Darren Meakins

[00:00:00] Speaker A: More music, Better mental health. Only on IPL Radio. [00:00:08] Speaker B: And welcome back to the Perth Property Bows. It's been a hot minute and you. Hold on a second. You're not Josh. [00:00:15] Speaker A: No, it's the Trish and Carlisle Show. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Oh, poor Josh is a little bit under the weather at the moment, but hey, I had it too. I was. I was off. [00:00:23] Speaker A: I know. I've been editing your shows and it's like there hasn't been one recently where you've both been together. You know, it's been the Josh and Carly show or the Carlos and Carly show or. Yeah, it's. I think hopefully next week you guys will be back together. [00:00:38] Speaker B: We should be back. And then we had King's birthday, of course, last weekend. Yeah, Josh has. Josh has a family, so we can't do generally the, the, the long weekends. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:00:49] Speaker B: But there'll be some sort of a conflict, you know, but next week we're going to be here, if any. Hopefully he's not sick, though, because I went downhill, though. [00:00:59] Speaker A: There is a lot. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I went downhill the first week and then the second. Then it went on to third, then the fourth week and it was just a nightmare, mate. [00:01:06] Speaker A: It's just like so many of our volunteers. I had it for three weeks the first week. I just slept the whole week. [00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:12] Speaker A: And then I started recovering slowly and then I got. I went out in the rain, got drenched, and then it came back again. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Well, that's what Josh said because Josh was at a home open with us on, on Saturday and the rain came in and he got wet and he's not feeling well today. So it's. [00:01:27] Speaker A: I don't know what it is about when he get rained on, but it brings the coals out, doesn't it? You know? [00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I don't get it either, but hopefully he's feeling better. Mr. Josh, if you're listening, we're sending you our love. [00:01:38] Speaker A: I'm sure he'll be listening. I'm sure he's lying there relaxing. [00:01:41] Speaker B: Critiquing, you mean? Yeah, critiquing. [00:01:44] Speaker A: I've got some notes for next time. You didn't say this. You didn't do this. [00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. How's the station going, mate? [00:01:50] Speaker A: It's going good, yeah. We've. I don't know if you've seen the podcast. [00:01:55] Speaker B: Well, I see that. I see that's been upgraded because this is a whole new studio. You've moved in here. You've done an incredible job. The board's been filling up with shows, the most important of which being the Perth Property Bros. Yeah, on Monday at 3:00pm but, but yeah, there's a lot of activity around us here in the studio. [00:02:10] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's a lot of things happening. We've got the mixer from Black Dog Ride, so we're just waiting to get that training room set up and then we can have live bands performing and then we've got the podcast room. We've got all the soundproofing up now. But the black and red looks really nice. [00:02:25] Speaker B: I saw that. That looks really. That must be your favorite color because I'm seeing the curtains over here. [00:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:02:30] Speaker B: Black and red. [00:02:31] Speaker A: Black and red just. It kind works well. Right. You know, but we got Ben and Trish in from Alcoa the other day or last week or the week before and they funded the podcast room. So we got them in, did some photos and did a thank you to Peach. So that was really, really cool. We've been hit recently with quite a few events that we've been attending. So we were at one last week it was the Wellness Wednesday, because it's Mental Health Week, of course. So that was quite a cool event to be involved in. And we've made some contacts with people which hopefully will bring out other things in the future. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Oh well, they're hopefully new station sponsors that you pick up along the way. [00:03:13] Speaker A: Exactly. You know, and people find out about us. So we've got the magazine, which we're working on the next issue of the magazine. So we're actually looking at how we can alter the magazine to improve the reach, the distribution. At the moment, there's the last one, I think was 750. The next one, we're going for probably 750 or thousand copies. But we want to, in the new year, we want to get to probably 20,000. Wow, done. [00:03:41] Speaker B: It's possible, I mean, people are more than happy to take them. It's a good publication. [00:03:44] Speaker A: That's it. It's just how we. Because 20,000 of that is very, very expensive. So we're looking at how we can reduce the costs but still make it pop. [00:03:58] Speaker B: Well, when we've done real estate magazines in the past, over the years, generally we would reach out to the tradies, all the tradies that help us. So we've all. Every real estate agent, for example, has got a network, the gardener, electrician, the handyman, the plumber, and they would contribute. So you'd get the overall cost and divide it by however many people you can and then the publication ends up being free. That's how a lot of agents do it. So. [00:04:23] Speaker A: Yeah, because asking people for money is not our strong point, you know. [00:04:28] Speaker B: Hey, I can do that for you. I'm not kidding. [00:04:32] Speaker A: Yeah, we just need more sponsors on board. We've got. Jen's put together an advert so we're going to start playing that on on the radio soon to try and get more sponsors. But we definitely. If we can get more sponsors then we can get more magazines printed. That, that would be ideal. