Ep 74. Property Myths Revealed
Welcome to the first episode of 2026! Today, we’re busting some of the biggest property myths that trip buyers up and sharing the truth behind the headlines.
Here’s what you’ll learn from today’s episode:
Why “buying off‑market” isn’t always the golden ticket
The truth about auctions — and whether they really favour sellers
Why the “worst house on the best street” isn’t always the smartest move
How to spot misleading marketing and avoid costly mistakes
The myth of the perfect timing — why waiting rarely pays off
Practical tips to cut through the noise and buy with confidence
Takeaway: Knowledge is power. Busting myths helps you make smarter, calmer decisions in a competitive market.
Speakers in today’s episode:
Michelle May - Michelle May Buyers Agents
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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
Hi and welcome to the Buy Your Side Podcast. My name is Michelle May and I am the principal of Michelle May Buyers Agents in Sydney. This episode is property myths revealed and I want to tackle three in this episode. The first one is about off-markets.
A lot of people think that buying off-markets somehow gets them a better deal. Number two is believing the best buyer's agent's websites. You know, the top 10 buyer's agents in Sydney, Perth, or Brisbane, or wherever it may be. Are they actually the best ones? Now, point number three is when someone says, oh, you can't go wrong with buying in Bondi.
I want to specifically talk about why that can be severely misguided. Let's go back to point number one. Off markets, now a lot of people come to us as buyers agents and one of the first questions they will ask us is can you find off-market properties because I think that's the only reason I need a buyer's agent because I'm going to get a bargain.
Well there used to be a time when off-markets were that truly off-market. No marketing, no agents, very hush-hush, nobody knew about the sale and the purchase consequently. But nowadays, off markets by and large are used as marketing tools by the big real estate agents to get their database through early before they start marketing it on the real estate portals like realestate.com.au and domain because that costs a lot of money, right? And a lot of vendors may not necessarily want to cough up that money beforehand. So what they do is they send the address to all the buyers that are on their databases and say, you've got a two week window to come through this property. But what they don't tell you is that there's a lot of reasons why these agents will actually do this.
Now, first of all, because potentially the vendor may not have the money to cough up for the you know the huge marketing fees on domain and real estate because they are thousands of dollars. But it could also well be because what they have done is bought the listing. Now that means in real estate terms that they were up against other agencies and they promised the vendor that what they thought the property was worth, they could sell it for.
So say a property is actually worth a million dollars based on the comparable sales and the vendor is adamant that no, I wanna sell it for 1.2, that's what my property is worth. The agent made them well promised, yes, I can totally get you that, amazing, yet let me take the listing, sign the agency agreement, and let's do an off market period first because you know it'll be great to test the waters etc.
But of course once the buyers come through that off period period of time the feedback will invariably be well actually we don't think it's worth one you know we think it's worth one million and so the agent will go back to the vendor and say oh I don't know what happened um you know, the feedback is is a million and I'm confident we we're going to get 1.2 and they're going start putting pressure on that vendor to adjust their expectations. But of course, at this point, the vendor is already locked into an agency agreement.
So quite often in that off market period of time, the vendor is seeking an unrealistic expectation in terms of price. If they don't get that price during that off-market period of time, they will then take it to market.
Other reasons for off-market may well be that you know it's a divorce and people they don't want people to know that so you do have to be mindful that when you are presented with an off-market by these agents that you may well end up paying a premium than if you were to wait patiently and wait for it to come on the market. That's my first point. The second point is that off-markets does not mean it's a better property. An off-market still needs to be assessed with the same due diligence and research and caution that you would apply to any property that is marketed wildly elsewhere.
So I actually find in my experience, and I've been doing this a long time, that a lot of off-markets are actually subpar properties. And by creating this off-market mystique and, you know, oh, you're going to get your first foot in the door and you have exclusivity to this property, the agents are actually hyping a property that wouldn't necessarily do well on the open market. So be very mindful of that, that you don't skip any steps in your due diligence because the agent is applying a little bit of pressure.
It is, however, important to have access to off-markets because obviously you want to see the full spectrum of what is actually for sale or not on the market. So if you are thinking of buying, make sure that you have an email set up where you're on all the agents' databases because over the years I've seen that more and more agents are using this as a marketing tool. So make sure you get all their emails and you know you have access to these off markets. Now be aware that with true off markets there usually are no photos, there's no floor plans, so you may waste your time by going to a property and realizing, oh, it wasn't really what you were after, but it's worth being part of that inner circle, so to speak, so that you do get a chance to have a look.
When you find an off market that you do like, make sure that you are fully across what the vendor's motivations are, because like I said, an agent may have bought the listing because the vendor has unrealistic expectations, and so if the vendor wants way over the odds, you may well be you know, wasting your time because it's just not worth the money that they're wanting for it. But again, it's worth exploring all your options and making sure that you're not missing any of these potential properties that may well suit your brief and your budget.
