I don't charge and I don't give referral fees in and out for my suppliers. I try to match the person with the, especially in the case of real estate agents, they're gonna spend a lot of time in that real estate agent's pocket if they're selling a home. I try to match them with the personality and the type of person that's gonna suit them best, 'cause there's no point in sending them to a real estate agent that I know they're not gonna gel with. So that recommendation comes with, I guess, a personal lens as well, of, I think you'll really get along with this person. They'll do a great job regardless, but I think this is the one for you. But always double checking. Yes. Going in, having a read of the reviews, making sure that the information in those reviews matches what you've already seen or experienced in that conversation. 'Cause ideally, if you've had a conversation with that person, you hopefully would know within that first call, that first interaction, whether or not this is the person that is gonna work for you.
Michelle May: Yeah, absolutely. And if you are reviewing buyers agents' reviews, if 80% of them are from sales agents, they're not real reviews. Let's just be real.
Sam Neville: Yeah, you definitely want 'em from the clients, right? You want the person that's experienced the end to end of the process.
Michelle May: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that's a great point to make. So if you're looking for a broker, this is how you get started. Now, you are in South Australia. I'm in New South Wales. Obviously there's been a lot of hype for the government helping first home buyers, different incentives for different pockets, different price brackets and all that kind of stuff. Tell me, how do you feel about these incentives, and do they actually help first home buyers?
Sam Neville: Any help is help. And there's such a gap in the market between the people who have money and have support, and then the people who quite possibly will never break out of renting, because it is so difficult once you have kids, if you're only on one income, to be able to save while you're renting. It's very, very hard. Rent has gone up so much in the last five years that it's not just a case of the boomer generation saying, oh, you just need to tighten the belt, and you just need to eat out less and stop eating your avocado toast. It is very, very hard to eke out a deposit when the gap between disposable income and rent has tightened up so much. And then what you require for a deposit has increased so much. I was talking to someone about an $800,000 purchase, and you need $50,000 here in SA, you need $50,000 just for the fees, and then you need a deposit on top of that. So you're looking at $200,000 of deposit. And even if you were saving a really significant amount, that's a long time to wait to get to that kind of money. If you're doing it while you're renting, it's difficult. If you can't move back home, if you don't have support from family for a guarantee or a gift, it's a really long time to wait. And in that time, the market just keeps going up. So any support is helpful. It's a really intricate beast, in that you give support to a group, then they enter the market, and then there's still more buyers. So the supply and demand issue is exacerbated. And the answer to that comes down to the government releasing more land and incentivising more build. One of my bugbears is we have a first time owner's, like a build grant, so $15,000 in SA if you build a new home, if you're a first home buyer, but that's not available if you are an investor or a second-time builder. And for me, if the intention of that grant is to stimulate growth in the construction sector, to get more people to build homes, to release more properties into the market, why wouldn't that then be available to anyone who wants to do that, to build, to employ people, to build those houses, to free up more housing stock? There are a lot of people that maybe they bought their first house with a partner and then they've separated. They have a new partner. That partner is a first home buyer, but they're no longer eligible because one of the people in that partnership has already bought a house, whether they claimed it or not the first time. So in that
Michelle May: Yeah.
Sam Neville: There could be some leniency to say, well, if one of them is eligible, maybe they can both be eligible again, because otherwise there's potential, therefore, that they've missed out on one of those perks that's available to other people because they have a partner. And there's probably sort of some of those inherent assumptions in those rules. Like, oh, if you get a new partner, you're no longer eligible because they've had it, therefore you're trying to double dip. But blended families and divorces, they're very common. And I can have a 30-year-old that's already been married and divorced. I can have a 25-year-old that's already been married and divorced coming in to buy their first home with a new partner. And so I think there's possibly some more leniency with who could be eligible for those sort of grants and schemes, but also understanding the reason why they're using those grants and schemes. If the reason is to stimulate the building industry, then let's let everyone build. If the reason is to help first home buyers, then specifically here in SA, why do first home buyers get no stamp duty rebate on established homes? Are we helping first home buyers or are we not? So those things irk me a little bit, in that often that's a bargaining piece for a political, we wanna get the vote. Here's something that we are doing, it ticks the right boxes for making people happy, but it doesn't tick the wrong boxes of making a certain set of other people unhappy. So they're not gonna talk about negative gearing 'cause they don't wanna upset everyone that already has an investment property. Sure, I understand that. But I feel like they could be a bit more aggressive with helping first home buyers into the market.