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah, well, nothing happens without the sponsors. So Rotary Club of Rockingham. Sponsor, Station sponsor. I'm. I'm a sponsor. My business wa. Property sales. Who else have you got? [00:04:56] Speaker A: So we've got Nexus, We've got Passionate Lives. I think there's a couple more. The smaller, smaller sponsors. We've also got Bendigo bank, of course. Bendigo Bank. [00:05:08] Speaker B: They're always good. [00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah, they've been amazing. So yeah, we've got quite a few sponsors, but we just need to get more just to help cover the cost of stuff. [00:05:16] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. Well, if I can help in any way, mate, you know, I raise funds for different businesses sometimes. Like I'm helping canine rescue next week at the shopping center in Mandurah. We just sort of stand around the stall and try to drum. Drum people up to donate to the doggies. And it helps. Helps if you're a real estate agent. Even when, when I run, I run their trivia nights. Even our road for your trivia nights, I just tip people upside down and shake them. Last time we had our, our Rotary changeover dinner, there was 38 people in the, in the room and I sold 400 tickets. [00:05:52] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:05:53] Speaker B: So I just kept going around and around and around. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Yes, we'll give some more. [00:05:58] Speaker B: Well, how about a few more guys? Come on. These are the winning tickets guys here. I've got the winning tickets in my. Of course. And they're happy to give. But yeah, you're right, it's a good cause. [00:06:07] Speaker A: You know, I mean we've seen so many people benefit from, from the, from IPL Radio. It's it. The actual huge benefit to mental health and confidence and self esteem is huge. But a lot of that stuff, you know, it's difficult to generate money for, but you can't charge people for that, you know. So, yeah, like I said, we just need to get more sponsors on board and yeah, be good. [00:06:31] Speaker B: Well, if anybody listening is Interested in sponsoring IPO radio, please reach out to Tristan or myself. 100 or Tristan, if I can help you in any way. Yeah, absolutely. I'm more than happy to. [00:06:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. [00:06:43] Speaker B: So you're looking a little bit more relaxed these days, mate. Did you just recently sell a property? [00:06:50] Speaker A: The press, the pressure is, is huge. [00:06:52] Speaker B: Because you, you mentioned that. I mean, yeah, quite privately, I don't discuss anything while the sales process is happening. But there was an element of pressure you discussed. [00:07:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I guess the thing is our mortgage, we couldn't get a mortgage through mainstream lenders because I wasn't bringing enough money through the business, you know, to go through mainstream. So we ended up with, with Pepper. [00:07:19] Speaker B: And there's others like them, Resimax and. [00:07:21] Speaker A: Other ones is a low dock, something where, you know, they don't require acquired too much information, but then they hit you with higher interest rates. And then because the last couple of years the government have been putting up the interest rates and every time they go up, Pepper put him up as well. So we went from paying, I think it was 1500 or 2000amonth to close to three and a half thousand in a year. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Whoa. [00:07:49] Speaker A: That, that was the, you know, and we, we tried. I think I've told you this before. We, the lady that we rented the house to, the unit to, we didn't want to put the rent up the way that the, the real estate people recommended because we were like, well, she's a single mom, you know, she's working part time and stuff. She's struggling. Why were we going to just push everything on her? If she then says, I can't afford this and she walks away, we might end up with, you know, a really bad tenant. We were very lucky that she paid every week on time and stuff and there was no issues. [00:08:23] Speaker B: Well, bad tenants can be very expensive. They can cause damage. They're not paying the rent. It's expensive to then make them pay and get them out. It's quite a complex process. [00:08:31] Speaker A: And then, you know, they could do damage to the, to