The Rezzi Podcast

EPISODE FORTY FIVE

THE WA PROPERTY Q&A PODCAST

Real Estate Fatigue Is Real: Burnout, Buyer Stress & Broken Systems in WA

Real Estate Fatigue Is Real

In this episode

In Episode 45, Peter Fletcher sits down with industry veterans Nikki D’Agostino and Davide Palermo to take the pulse of WA’s real estate industry—and it’s clear that fatigue is setting in across all fronts.

Whether it’s burnout from relentless compliance reform, buyer exhaustion, or mental health strain among agents, this episode explores the human cost of a market under pressure. From the effects of COVID-era disruption to the reality of 200-page contracts, the team discusses what’s broken—and what we can do to fix it.

Key Topics Covered:

  • Industry-Wide Fatigue: Mental and emotional toll across agents, buyers, tenants, and property managers
  • Buyer Burnout: Frustration at missing out, overcrowded home opens, and escalating prices
  • Compliance Overload: AML/CTF, Strata reform, RTA reform, and disclosure fatigue
  • Mental Health in Real Estate: Why burnout is being normalized—and why that needs to stop
  • Disclosure Gone Wild: Are 200-page contracts actually protecting consumers?
  • COVID Aftershocks + AI Anxiety: How societal burnout may still be driving behavior in real estate
  • Professional Standards: The urgent need for better training, mentorship, and clarity in contract writing

Actionable Recommendations:

For Real Estate Agents & Agencies:

  • Audit Your Workflows: Ensure your compliance processes don’t sacrifice clarity or client experience
  • Invest in Mental Health Training: Normalize sustainable work practices and mental health check-ins
  • Train for Quality, Not Just Quantity: Mentor agents in how to write effective, clear contracts—not just close deals
  • Embrace Tech with Caution: Don’t let AI or automation further remove the human touch in real estate relationships

For Buyers Agents & Investors:

  • Insist on Material Facts: Demand clear disclosure—beyond the page count—about special levies, defects, and minutes
  • Vet Your Representation: Choose agents who understand both compliance and communication
  • Educate Yourself on Contracts: Don’t rely solely on templated clauses—know what you’re signing

For Conveyancers:

  • Champion Simplicity: Work with agents to identify key risks and streamline disclosures
  • Be Accessible: Open communication with buyers and agents can prevent small issues from becoming major conflicts

Notable Quotes:

“Buyer fatigue is real. People are just giving up.” – Davide Palermo
“It’s almost become glorified to work in a way that’s unsustainable.” – Nikki D’Agostino
“We’ve gone from a two-page contract to 200 pages, and still people don’t know what they’re signing.” – Peter Fletcher
“Disclosing too much can hide the most important facts.” – Peter Fletcher

Real Talk on Mental Health:

This episode dives deep into how hustle culture in real estate—especially glorified GCI stats and 24/7 availability—has created a burnout loop. The trio discusses how events like REIWA Connect and REBarCamp are beginning to shift the industry toward prioritizing wellness, mentorship, and resilience.

Sell, Buy, Avoid Segment (Bonus):

A lighter wrap-up segment covers:

  • Buy: Eglington – Affordable, beachy, Truman Show vibes (but quieter home opens)
  • Avoid: Poorly structured contracts and vague special conditions
  • Sell: Perhaps your sanity, if you’re reading another 100-page strata disclosure packet

Who Should Listen:

  • WA real estate agents (new and veteran)
  • Buyer’s agents navigating compliance and ethics
  • Property investors seeking insights into current sentiment
  • Conveyancers and settlement agents
  • Agency leaders building sustainable teams
  • Regulators and trainers shaping industry standards

Call to Action:

This episode is your wake-up call. The industry is exhausted—but it doesn’t have to be broken.

  • Start conversations inside your agency
  • Review your disclosure processes
  • Advocate for mental health and sustainable practice
  • Share this episode with colleagues, team members, or mentees
  • Connect with Nikki, Davide, or Peter to continue the dialogue

Resources & Links:

  • Peter’s Proposal: Strengthening Trust in Property Transactions (from Ep. 44)
  • Mental health training & CPD providers in WA (insert links)
  • Submit questions or topic suggestions for future episodes: [Insert Contact Form or Email]

Connect with the Guests:

  • Nikki D’Agostino – Strata specialist & compliance advocate
  • Davide Palermo – Sales agent, mentor, and BarCamp co-founder
  • Peter Fletcher – Host, property commentator, and compliance champion

Liked the episode?
Subscribe | Leave a review | Share it with your team
Until next time – stay sharp, stay ethical, and stay human.