Michelle May: Yeah, no, I a hundred percent agree. The flip side of that, of course, is that I see the queues at the inspections. And since that was announced, that it wasn't gonna happen next year but it was brought forward to October, we have been inundated, and I mean inundated, with inquiries, and it's a race to the finish. Whoever can get to the 1.5 first, which means, it was literally the first person who put that offer in at 1.5 got the deal done, because no one was gonna pay a dollar more. But that also meant that properties that would potentially, normally, have gone for 1.3, 1.4, all of a sudden people were like, well, I'm just buying it because it's gonna go up in value anyway the longer I wait. So it's a really complex conversation, isn't it? It's not just a one size fits all solution.
Sam Neville: No, it is tough. And I think so much of that panic and pressure from first home buyers is driven by the, like, the media will get on and they'll say things like, oh, house prices are gonna go up because of this. And then the first home buyers hear that and then they go out and they're like, we have to buy now, and we have to buy $50,000, a hundred thousand dollars above market to get it now before it goes up by 50,000 to a hundred thousand. And they can't see that that's exactly what happens when they go and they make ridiculous offers on properties to stop it from being a ridiculous offer.
Michelle May: So education then, and buyers agents can help with that, because you won't let them go crazy and buy something for more than it's worth. But yeah, some education and some handholding to sort of say, if you're overcapitalising on the property, you need to pull back.
Sam Neville: But also, yeah, that's the tough thing. We saw that here in South Australia. Our cap on the first home buyer scheme was 600,000. And the median house price in Adelaide hasn't been 600,000 for four years. I think it tipped over 600,000 in the very first year that the cap was at 600. So I think it went from 550 to 600 and then it was immediately out of date. And we've had that for, I think, three or four years now. And it's only just gone to 900,000. But the median house price in Adelaide is already back up at 875. So it's quite a lag in terms of catching up with where the pricing is. And before the 1st of October, it was nearly impossible to buy a house even in the far edges of the metro area. 'Cause if you had to go far enough out that the house prices dipped below 600,000 for a house, it tipped over into regional and dropped to 450. And so you just couldn't do it. You couldn't get there. You went out far enough for it to be cheap enough, the cap price dropped down to 450 and it was still priced out. Now that it's gone up, it's possibly made things less aggressive. We had a similar but flipped issue with the 600,000, where people were offering 601, because then that pushed out every single buyer that was using the scheme. They knew that if they offered 601, that knocked out 50% of their competition that was using the scheme to buy, because they could not offer over 600,000. So that gave an advantage to people who weren't using the scheme, even if that meant that they went into mortgage insurance territory to do it, because it gave them an edge over getting the property versus not getting the property. Now that it's loosened up a little bit, we can go up to 900,000. I think it's taken some of the pressure off of that lower part of the market, which means that theoretically the people who do need to buy under 600,000 because that's all they can afford, or they're buying a unit because that's all that they can get to, there's less people competing in that space. Hopefully that means there'll be less aggression in that bottom end of the market, where people really need to have cheap homes.
Michelle May: Yeah, good point, good point. I mean, here in Sydney there's never enough supply. But one of the things that I'm concerned about also, and I've spoken about this before on many occasions, is the risk of new homes. Like first home buyers buying new off the plan or something that's less than five years old. Because when you buy new off the plan here, it's like buying a new car. As soon as you drive it off the forecourt, it drops in value. Right? And then with that comes, with us here in New South Wales, we hit the privatisation of certification of buildings. So the council was no longer signing off on things. It was private certifiers that are doing it now. And that's where things like the Mascot Towers happen, for example, where there's massive serious build issues, water ingress, cracking, all that kind of stuff. And it is insidious in the building industry. And so we work with a lot of first home buyers and we walk away from so many of these complexes that typically first home buyers are drawn to or can afford, because we go, no, this is too risky. There are special levies, there's risk of collapse, there's like serious dangerous things that I've read in strata reports. And so what I'm concerned about is that these buyers are flocking to this new stock thinking, oh my God, it's great, it's Australia, of course it's gonna be solid and quality and all this kind of stuff. And then they're gonna be left with, actually, a product that, they're gonna be left with huge costs. They can't sell, like, such a stress to them, potentially negative equity as well. So I think that brings a whole other layer of stress, where you've just gotta go, look, take a breath. I know you wanna get into the market, but you really need to think about this very carefully, no matter where you are in this country, because it is a serious commitment that you can't just pull out of if things don't go right. So, yeah. I wanted to ask you this question as well. Now, you are based in South Australia. You're obviously very knowledgeable about South Australia, but when it comes to choosing a broker, is it important, or is it crucial, that your broker is in the same state?