the property, which you then got to cover. And then there's the time when it's not being rented out where you're losing money. So, you know, you're a smart man, Tristan. [00:08:42] Speaker B: I mean, this concept, any property managers out there listening will know this conversation could be quite a protracted one. Trying to get landlords to understand this. Yeah, it's not a matter of just pushing the rent up as far as you can get it. It's a matter of saying that there's another person, there's a real person on, on the other side of that. Yeah, that's doing their best. [00:09:02] Speaker A: And, and why would we, you know, we've got pressure, but why would we push that pressure down on someone else and expect them to cover our bills when, you know, she was paying fine. [00:09:15] Speaker B: She was. And she was so grateful, Tris. She was the loveliest lady. I met her on several occasions, of course, and just so grateful to you that. That you did keep her rent down. And then the buyer that we got actually had the same philosophy as you, so the rent is still in the same place, so. [00:09:33] Speaker A: Well, I'm so grateful for your help with that because one of the things. [00:09:37] Speaker C: That. [00:09:40] Speaker A: I really struggle with is we're selling the property because then we were basically. We didn't know who was going to buy it, whether they were going to buy it for themselves and she'll be evicted and now isn't the time to be homeless. She had a kid. [00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:52] Speaker A: You know, so we, we deliberately, you know, kind of pushed off selling the unit because we had a responsibility to her to make sure that she had a roof. And the fact that, you know, we sold it to someone who's got similar belief system as usual, double the reward, I think, you know. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly right. She had an idea of just, you know, she told me moving, moving her. Her investment into bricks and mortar was probably safer and how volatile the market is out at the moment. So it, it wasn't a motivation to get as squeeze as much out of it as possible. And she met the tenant as well and it just lined up perfectly between. [00:10:35] Speaker A: Everything was lined up for it. It was just perfect, wasn't it? [00:10:37] Speaker B: She'd been there for years, that tenant, and she has the opportunity, I mean, she could move, she can meet. Meet somebody, you know, get married or find something else or her life situation could change. Yeah, but with the buyer that we found you, she has the opportunity to stay there quite safely and securely for. For quite some time. [00:10:57] Speaker A: Really kind of took the edge off for us that we. We weren't sailing her into, you know, difficult waters kind of thing that she was going to be looked after and. Yeah, that just was the icing on the top for us. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Well, that's really good. And you were quite lucky. I mean, we went in and did an appraisal for you. And at the same time, because there was a buyer that was in the midst, we did ransom figures and I think we came in at a quite fair price considering where the market is. And there was a unit selling in the complex next door that did go to market. Now, those sellers would have had to pay for marketing and photography and go through that whole process and then the agent went through the home open process trying to generate buyers. But the final sale price, I believe, was within about $5,000 of the mark that you hit without having to spend all that money. [00:11:54] Speaker A: Yeah, and that was really, like, me and my dad had discussed, you know, what. What would be a good price for us to walk away with. And we. A year before, we'd asked another real estate to do an evaluation, and she came back. I think it was like $100,000 less than what we ended up selling for. So, you know, it was just a perfect time. If we sold the year before, that probably wouldn't have covered off all the. [00:12:17] Speaker B: No, it wouldn't have. It wouldn't have. [00:12:18] Speaker A: So, you know, we managed to not only cover the mortgage, but we had an amount there that we know could help cover some bills and, you know, give us a bit of extra money. So, yeah, it was a huge thing. And just the communication from you and Carly was. Was definitely, you know, amazing. And I definitely recommend you guys, both of you. [00:12:43] Speaker B: It was great to work with you, my friend. [00:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Because the important thing is, you know, everybody. Everybody met their targets. It was a win, win, win, win across the board for everybody. [00:12:51] Speaker A: Everyone was happy. You know, the. The tenant, I can never remember her name, but the woman at the board, I think everyone was happy with it. [00:12:59] Speaker B: Patricia. [00:13:00] Speaker A: Patricia, yeah. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. It's just one of those things. I guess you get emotionally attacked because that was the first house that mum and dad bought. [00:13:08] Speaker B: I know you did say that. [00:13:10] Speaker A: But, you know, they moved in with me in 2016, so they haven't moved. They haven't lived there for quite a long time. So. [00:13:17] Speaker B: So out of interest, if we'd gone to Market Trees and I. And there was buyers sort of throwing offers at you, and somebody wanted to come in and. And jack the rent up to 500 bucks a week or 600 bucks a week. Would that have been a factor for you in deciding to sell to them? [00:13:31] Speaker A: I think so. [00:13:32] Speaker B: I think so. [00:13:33] Speaker A: If. If. [00:13:35] Speaker B: Because they generally tell me, you know, they're saying, well, what's the appraisal? How much can we get out of it? What. What do we. What do we have to do to get as much out of it? Yeah, And I communicate that back, of course. [00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And I think if it had been that kind of person, that probably would have made our decision very difficult. We would have gone in some ways, you know, okay, they've given us more money, but they, you know, gonna put her through some difficulty. We don't really want that unit to Go to someone like that. [00:14:08] Speaker B: Well, there was an affordability issue because I had several conversations with her and she was maxing out, working as hard as she was. And this is the reality for many people out there that are renting. Yeah. You know, even paying mortgages, they put, they're working hard full time, maybe even a second job or partners are working as well. There's no time for family, no time for the kids. And whatever time you have, you're just tired. [00:14:31] Speaker A: I mean, I've seen quite a few posts recently on Facebook where people have been complaining about the rent being jacked up. And you know, you get two different reactions to those posts. You get one group of people who were saying, oh, you know those blood sucking millionaires that are charging fortune for the rent, they're the tenants. They're the tenants. [00:14:52] Speaker B: The other reaction. [00:14:53] Speaker A: And then you get the other people who are probably a bit more entrepreneurial who understand about, you know, you've got to pay your mortgage stuff. [00:15:00] Speaker B: They're the landlords. [00:15:01] Speaker A: I'm sorry, but our mortgages have gone up. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:04] Speaker A: And we're not jacking up because we want more money from you. We're jacking up because unfortunately the government put up the interest rates. The, the mortgage providers pull up the interest rates and therefore we have to pay more. [00:15:14] Speaker B: It's not just interest rates. Rates. Rates go up. [00:15:16] Speaker A: Rates go up. Yeah. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Insurance premiums go up. Yeah. And it's, it's incremental sometimes, sometimes it's blatant sort of jump the last year. [00:15:24] Speaker A: Because I think the thing is with COVID which Covid affected so much, the interest rates kept going down and down and down and they got really, really low and they were held low for quite a long time. But then they just jacked them up really quickly over about a year or so. They went up, I think, I know it's 4 or 5% or something. It was ridiculous how fast they went up. And, and you know, we, we, when we took on the property, we kind of budgeted for X amount. You know, we budgeted for two, two thousand or two and a half thousand a month. We could afford that. But when it went up to three, three thousand, three and a half thousand. [00:16:00] Speaker B: That'S getting too much. [00:16:01] Speaker A: You know, then there's a problem. [00:16:03] Speaker B: It's untenable. Yeah. And people's mortgages went up as well when, when their fixed terms expired. Because like you say, around that Covid time, interest rates were very low. So they might have locked in a ridiculously low percentage, you know, you know, between 2 and 3% or something like that. And then all of a sudden, in the meantime, interest rates went up and up and up and all of a sudden they went from 2% to 6 and a half percent, which is, you know, equivalent to, you know, going from, from 2000 to like 7000amonth. Big hit. I had a lot of people telling me, like, what do we do? Yeah, we're going to have to make some changes or I think it's across. [00:16:41] Speaker A: The board because, you know, your interest rates go up, so then grocery prices go up, rates go up, bills go up, but wages don't seem to align like that, you know, so you're getting less, you're seeing less and less and less. I mean, we do a shop, you know, we go do a daily shop, right. So we, we used to go in and get stuff for the next day or so and it would cost maybe 20, $25. Now we're probably lucky if we get less than 70. But for one, for one shop, and then when you see that your money isn't going up, but all the expenses are going up, but your income is, you know, staying the same, your actual income expenses, it. Yeah, it's not, not good. [00:17:26] Speaker B: No. Everybody's in the same boat, Chris. Yeah. Whichever side of the fence you're on. Landlord, tenant, you know, they're working one or two or three jobs. I mean, yeah, things still cost. [00:17:36] Speaker A: And it gets, I guess, frustrating