Transcript

Peter Fletcher

Peter Fletcher: [00:00:00] Welcome to the WA Property Q and A, the podcast where I explore the ins and outs of buying property in Western Australia. I’m your host, Peter Fletcher, and each week I interview local property experts to help you to develop a deep understanding of the nuances of buying property in wa. From market trends to legal considerations, no topic is off limits, but before we dive in, a friendly reminder, while we provide valuable information, it’s important to note that nothing discussed in this podcast should be construed as personal investment advice.

Always remember to seek the appropriate professional advice for your specific circumstances. Now, let’s get started and unlock the secrets to successful property buying in wa. Welcome to a very special episode at WA Property q and a podcast, and with me a couple of legends.

Davide Palermo: That’s you,

Peter Fletcher: Nikki D’Agostino Dave Palermo.

Davide Palermo: Welcome back. For some of [00:01:00] us.

Peter Fletcher: Yes, all of us.

Davide Palermo: All of us.

Peter Fletcher: Yes, yes. How you guys going?

Davide Palermo: Very good, thanks.

Peter Fletcher: Right. Let’s talk pulse of the industry.

Davide Palermo: Pulse of the real estate industry. What’s happening out there, Nikki?

Nikki D’Agostino: Well, we were talking about fatigue earlier and that covered in through the industry overall. I’m seeing that from the consultancy perspective with the amount of compliance coming in and risk on agents. And I think as well, in the last few years we’ve seen a lot of new agents or reps come into the industry, new agencies popping up. Everyone looks like a legend because it’s a great market. As long as you can get listings and now there’s coming to be a bit of a crackdown on the compliance and things.

You’re looking at A-M-L-C-T-F reform. Residential Tenancies Act reform, strata reform coming in. The strata industries are whole separate based, where, as you know, I’ve got an agency that [00:02:00] solely focuses on strata, but a lot of strata managers don’t even operate under any sort of licensing compliance and what that looks like.
Still to be determined.

Davide Palermo: Mm-hmm. I think fatigue is a massive thing in the industry right now, across a lot of different levels. But from, someone that’s selling. Such as myself and just seeing the buyer fatigue. Fatigue from buyers with this probably overused word of, cost of living.

It’s definitely a thing. People are over, they’re fatigued from missing out on properties, going to 2030 home opens and missing out on offers. I think they’re just over it. There is this fatigue and right now as we sit, I think. We’ve got record low numbers of properties on the market, so that fatigue is going to continue to happen.

The buy fatigue is real. I think people are just giving up, trying to find something, you know, they’re locking in longer rentals or staying with mom and dad a little bit longer. But by fatigue is probably the word that I would be leading towards. And you mentioned industry fatigue. I think we’re seeing it from tenants as well.

[00:03:00] Tenant fatigue is probably something that’s. A massive issue for property managers now, fatigue from rents going up. You know,

Nikki D’Agostino: even think about social media fatigue and all the new, like, you know, become a buyer’s agent. Could we often talk about the splunkers and the kind of information out there and how easy it is to, start this empire and stop air Airbnb Empire, buy 10 properties in a year and do this.

And, you can talk a lot to the kind of properties that. Unskilled buyer’s agents or claiming to be buyer’s agents are talking people into buying and things like that with these dreams of sort of the new Ponzi schemes or pyramid schemes. Mm-hmm.

Peter Fletcher: Mm. What’s your pulse, Pete? What do you say?

Oh, I agree with you, Dave, that there is a level of fatigue and it almost it’s almost become hopelessness for some people. It’s almost like. Well, you know what we’ll just give up. I’m following. Well, I dunno whether I actually follow the account or it’s being dropped into my Insta [00:04:00] feed of this.

Young lady by attempting to buy a property and complaining about, how terrible they are and how hard they are to get, you know, to get an offer accepted. I kind of think there’s a little bit of, windingness there, but it speaks to a, like a thing that’s going on where people are just going, you know what, I’m just gonna give up.

I’ll try again. When prices go down, which yeah. I can’t see that happening.