Sam Neville: So not crucial. As mortgage brokers, we have access to lending across the country. So there's no difference between a loan here in Melbourne or in Sydney or in Tasmania. There are possibly some situations where you do want a bit more local knowledge, and that might be where there is a lender that only operates within that state. So the example I'll give is, in South Australia we have a state-backed lender called HomeStart, which only lends to South Australians in South Australia. And we have a local credit union called Credit Union SA, which again will only lend to South Australians, or through South Australian brokers to South Australians. You can have security in other states, but you do sort of need to have a South Australian aspect to it. So there are some situations where it might be a bank that is something I can't offer, and in those situations, an ethical broker is going to refer you back to a broker in that state that can offer you something. So for example, WA has Keystart, which is their version of HomeStart. If it looks like it was going to be a Keystart deal, there are some developments which are only offered through Keystart, through like the Home Seeker programme, which is like a, like a bottom end of the market. They offer it to Home Seeker clients before it goes to market to satisfy that sort of lower end of the market. Then I personally would refer that back to a broker in that state to support. Same with the Help to Buy scheme that's not currently available here in South Australia, because we already have HomeStart, which does a shared equity scheme. So any Help to Buy sort of shared equity scheme clients, I'll probably refer those on, just because I'm not as knowledgeable about that yet as I would like to be. And I would want my clients to be getting the best advice. That's a personal thing. You can't always guarantee that from every broker. And I think that comes back to having that referral in place where you've been referred for the right reasons, not just because there's a commercial relationship in place. But also what I do find with having a local broker is, when you are purchasing in the local area, because I do know a lot of the real estate agents in my local area, they know me. We've worked together over years. Sometimes that can get you over the line, where they know that that finance is gonna be rock solid. They don't have to worry whether two weeks later their broker's gonna come back to 'em and say, oh no, sorry, we didn't get the deal. We're walking away. So you don't have to have a local broker. If it's important to you to have a face-to-face meeting and to know that they're nearby and to maybe take advantage of some of that home court advantage, then yes, definitely get someone that's local, but it's not a requirement. If you have found a broker that you like to deal with, that you want to deal with, and they're in another state, absolutely reach out to them. Make sure that that's something that works for both of you. The broker should tell you if it's not something they can support with.
Michelle May: Mm. I think, I mean, the fact that you're saying, well, look, I'd rather just tell the client to go somewhere else than to stick with me because I'm not necessarily the best person. I would take you any day over just a random person I found on the internet, because you don't know what you're gonna get. Right? So, if you're in South Australia, reach out to Sam, but also if you are anywhere else in the country, reach out to Sam, because she will tell you if she can help you or not. Right? This is how I like things. Now, I think I've come to the end of my questions for now. But I'm sure that if you have been listening out there and you have more questions, please reach out to me. hello@buyyourside.com.au. But also reach out to Sam directly. Sam, how are people best to get in touch with you?
Sam Neville: So the best way to get in touch with me is usually via the link on my page. So there is a link on my Instagram, my TikTok, and my webpage to book a meeting or book a call back. So you can go straight through there and see my diary and get in touch with me that way. You can DM me on either of those. It might take me a little while to get back to you, depending on what I'm doing at the time. But I'm very easy and accessible to get in touch with. I don't gatekeep my information. One of the things that drives me insane is when you go to a website and you can't get someone's phone number or email to contact you. Like, that's the entire reason that you went to the website in the first place. So it should be very easy to contact me. And then from there, we'll sort of get the ball rolling on getting in touch and working out what you need, whether that's just an initial conversation, whether it's a full assessment, or whether it's getting stuck into putting the approval in for your purchase or your refinance.
Michelle May: Thank you, Sam. Now, just to clarify, the website is www.iamlending.com.au. I Am Lending. Look Sam up on TikTok as well. You'll find some really helpful information there and some really good entertainment, I have to say. But thank you so much, Sam. I really appreciate you coming on and talking me through the trials and tribulations of first home buyers and how they get a mortgage. I hope to have you back another time. Please, if you can.
Sam Neville: I would love to come back. Thank you so much, Michelle.
Michelle May: Thank you, Sam. Take care. Thank you again for listening, guys. If you have any questions for Sam or myself, reach out. hello@buyyourside.com.au. Till next time.