for people when they are doing two or three jobs and then they're seeing their rent constantly being put up and they're like, how can I afford this? You know, where is that money going to come from? And you know, that money then comes from the entertainment kind of stuff. [00:17:52] Speaker B: Of course, of course. [00:17:55] Speaker A: But then you think, well, you know, I'm cutting off all the things I enjoy doing. Just spending money on the essentials. [00:18:01] Speaker B: The essentials? Yeah, well, you know, years ago, so prior to going into wa Property sales, which is the, the current business that I operate, it's a sales only agency. I used to have a rental agency. I operated that for many years. And look, it was best practice to review rents probably, you know, a couple of times a year, just not even, not jack them up, but just to check where they're up to, you do a bit of a market comparison to make sure we're on point. And it was good practice, maybe doing incrementally increase rents maybe $10 a year, you know, maybe $15 a year just to keep it up so that, so that there wasn't too much of a gap forming between the market changing over time. And I'll tell you all the letters that I used to send to do rent adjustments. Sometimes it was a $5 adjustment, which I thought was quite fair. On average, I did $10 adjustments. And on the odd occasion, I'd do a 20, $15 to $20 increase. And tenants weren't happy. Like, I get a mouthful, I get a phone call, I get a very strongly worded email. How can we put the rent up so much? But that's how it used to be. [00:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:11] Speaker B: You never used to put rents up so much. Just small amounts just to keep up, but not so much that you'd hurt people. [00:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:17] Speaker B: Then post Covid, rents are going up $100 increases of 150 or three or several hundred dollars. Yeah. From. From one one notice, which is what? Just just a very small number of weeks, your rent's just gone up hundreds of dollars. That's not been seen, if not for a long time, if ever. You know, it's such big increases where your rent's going up 20, 30, 40%. You know, people are hurting. [00:19:50] Speaker A: That's coming from, like you, we've both talked about since COVID So is it a Covid thing that's happening or it's because the. [00:19:57] Speaker B: So. So the rents were, say, let's pick a figure of $300 a week. The rents were sort of stable. Then post Covid, we had a crazy demand that started developing the sales market and the rental market, shortage of houses. And we've had a huge influx of people coming to wa. It's all just kept adding up to shortage, shortage of housing, shortage of stock currently in the market to sell. Still an overall shortage in this country for where people live. So obviously scarcity leads to higher prices. And if your base rate was, say, around the $300 mark, people are just screaming to get into a property. Your average market rate started going up 400, 500, $600. Now, generally, with how the tenancy laws work, you'd be able to increase rent up to what the market rate is. So the market rate is no longer 300, it's gone up. And I'm using that figure as an example. So market rate's gone up to, say, 600 on average. The same property that, you know, two years ago was averaging $300 a week is now averaging $600 a week. Then the agent can, by rights, the landlord as well, increase the rent up to $600 a week, because that's where the market rate is. It's just that the market rate crept up so quickly. [00:21:11] Speaker A: I mean, we've often talked about the homelessness issue at the moment. So just a couple of months ago there was a house on the road I'm on that was. Had a home open and there must have been 20, 30 cars. 20, 30 people were walking through. And I'm sure you've seen that, right? 20 or 30 people walking through the house. And so I guess that's a contributing factor as well is the amount of people that are. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Scarcity, scarcity of, of, of. Of. Of housing, of properties to rent, of properties to buy. [00:21:39] Speaker A: So I mean, where's the scarcity coming from? Like, is that that there's less people renting the houses out or. [00:21:47] Speaker B: Well, we've had a lot of new West Australians if we're going to stick to wa. A lot of people came over. I mean, a year and a half ago we were increasing population by 3,000 people a week. New arrivals, new arrivals coming in from the eastern states. I think Covid shone a big light on Perth to say, hey, things aren't so bad over there. I got stuck over there, Tris. I got stuck over there. When they basically shut the country down. I couldn't get back into wa and it was a police state over there. [00:22:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:20] Speaker B: While over here it was unicorns and rainbows and everybody was free. No Covid here, it was rampant over there and every. Nobody had their freedoms. So that whole scenario shone a lot of light over here to wa. This. That isn't so bad over there. Far away from all of it. [00:22:36] Speaker A: That was actually on the news the other day that someone