Davide Palermo: I’ve seen that Instagram page and I have been following her journey. And I think the fatigue is really in that as well because I think one of her recent videos that has gone viral, she’s talking about how poorly presented a property is by a local Perth agency.

Now there’s always a backstory of why perhaps the property was presented like that. We dunno the story. You’re not gonna name who they are, but you look at that and you think. Maybe that is true. The fatigue’s there where they just go, Hey, we can advertise anything and sell anything. It doesn’t matter what condition.

Doesn’t matter how many syringes are in the bathroom at the time, which is what the scenario is about, or how many dead mice are on [00:05:00] the floor. We can just sell anything and yeah, that’s not the way we like to do things. But yeah, there is just this, let’s just give up. It’s hopelessness sort of, vibe coming out there.

People are just going, yep, we’ve missed the market. We are, we’re not gonna participate anymore. They’re just dropping out. Mm mm.

Peter Fletcher: And is this where the, we were all at the Connect Conference? Well, you, we were all there. Yeah. It was Sam on your

Davide Palermo: table.

Peter Fletcher: And you know, we, so we were at Rework Connect and they had two sessions on mental health you know, two big sessions on mental health.

We, no, I wasn’t there. No, you weren’t on that one. I was at the other one. You were, think of Innovate. Yeah. Not the other one. Yeah.

Davide Palermo: We highly endorsed all Rework events.

Peter Fletcher: But is that where this thing about mental health is coming from That where that. Real estate agents themselves are starting to get a bit tapped out from it all.

Nikki D’Agostino: You think there was a [00:06:00] statistic that was about 70% of real estate agents at some point suffer burnout. And we’ve seen this, in the last 20 years I’ll be in the industry and I always used to make the joke, if you make it through your first two years in real estate, you’ll be in it for life.

Not many make it through the first two years. Mm.

Davide Palermo: I think I’m getting to the age now where I’m calling myself the older, the older guy. Mm-hmm. In the office. Yep. Where I’m probably not the best person to ask. I’m not trained in it. I’m not trained in identifying mental health concerns of employees and stuff like that and grown up with it and, you know, having.

A lot of my family in education and my wife who’s sort of in the uni scene of teaching teachers how to teach and things like that, she sees this burnout in young teachers in uni people. So we sort of had to just toughen up. Like our thing was, you’re just gonna toughen up. And that’s, I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but we just have to push through the stress and the drama of being these.

Many entrepreneurs in what we do, but I think it is a massive thing now where people [00:07:00] can’t, they do burn out. So that’s something that’s coming through the industry especially in property management, but as well as in sales as well.

Nikki D’Agostino: I think it’s always been part of the, you know, those, there’s the trainers and coaches and top sales people and all of that.

It’s almost been a bit glorified to work in a way that’s unsustainable to become robotic, essentially. Like you are just your job. You are just a sales rep. You don’t have a life outside of this. Everything you do is to live and breathe and find your next listing. And that’s spread a lot across, again, for the last 20 years of all the sales training and things that I’ve attended.

It’s good to see the industry bring different things into its training platforms and start looking at, you know, real life and personal development and things like that. O bar, GCI. Mm-hmm.

Davide Palermo: And I think we’ve seen this come up in the real estate bar camp events that we’ve been running. In Perth, as well as across Australia.

Now, where for those that aren’t familiar with the process, we have a board. And on that board is a list of topics that [00:08:00] people wanna talk about or know about in the industry. And the, you know, the mental health component of working in the industry has been popping up on that board for the last 18 months.

Yep. Maybe the last two years it’s been popping up as a, a thing. And I think there was a holy shit moment for us in the Perth one. A couple of years ago where it was a massive topic of discussion and probably one that we were maybe slightly out of our depth, having that conversation. And that’s then led to some of these REIWA events, having people who are much better prepared and educated than us to talk about that stuff.

So it’s, it is definitely something that’s there. I think, you know, you can’t take my mentality or the way that we’ve come through the industry of just going, Hey, you have to toughen up. We just have to do it. If you’ve got 10 home opens on a weekend, that’s just. What you have to do if you’ve got multiple offers and you have to write offers, and we’re talking, writing offers not DocuSign, you know, in the old days you just have to work the hours, so.

Carbon cup. I think I entered the industry just a little bit after that. Yeah.