Now, the second myth I want to address is that when you are in the market for a buyer's agent and you're thinking, okay, I need help, I can't justify myself, let's see who the best buyers agents in my area are. Can I just point out that on almost a weekly basis I get unsolicited emails from companies that say, hey, we know you're an awesome buyers agent, let's put you on our list of top 10 buyers agents in Sydney or the inner west or whatever the case may be this week,
and to be on that list you actually have to pay. So they're just advertisements, they're not genuine lists. These companies don't care if you're actually any good. I've seen buyers agents on those lists that don't even have a full license, have been in trouble with the OFT.
So be very wary that if you are looking to use a buyers agent, engage a buyers agent, obviously it costs a fair amount of money from your end, it's an investment and do make sure that you're actually picking the best buyers agent for you and not just because some random website is being paid to tell you that they are.
If you are looking to find out who is the best for you, here are my top tips to find out. Firstly, they need to be property properly licensed. A class one license, if they work for themselves, is obligatory in New South Wales. Now it takes three years to get a class one license in New South Wales and I would say that because you don't want your buyer's agents with their training wheels on practicing on your property search, you know, in terms of negotiations and not having the contacts and not understanding the area, I would recommend that you only work with a buyer's agent who has had their class one license for at least five years.
I've been in the industry since 2008, and have had my own business since 2017. And I can tell you that every transaction is still different, every auction is still different, and so you need to have the confidence and the experience to deal with all these different situations.
Not least of all these different agents and vendor motivations and also clients, you know, all my clients are different, and so to have the confidence and the ability to really advise and give the right amount of knowledge across is really important because I always say, you know, you can buy shitty property all by yourself. You don't need to pay a crappy buyer's agent to do that for you.
So the second point I would make is that they need to have Professional Indemnity Insurance. This is a legal requirement. Again, just ask them for it, much like the Class 1 license, which by the way you can look up on the OFT website, and I'm sure in different states you can do the same. You look up the license of a real estate agent and see if they've actually got a Class 1 license. If all of a sudden they have a Class 1 license out of nowhere, that means they have sneakily used the reciprocal agreement system in Australia, which means they bypass the three years of minimum experience. Why would you want to do that? You know, someone who's confident that they can just bypass the experience and time it takes to learn, to become, you know, the expert in the transaction. I personally wouldn't want to work with someone like that, but you have to make your own decision, so check their Professional Indemnity Insurance.
I would also say don't work with someone who's just a sole trader. I have a team of seven now, which has grown over the years, and I would say that you know the services that we are able to provide are not on the same level as someone who is just a you know a one-man band. My team and I are able to act so much more swiftly, and also the experience that we have in our team together is so much more than even just working with me by myself. We have three buyers agents in our team, and we share our knowledge, so if I'm potentially looking into a strata complex, for example, you know, we have a list that we keep and we keep updating of bad stratas, building issues, and that kind of thing. But my colleagues also have experiences with agents that maybe potentially I haven't had in the last couple of months. And we can share that knowledge to understand further strategize for our clients and just get a better outcome for them. Pay a better price, don't waste our time on the wrong buildings, we know the histories of properties that have come on and off. And because we have that collective knowledge and wisdom, it just works so much better, and not to mention efficiency. We can knock out our due diligence in a fraction of the time without skipping any steps because there are multiple people who are able to work on the same property for one client.
Now, the other thing to watch out for is to not work with a buyer's agent who charges a percentage of your budget. To me, it makes no sense at all. It's a complete conflict of interest. If you are selling your property, it makes sense for the sales agent you know to get paid. you know If you do well, they do well. That's just common sense. However, for a buyer's agent, we need to save you money. We need to save you time and effort. Now, if I'm going into a negotiation or even an auction, if I'm going to get paid less because I do well for you, yeah, that doesn't work, right? So look at buyer's agents who charge fixed fees only, because also at the beginning of a search, you know exactly what you're in for.
It's quite common for buyers to come to me with a certain budget and then you know down the track once they understand more of you know what it is they really want and need, they may be able to scrape together a little bit more, and so you know that fee is fixed. It doesn't matter if they get another $50,000 or $25,000. They won't get penalized for that fact. The other thing is that you need to be able to speak to past clients. Then you know that the buyer's agent needs to have current experience in the market that you're looking to buy in. So speaking with clients that they've worked with recently and their experience and looking at the type of property that they bought, the quality of the property that they bought is really important. Don't be afraid to ask for two or three clients that you can speak with.