from Dan Andrews government has said that a lot of the crackdowns on the lockdown and stuff weren't necessary or lawful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:22:52] Speaker B: It was really bad truce. I did see it, unfortunately. So Covid just changed this country, certainly changed the property market. It just took a big corner. So, yeah, Perth has been ticking along. WA's been ticking along quite smoothly for a lot of years. And as you know, the property market was sort of just, just sitting there. You had a boom 20, 20, 12, 2013. [00:23:15] Speaker A: How do you think then Orcus is going to play a role? If at the moment you're saying that, you know, we're having record numbers of people coming to WA because of, I guess, how safe we are, then you've got the Orcas program where I don't know how many, but there's presumably there's going to be thousands of people. [00:23:33] Speaker B: Yes, it is thousands. [00:23:36] Speaker A: How is that going to work? [00:23:37] Speaker B: It's more pressure, more pressure on the market. More pressure on our overall system, on our hospitals, our schools. I mean I know for a fact that the, the school system is preparing for the influx of students and I think the number was underestimated by several hundred. A lot of kids coming in with these families that they're bringing in from America. So much so that it actually could warrant two more new schools in Warren Rockingham. So these things don't get built overnight, Tris. So this is what's the biggest problem with the property market as well. I mean houses just can't become available overnight. You can't just build these things overnight. I mean you're looking at maybe 18 months for a turnkey on average. A good builder might do it within 12 weather dependent builder with complications. There was issues there for a while that people were going into their third and fourth year waiting for turnkey which is crazy, waiting that long. You're paying interest for that. You're not paying it sort of the loan gets drawn down in increments, pieces along the way to cover the stages but you've got to pay the interest on that. Sometimes you can go and come to a deal that the interest is lower for a period or whatever your mortgage broker can do for you with the bank and lender but you're paying for something you're not living in or that is producing income, rental income. So it's a lot of pressure Tris, across the board. So Aukus is going to have a big effect. I mean when I'm talking to investors and Josh as well, Josh talks to a lot of investors when they're asking where should I buy. So Josh is all about safety and security, longevity. I would agree with his assessment that Rockingham is very safe. Even if the market did change because of Orcas, because of the demand in this area. The naval based demand in general will always, they're always going to need dha, Department of Housing, Defense housing, sorry is going to need properties here because they rent privately for their people. So it's a good place to invest in even if the market changes. But yeah, how is it going to affect it? My entity was pressure, more pressure not just on the housing but the schools. [00:25:53] Speaker A: The hospital building enough houses to accommodate for all those extra thousands of people. [00:25:57] Speaker B: We are short 500,000 houses in this state and I think, I think we're building about 20,000 a year by the last. So I mean it's just not adding up, is it? And then you've got a wider issue of immigration that keeps coming up on the news. Yeah, that's International people coming in from other countries, people upset about. About the pressure. It's a pressure issue, isn't it? [00:26:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:24] Speaker B: On our housing market, not just in Western Australia, but overall in our country. [00:26:28] Speaker A: And then it affects the schools, which, you know, they then have huge numbers of kids. It's really hard to teach and. [00:26:34] Speaker B: Well, yeah, so that puts pressure on the teachers and it's a chain everywhere you look at it. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Hospital. So I guess, I mean, this is. [00:26:42] Speaker B: An economy, this is. It's a complex chain. It's a web. [00:26:45] Speaker A: It's all intertwined and everything has like a reaction and consequence. I mean, I took my daughter, she was sick last week, we went to the hospital, we went. I think it was like 10 o'. [00:26:55] Speaker C: Clock. [00:26:55] Speaker A: We got there 9, 9, 10 o', clock, and we left at 7 in the morning having not seen anyone. And that was just absolutely crazy. [00:27:08] Speaker B: Wow. [00:27:09] Speaker A: And. And then if you imagine, you know, Orcus coming in and then migration coming in, which I can't see migration stopping or slowing down at this stage. So there's a lot of. In future. And I guess, you know, you look at, you can look at from the negative, but then you can look at it from the positive and say, you know, that means it's ripe for investment. Right. So if you have money to put down, buying a house at the moment is probably the safest way you can spend that money. Would you say that would be fair? [00:27:40] Speaker B: Well, it's, it's. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's a. I was just thinking, as you're talking about the new, These new people coming in, the last, I have to say, almost five houses I've sold within the last couple of months have been to new Australians, immigrants, not, not, not West Australians that have been here their whole lives. Yeah. So I'm starting to see a change. I get to see different people. The, the tenants that are living in properties, when I visit them, they're not. They've not been here. Trying to put this as delicately as possible, if you know what I mean, because I don't want to offend anyone. No, we're just trying to call those new. [00:28:20] Speaker A: New migrants. [00:28:22] Speaker B: Yes, exactly right. So when I compare it to say, I go to a property and there's a West Australian there that's been here, you know, for five generations. It's not those people, they're new Australians. The people that have immigrated here and. [00:28:33] Speaker A: Those people buying a house, is it. [00:28:35] Speaker B: Buying or renting, whether they've come from over east here or they've come to our country straight to Wa. This, this state is changing, things are changing. And as you know, just that example you illustrated earlier, where as a landlord you had this additional pressure of higher rates or higher interest, you know, you would, you know, I know you didn't want to do it, but a landlord would pass that pressure on down the line to the tenant, you know, with their family, feels that pressure. I mean, the way things are going now in our state with our housing system, it's just all pressure, isn't it? That's coming through and filtering through and affecting everybody. And yeah, we're seeing the effects with a very tight market. Mr. [00:29:24] Speaker A: Trees. I guess so. I mean, that's, that's good for your business, right? [00:29:30] Speaker B: Well, somebody said that to me today, that was great for your business. And what I, what I said to them is, look, yeah, I can sell it and I can sell it. Well, but having the listings to sell is a scarcity issue, isn't it? Having the listings to sell in the first place is the real issue. I mean, yeah, we can sell them. There's lots of buyers that are amazing. We get amazing prices and I have recently. Yeah, but getting the listings. [00:29:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's because then people are worried that if they sell a house and they go back into renting. [00:30:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:02] Speaker A: Why would they put themselves at risk? [00:30:03] Speaker B: What's their next step? What's the point of selling their property high if they can't buy anything? [00:30:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:08] Speaker B: Or if they buy, it's going to have to buy really high. So they'll have to get a bit of bridging, finance or something. So. But yeah, there's, there's very low stock at the moment. We're under 2800 houses for sale in Perth. That's sort of. [00:30:26] Speaker A: Average sale time of a house in WA at the moment. [00:30:30] Speaker B: So look, averages. It's interesting to go back to what it used to be. It used to be anywhere from six weeks to six months to sell a property in the lower market. I think it's days to a week and a half at the moment. Oh, wow. Yeah. Days on market. My recent properties, my recent sales, if I looked at the last 10, they haven't even been on the market for a week. You know, if I listed it three, four days before the first home open, generally they're selling. That's the way I described it earlier to somebody that asked me the same question. They're generally selling between the first and the second home open, whenever that is, if the home opens are consecutive, consecutive days or a couple of days apart or a week apart. Generally by the second home open there, they're under offer. Yeah, that's the best way to put it with a huge, with a higher number being under offer after the first home open. Yeah. [00:31:24] Speaker A: Wow. So it's a really like, quick turnaround, but get in those places, getting those houses. [00:31:32] Speaker B: Oh, getting the houses to sell in the first place. Yeah. So I know a lot of agents and I have coffees with them, we have lunches, we have get togethers that are hitting the pavements, knocking on doors, doing cold calls, doing letterbox drops, email spamming, looking for any sign of anyone, anywhere that's willing to sell. And you know, I mean the statistic, look at the statistic of listings in the market under 2800 properties in Greater Perth. That's taking into account sort of south of Mandurah down in Dawesville, up to Yanchep Two Rocks, that whole greater metro area and 7,000 agents, registered, licensed agents in NWA. So it's really not adding up too many listings. Now you take away the buyer's agents from that list, you're probably left with 5,000 agents, you know, so even so, half a listing per agent, effectively. So this is why our networks are so important. Yeah, Tris, I mean you came along to our BNI group, Josh and I, member of BNI and other groups. We've built these long term relationships with people