Nikki D’Agostino: Carbon little notebook. Car orange, carbon maji. [00:09:00]

Davide Palermo: Yeah. But it’s definitely, it’s definitely an issue.

Peter Fletcher: You can always tell the rookies in the industry and I did a couple of times where you get the carbon papers. You’d flick it over, flick the pa the offers offer over to write on the back, the special conditions on the back, and you’d forget to turn the carbon paper over.

And then you’d end up writing all over the front page of the contract and have to start again. And, there’d be people listening to this going, what is he talking about?

Nikki D’Agostino: We’ve navigated tech Before it was tech

Davide Palermo: particularly, there’ll be people Googling right now. What do, but we touch the link and for everyone, I used the

Peter Fletcher: chisel, chisel contracts onto the, onto stone tablets and attach them to the back of a donkey.

Yeah.

Davide Palermo: But that’s a good wrap up of what the pulse of the market right now is, and there’s so many things we could talk about, but I think, yeah, there is this general feeling of fatigue running through the industry from employees to, from property management, from tenants, from buyers. It’s just [00:10:00] this general feeling going on.

I’ve got a home open and a property for sale at the moment, just around the corner in this area, and it’s in that first home buyer. Price range. It’s in that first home buyer segment. So there’s a lot of activity in there and just the general questioning from people. You can just feel it, or how many offers have you got already is the question, or do I stand a chance at this price level?

And that’s sort of, you know, that negative. Questioning is coming through where we didn’t really see that, you know, 12 months ago. I think people are still sort of a little bit buoyant, a bit positive about entering the market and hence now why these things emerge. I think that Instagram page you’re referring to as Bruco, bruco finds or bruco, something like that.

No, I dunno. These things start emerging and you start seeing, even in Sydney, you’ve got these negative sort of property influences now telling you how to go find.

Properties that you can squat in for free and the legal rights around it. So this negativity is coming out because of this emergence of fatigue, and they’re just playing into what other people this dystopian do now of property

Nikki D’Agostino: like the COVID pandemic all over [00:11:00] again.

It’s like the sort of onset from all that negative. I remember being obsessed with the news and waiting for the 10 o’clock McGowan appearance. That’s right. See on earth am I doing this? And once I switched off from it. Turned it around, but it’s like, almost, we don’t know what to do with ourselves now that’s not the case, that we’re latching onto the next negative thing to,

Peter Fletcher: Is this a COVID hangover?

It’s kind of like, we went through that and we got through it and there was all sorts of rubbish that came out of that. And then we go, well, this is just like the bounce, the dead cat bounce out of that. Mm mm.

Nikki D’Agostino: I think I think it definitely could be. And when you look at it, you know, you talk about generational trauma and things like that.

We experienced it as a society. It was almost like entire society going through some form of depression or major life event together. So that’s embedded across us all. It’s not just one person’s experience, but everybody experienced it [00:12:00] differently. And now we are learning to come out of that and.

Interact again, but all of a sudden with all this new. AI and things coming into play. You know, we went from only being able to do video calls to having to come back to the office and we dunno if we’re after a Martha at the moment.

Davide Palermo: Mm-hmm. I think the vibe’s a bit different in other parts. So this is obviously a Perth podcast and we talk about our experiences here, but what we found from the Melbourne events that we’ve done is, and Melbourne had a very different COVID experience to us.

They’ve come out of a tough COVID experience and long downs and things like that into. Perhaps not a buoyant market as well. So they’ve come into a tough property market and then also a tough political situation and where property is getting crucified with, you know, land taxes and council rates and all these, yeah.

Why so, so their experience is even different. They’ve had a really bad experience with COVID and then flowing through too. Their work life now is. Quite the same as I guess our buoyant market over here. It is changing. And probably with Rob when we [00:13:00] need him, Rob part of the crew, he can talk about Melbourne.

Nikki D’Agostino: Important. Part of the dynamic with Melbourne as well is the regulators are taking a heavy hand. Yeah. So whether that’s a political thing to pre back the, you know, get some income for the government through various ways, but they’re just handing out fines and things to industry people. We heard a lot of it.

I actually did live and work in Melbourne about 20 years ago in consumer affairs over there doing Strat Titles Act stock or they’re equivalent.

Davide Palermo: Look at you Go strata 20 years ago and strata. Now

Nikki D’Agostino: the reform to

Peter Fletcher: she, she was in strata when she was 14.