Now looking at Google reviews, always used to say check the Google reviews, look at the amount of Google reviews but I've noticed with this new brigade of buyers agents what they're doing is just getting every Tom, Dick and Harry putting in Google reviews who've never actually been a client so they have to be genuine client reviews. There's one buyer's agent who literally has been going for two years and they've got more Google reviews than I've been working for over seven years as my own business. So that's physically impossible. Apparently they've bought over 200 properties in the last two years alone. First of all, that's total BS. But secondly, it's sales agents that are putting in Google reviews, It's brokers, etc and then you've got a question, why are they doing that for this buyer's agent? I can tell you why. Because they're probably paying and receiving referral fees in transactions. So that's my last point,
check that your buyer's agent is not giving out or receiving referral fees for recommending or being recommended clients. If you have a sales agent say to you, hey, you should work with XYZ, then ask that client, hey, are you going to pay that?
That sales agent by law are legally required to disclose this. Now this can be as much as 20 to 30% of the fee that you are paying the buyer's agent, right? So this to me is a huge red flag because what they're doing is they're just getting these these clients and they're churning and burning the clients because they need that that quick, purchase and onto the next one, purchase and onto the next one in order to make up for that loss of that referral fee that they're paying those agents or those brokers. I get lots of people reaching out to me on LinkedIn saying, hey, I'm a broker, I'll pay you 20% or, you know, if you give me a client, I'm not interested. And yes, I do get recommendations from sales agents, but those sales agents know that I would never pay them a referral fee, so it's genuine, hey, Michelle's great, her team is great. You should talk to her and her team situation, right? A section 47 is something that should be provided to you.
We always give it when we sign up a client with the agency agreement. Every other ethical buyer's agent would do the same at the beginning of the search. A section 47 certificate discloses who we give out or receive any kickbacks from. Now if you are signing up with a buyer's agent and they're not able to provide that, then that again is a red flag. So make sure you look into that before you sign up with a buyer's agent and don't believe those lists.
Finally, my final point, the number of times when I meet new people at a party, for example, and, you know, the word always is, hey, what do you do for work? What do you do for work? What do you do for work? I wish I could just lie and say that I work for Coles or, you know, something that people don't want to know about. Because usually what happens is if I disclose that I'm a buyer's agent, people will throw these lines at me that sometimes I'm bothered to refute and sometimes I can't be bothered. But one of these lines that really just annoyed me so much was this person who said, oh, I invested in Bondi because you can't go wrong in Bondi and, you know, you're always making money in Bondi, and I thought, I'll save my answer for another day. So here it is.
When it comes to buying property in Australia, as long as you hold on to it long enough, you'll make money, right? There is that tricky point where if it's between five to seven years, depending on what you're buying, you could actually lose a lot of money. And I'll cover that in another episode. But sure, if you hold on to property long enough, the property will increase in price, but what people fail to understand is that in real terms, you may still have lost money if you are not careful with the property selection.
Now, you make your money when you purchase a property. This is an actual true thing. Your property selection is everything. Whether it's an investment or your home, this is something you cannot be too blase about.
Now let me explain why, because you probably have heard of median prices right? So when people in the media talk about a 5% increase in Bondi and the real estate market has gone up by 20%, they're always relating that to the median price increase in that particular suburb or area. Now the median of course is the halfway point of all properties sold within that 12-month cycle. The exact middle of that curve. Now if you bear with me because I'm showing you this if you're watching me but if you are just listening, now the halfway point is the median and so obviously over time that will go up or down but generally if you take a 20-year curve it would have gone up. Right now if you buy a property that sits under that median, right yes sure over that 10-20 year period of time you would have made money. But in real terms, you have actually lost money on that median growth, and you have lost money in real terms for those people. Particularly if you have bought an A-grade property, you would have made more money than a median. Now what that means is that when it comes to selling, that means you've got a property that is not as desirable as the ones that are the A-grade properties. It may be that you bought something on a main road or that you bought something in a bad strata or it's dark or it's got a bad floor plan. So those types of properties, sure, over time will make money, but when it comes to making your next purchase, you'll find that you will have lost ground on the market that is today and therefore you actually got less money in your pocket than everybody else who would have just sold an A grade property.
Does that make sense? I can delve into that deeper in another episode if you like, but saying that you can't lose money in Bondi is such a grandiose and incorrect statement because in real terms you most certainly can and particularly given the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars that are involved in real estate, you can't afford to get this small piece, vital piece wrong. So if you want me to expand on that further, like I said, I can do another episode or If you've got any questions on any of these three points that I've just tackled, let me know.
I'd love to answer your questions.That's it for now, I might do another Property Myths episode a bit later. Thank you for listening. If you want to get in touch. Email me on hello@buyyourside.com.au.
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If you found this helpful, please share and forward to your friends and your family members who may benefit from this information, and other than that, I've also got a bit of news. In the coming year, I've been working with Seekers Guide. I've been working on something that may well benefit you if you're looking to purchase in 2026.
It'll be more exclusive to me and my knowledge of the Sydney property market and the Australian property market. So stay tuned because I'll have some great news coming for you soon. Thanks for listening.