I just wanted to ask about the, on the legislation front, are we any better off as a result of all this le, all this disclosure, all these regulations and I’m thinking of the back When I was started out in [00:14:00] 1985 our listing form was literally one page, like it was one page. That was it.

Our. The offer and acceptance was two pages back in front. And the general conditions was the general conditions. It was a bit shorter than it is today, but by and large it was one page back in front. Some general conditions. That’s it. I wonder, and now we are getting contracts through that are 200 pages long with all the strata disclosures that no one reads it.

It just, people just glaze over after page one and a half and it’s just like, okay, whatever. Just sign

Davide Palermo: it. We go back to our fatigue comment. We have two page contract 40 years ago. Woody. Yeah, 40, 42 page contract. Then we’ve learn that people weren’t aware of what they were buying, so we’ve provided more information.

Strata disclosure changes came out in Perth. Five, six years ago. So that [00:15:00] document is a lot thicker now, and I think there’s this fatigue now where buyers didn’t really understand the process before. They’re now faced with making a decision on a property which has a hundred pages or in most cases, for a simple three bedroom villa.

In most suburbs it’s perhaps. An Ag GM minute for a strata property and a few other bits and pieces, but I think that buyer fatigue comes back in. It’s too much for them to take on. They don’t understand it. And then whose job is it to clearly explain it? It should be ours. So is it healthy? And it’s

Peter Fletcher: not.

That’s the problem. It’s the real estate just. Flinging this anywhere from, let’s ignore the general conditions and just say, contract anywhere from around about six pages through to a hundred pages or more at the buyer and say, this is you to sort this out. You to understand it.

I’m not gonna make any comment because I’m not an expert or whatever. And the buyers are just left to, fend for themselves. And my point here, taking a very circuitous way around making this point [00:16:00] is that under the code of conduct, we are required to disclose all pertinent facts. And I think that disclosing too much is actually hiding the pertinent facts.

Instead of saying, or I should say material fact, instead of saying, here are the material facts material fact one is there is a special levy. Material fact two is someone’s made a comment in , the general business section, which says we’re going to defer discussion about the concrete cancer to a future meeting their material facts.

Davide Palermo: So you’re saying that they’re hiding it amongst all of the information so you can have all the info. Here it is. Decipher

Peter Fletcher: it and not deliberately, David. It’s just like this, just, well, we are gonna tick the box that the government have made for us, as in we are going to give them all these [00:17:00] documents.

So we’ve ticked our box but in the process we forgot to, we didn’t do the thing that the buyer most needed. And that is have the material facts disclosed to them.

Nikki D’Agostino: I actually be, because we are a friendly. Agency friendly, strata manager,

Davide Palermo: Agency friendly. I love I’m gonna call you on that. I don’t want to pay for my documents and I want ’em emailed for free.

How friendly are you,

Peter Fletcher: For you? We’ll charge you

Davide Palermo: appeared here. Everything’s sorry

Nikki D’Agostino: that if a selling agent, their free disclosure information, they get it all and they get the information and their buyer who is essentially gonna become my client as an owner of the Strata company. Welcome to call me and Field any questions via me.

So I actually speak to a lot of our selling rats buyers and walk them through contentious issues, what it means.

Peter Fletcher: So there, take that no,

Nikki D’Agostino: because an educated or at the end of the day is better for my portfolio too.

Davide Palermo: I normally [00:18:00] take a more passive aggressive approach with strata companies. If you don’t give me the information, I will be giving your number to every single buyer for them to call you on Monday.

Please gimme the info. ’cause some of ’em take this approach of, oh, that’s personal Information Privacy Act, we can’t release stuff.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah. And that there’s something else that leads to fatigue is all this multi-layered legislation that ends up having people do nothing. Like you’ve got this well.

Am I allowed to release this information under the Privacy Act, but I’m required to disclose it under the real estate agent’s code of conduct. And I have to do it to comply with the regulations around disclosure on the contract. This is too hard.

Nikki D’Agostino: Take a approach with legislation that it is a tool.

To learn from, to guide the process that we revert to, but that we are not to be taking the punitive approach. Strata managers are a good example, but [00:19:00] in, in any of it, it’s not about saying no, it’s about knowing the rights and the process and having a solid, clear process and understanding these tools that help you do your job and be the professional you are.

Davide Palermo: I think for a lot of us, when we. Leave our surroundings and our offices with our team, and , you step into the compulsory, the CPT world and you get to see the other agents and the other strata managers are out there and you start seeing the questions they ask it. It’s no surprise to me when we go to these public forums and especially when strata’s involved, the questions that agents are asking.

That show their lack of experience with strata and understanding. So maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re right. It’s not the agent’s job ’cause they don’t know how to do it. Not everyone’s experienced in strata. But at the end of the day, you mentioned code of conduct. We’ve got a job and our job is to know a lot more than the buyer and the seller.

We should be able to either say, well actually I won’t sell that house for you ’cause I really don’t understand a 14 story apartment strata set [00:20:00] up and how it works to be able to explain it to. To abide. Yeah. Like that’s not the case. They’ll take the work on and then just fumble their way through it.

Nikki D’Agostino: Entering the rec industry Yeah. Happened to the licensing. Yeah.

Peter Fletcher: But being actually in charge. Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve got a contract at the moment and it, the contract has a clause on it where the settlement is subject to the seller’s purchase settling. All right. So, and what I said to the client before they made the offer and.

It’s evidenced in an email exchange that add a no later than clause to that. And you guys are nodding your head. Yeah, of course you’d of course you would do that. Otherwise that contract could just go on forever. Yeah. And property are

Nikki D’Agostino: you buying? When’s it meant to settle and the contract come into the course,

Peter Fletcher: it settle and sure enough.[00:21:00]

It was supposed to settle at the end of May, and we are now the start of July, and it’s still not settled. And the real estate agent is saying to the buyer oh, well it’s not on the contract. Therefore there’s nothing I can do. You were the one that didn’t put it on the contract. You were asked for it to be on the contract.

Now take responsibility for this shit fest.

Davide Palermo: I think you mentioned like who’s mentoring these people and who’s training these people. And the old days it was the licensee and I’ll put my hand up. I’ve been mentoring a few over the last few years probably more than a few years. And it always comes down to that understanding.

And we have to clearly explain this, that the offer and acceptance or the contracts, whatever you wanna call it. Is a document between the buyer and the seller, but in most cases, neither of those two parties, the buyer and the seller know how to write the contract. No, it’s us. We are the lines facilitating it.

So we have to make sure it is spot on. Mm-hmm. I think one of my first licensees when I started relied on the who, when, where, [00:22:00] what, and by when. It’s just follow that sort of. Policy. Yep. When writing these conditions, and in your case that settlement, that will just handle it. But, we see this, I mean, you see this obviously in your settlement side of the industry where you get.

Crap contracts. You get shit contracts with things that just aren’t worded correctly. Mm-hmm. And then it’s just, it’s a difficult thing to listen to and because you just know there’s gonna be problems. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, having spot on contracts is really important. And having, someone to coach you through that on how to do it is essential.

Nikki D’Agostino: I think it takes us back to the point we made earlier where the sales side of things is glorified, but how to do the job, the tools to do the job.

Effectively or not. So, it’s about the GCI and the next listing and all of that, that it’s not about how to write the contract term, how to protect yourself, the right bids.

Do we need to move towards just letting them be salespeople in order takers, and then getting lawyers to draw up contracts, what does the industry need to stop this kind of thing from happening.

Davide Palermo: [00:23:00] And I think the way we measure success from an agency or agency is obvious. We look at the awards, it’s all based on number of sales value, things like that. It doesn’t show you the wake of destruction that’s left us behind by a top performing salesperson that doesn’t know how to write contracts or just has these ambiguous, I can’t even say the word has these clauses that just don’t make sense or just leave things in limbo like that one, they have to be really.

Clear. And so sometimes I think you, you need to judge success, and I’m sure you do on your side of settlements when you go, oh, that’s a contract from John Smith, the agent, his paperwork’s gonna be perfect. Yep. We’ve

Peter Fletcher: got that. We’ve got those. Yep. We’ve a hundred percent got those where the paperwork comes through in it and it is pristine.

Yeah. And not only that, they’ve already done all the inspections, organize them all. It’s just all beautiful, like, and those transactions, they almost always settle just nice and smoothly and it’s all sorted. And then [00:24:00] there’s the others that are just like. Just chaos,

Davide Palermo: and it’s about identifying those road bumps beforehand and discuss discussing them with the seller and the buyer beforehand.

I’ve just had one this week where I made the sample contracts available to everyone, so someone that wanted to review what a contract looks like, and ours are slightly different to the rewa ones and is lots of different contracts out there. So the sample contract was available, the certificate of title was available, so the buyer actually filled in everything herself and signed it all, and I looked at it thought.

70%. Right. She’s done a good job. Mm-hmm. And I said, Hey, you just need to fix up this and that, and sent it back to her. And I said, and I don’t like your special condition. Your special condition is a little bit vague, but it’s okay. It wasn’t something really affecting the contract. It just simply said that the current.

Owner can rent back for a period of up to six months. Mm-hmm. Didn’t specify dates went by, didn’t specify how much and all this sort of stuff. Yeah. And I said, look, that’s okay. We can leave that in there. ’cause it’s a general understanding between the buyer and the seller of what the implication is.

And we might not even take that [00:25:00] up. So it might not be an issue because the owner might take that, but it’s an awareness. So, you know, by having these things there you know. People can do these sorts of things and you’ll end up having some clean deals because both the buyer and seller know, I’ve already said it’s kind of a shit condition, it’s word.

And, but they both know that, so they know that there might need to be some proper paperwork work put in place a little bit later on.

Peter Fletcher: One of my early bosses said to me that you don’t, if you’ve got a willing buyer and a willing seller, you pretty much don’t need a contract. It will settle. You just, you could write it on a napkin and it would still settle.

It, the only reason we have these contracts is. To deal with the edge cases. Just put

Davide Palermo: for when they’re no longer willing.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah. Oh. when people get pissed,

Davide Palermo: I send you an offer on a napkin, I’m gonna do it one day. Can we do it? Can we do it? Yeah.

Nikki D’Agostino: Two signatures. Yeah,

Peter Fletcher: yeah, yeah. Make contract. [00:26:00] Yeah. In, in.

And it’s like in, I think you could do it on a, an exchange of emails.

Davide Palermo: Yeah.

Peter Fletcher: Mm-hmm.

Davide Palermo: And a contract, or the contracts we’re writing are, good ones. An insurance policy fee when they’re no longer willing. Yes. And we’ve seen some nightmares and I’m always quizzing you on some nightmare scenarios, which are not normally mine.

They’re normally people I know who have something. Yeah. It’s always

Peter Fletcher: asking for a friend. Well, asking

Davide Palermo: for a friend and then, but that’s great. I love that. ’cause then you start ripping apart your own paperwork and your own contracts going, Ooh. Actually there is a little bit of a leeway there somewhere. I think we had one recently with a subject to sale and if one part of the subject to sale.

Terminated, then what? Yeah. And it was this open-ended thing again where, oh, actually we dunno what happens then and we then Yeah.

Peter Fletcher: Well it’s funny because in the rewe annexes, so the inspection annex or the timber pest annexer and the structural inspection annex they actually don’t place any sort of requirement on the seller to provide [00:27:00] access.

And like, well then what happens if the seller doesn’t provide access, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff that things aren’t perfect. Mm-hmm. But we get through, most of them get through.

Davide Palermo: Yeah. That’s where the drone now comes in and doesn’t physically touch the property and just inspects, comes into the root board or something?

Ah, I dunno.

Nikki D’Agostino: No. There’s always gonna be someone out there that will pick at aparts.

Peter Fletcher: Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. There’s always a Barry or Sharon from unit 32 shaking their fist at the young kids on the lawn.

Nikki D’Agostino: Doesn’t matter how good you think, it’s never gonna be.

Davide Palermo: And I think also, real estate is one of those things where people, a lot of people have done it in some respects.

They’ve bought. 20, 30 years ago, or they’ve sold or they’ve done something and they are the ones in providing advice based on their experience. I was, it might’ve been Fen, it might’ve been Jada, or it might’ve changed. Yeah. Yeah. I recently had a,

Peter Fletcher: everyone’s got an uncle. Uncle Ted.

Davide Palermo: You’ve got an uncle.

Yeah. [00:28:00] Who bought seven years. Yeah, yeah. And their understanding of what is meant to happen is based on what might have happened with a very easy sale maybe 10 years ago. And that’s not the case now. I think sometimes you’re getting forget specific, we talk about waterproofing issues and we have bias saying, oh, that’s okay.

That’ll be covered by the structural inspection. Yeah. No, and I’m like. No. No, it won’t. So I, who do I work for? I work for the seller, but who am I advising? I’m advising the buyer. Yeah. Say, no, no, no. You need, I need to protect you. That is concern for you. We need to write that separately. Yes. That is a concern.

It’s not going to be. And he’s like, no, no, no. I’m in the building industry. That’s definitely structural. I’m like, no, mate. Well one, it’s not, it actually isn’t. But we can help you. So you, so their understanding of, mm-hmm. The building industry crossing over to the real estate industry is not correct.

So we have to educate the buyers as much.

Nikki D’Agostino: And that is what I was just about to alert to is, although the agent works for the seller. They still have a duty of care to that buyer. So you are, well, will you, your rights to try shut they broker [00:29:00] customer. But you do have a duty of care and you do.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah, a hundred percent. I

Davide Palermo: recently sold something on my street. I live in sell in the area that I work in, I do sell elsewhere across as if you’re looking for someone. But, and it was a really good seller. They understood the process and sort of handed over to me to do my thing and it’s fine.

Had some great buyers come through, and of course on those perfect sales things start breaking after the final inspection. But before settlement, there’s a couple little issues that happen and you’re in this shit position because you have to then go, oh, hang on, we’re 24 hours away from settlement, but this has happened.

So you go back to your seller and in my scenario, the seller was, he understood the process. He goes, yep, Dave, I don’t wanna leave my house and hand it over to someone. And knowing something’s broken. So they’ve taken that responsibility on. But you end up in this thing. Yeah, we work for the seller, but 40,

Nikki D’Agostino: no, that’s brand.

Davide Palermo: I’ve had sellers that start taking the hoses that are attached to the pipe. Oh, that was worth a hundred dollars. [00:30:00] I’m taking that. That wasn’t in the contract. I’ve had people say, oh no, no security cameras included, but not the hard drive because, well. That wasn’t mentioned in the contract.

So sometimes you get sellers that are just jaded on their own personal experience or, we know the scenario, they hate each other.

Nikki D’Agostino: I’ve sold properties myself where furniture has been assumed to be sold with the property and then the agent’s not ridden it into the contract and I’ve taken it away and it’s like, what?

Davide Palermo: Straight off the heels of like a love island. I think they do this. Don’t quote me, I don’t watch those types of shows, but, sell, buy, avoid was gonna be a topic that we talk about. So what is something you would definitely be selling right now? What is something you’d buy and what is something you would avoid and why?

You don’t have to do all three, but we’re gonna hit you up first. Peter.

Peter Fletcher: So having recently gone through gone through a number of home opens up in Eglington and Almos, so. PS

Davide Palermo: Picnic Drive to get there. How far is that?

Peter Fletcher: About 40 minutes or 40 Ks? [00:31:00] Man of the North. Actually, I like it, man. Drive man’s great.

I like, I like Eggington as a suburb. They’ve got this this little down there. It’s called just the one, well it’s the one I went to. It’s called it’s not Pier 27 or, it’s something 27 related to the water and it’s lovely. You sit there, you’ve got the water views, you’ve got nice beer, alfresco, it’s the parks.

It’s like straight out of the Truman Show. It’s so perfect. But no, no buts. It’s a lovely beach side vibe. Oh, okay. Here’s the, but, so I went through the home opens and you go through a home, open down Carlisle, lath Lane, Vic Park, there’s people everywhere. Like you get over home, open on a Monday night at 10 o’clock, and you’d still have people through, in Eglington, there is 1, 2, 3 people go through and it’s [00:32:00] very, very quiet. But the properties are selling. The properties are selling the why.

Yeah. Well, why? Yes, and I suspect, and that wraps up another. Episode of the WA Property q and a. We hope you found our discussion valuable and gained some valuable insights into the world of property buying in Western Australia.

Remember, while we strive to provide useful information, it’s crucial to consult with the appropriate professionals before making any investment decisions. Don’t forget to tune in next week for another exciting episode where we continue to unravel the mysteries of the WA property market. If you have any questions or topic suggestions, feel free to reach out to us.

Until then, happy property Hunting and remember to seek the right advice for your personal circumstances.

Thank you for listening.