that we, we know like and trust. So luckily on my end I've been selling a lot, I've been selling regularly. [00:32:46] Speaker A: Because you're deeply connected like your networks is. And, and I guess we got, we got a letter through the Post the other day. It was just a circular thing from a local real estate saying that it was quite a, like, comprehensive report that they sent through about the prices in Quanana and stuff. But I looked at it and I thought if I was going to sell a house, I would go through you. I wouldn't go through some person that's randomly sent me a, a flyer. [00:33:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:12] Speaker A: You know, and I think that's where, you know, like you said, where you do business with no trust. [00:33:16] Speaker B: You know, you like them and you trust them. That's right. And that's why network is so important, building relationships over time. So I mean, I do know agents that are working other jobs just to, just to sustain their incomes while they don't have any listings. Or like I said, knocking on the, hitting the pavements, knocking on doors and sending out letterbox drops looking for listings. But that's sort of like it's just looking for the, the next quick sale. It's not like working for people that you like, friends, people you care for, people that know like and trust you, that you're really going to go out of your way for. Like you say that pamphlet just for you, it wouldn't do anything because you already know me. So luckily that's been good because I've been quite busy. I've got several listings coming up. I've sold a couple off market just like yours. I've had a couple go under contract this week already in the last couple of days under contract. And it looks like my end of year is looking quite full with properties that we're preparing for sale. So it just goes to show how important your networks are, especially as WA keeps changing and growing. [00:34:27] Speaker A: And yeah, I guess you've got to be thinking about the future. It's almost like playing chess. You've got to be a few games ahead. Of course, you've got to think what's coming up, how is that going to affect the market and how can you prepare for that? [00:34:40] Speaker B: Exactly, Ryan. So we're gonna have a quick break. Mr. Tris, who you've got for an interview this afternoon? We've got Darren Meekins today. [00:34:47] Speaker A: Darren Makin. [00:34:48] Speaker B: He's a developer, he's a Rotarian, a humanitarian all round. Good bloke. [00:34:52] Speaker A: Awesome. [00:34:53] Speaker B: I'm really happy to have him on. I think you interviewed him once by phone, so he's actually coming into the studio. [00:34:59] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I think we did an interview with him. [00:35:01] Speaker B: Yes. You did, yes, in person. We're going to talk. Yes. Scarborough Road Truth, cover of Scarborough. We're going to talk all things development, Western Australia, Melbourne. He's got some big projects in Melbourne and we might even get onto a couple of Rotary topics. But, but, but Darren and I together could talk underwater for hours. So it's going to be very interesting. Let's have a quick break. You're on the Perth Property Bros with Carlos and Tris today. [00:35:28] Speaker A: More music, Better Mental health, only on IPL Radio. [00:35:35] Speaker B: And we're back on the Perth Property Bros show with Carlos and Josh. Not Josh today though. Josh is sick. Been under the weather, but our guest, our special guest has finally arrived. Mr. Darren Meekins has come all the way from Yanchep. [00:35:47] Speaker C: Carlos, thank you very much. I was looking for the helipad. [00:35:51] Speaker B: That's a long ride, mate. But thank you for coming, mate. It's good to see you. More than welcome. Now, you are a developer LandHQWA. [00:35:58] Speaker C: Correct. Well, thank you to the listeners also for welcoming me. Yeah, Land hqwa. That's what we do, we do land, residential land. That's what we've specialized in for many years across Perth. Very hard to get land at the minute. Do you know anybody? [00:36:14] Speaker B: I've got a couple of blocks up my sleeve actually. I've almost finished with stage two over at the Helena Valley project that I showed you a few months ago. Stage three is coming up in February now but there is a few titled lots there that are just set aside. It seems to be that the land estates are repricing and considerably higher because the Bushmeat estate joins our estate. They've gone up into the 500s and these blocks are 380, 400 odd square meters and they've just shot right up with their prices. So we're still sitting at our same price point since July but I've only got a couple left as. [00:36:56] Speaker C: Yeah, look, let me bring it back a notch. When you've got a stimulated market, what I mean by that is that you've got massive demand with very limited supply. It's always going to put pressure on purchasing. I would even argue that the investors aren't as big in the market at the moment. They were quite prolific for the last two years so they've thinned out. It's all owner occupiers. But add to that the new 5% deposit scheme, the federal one, which is essentially getting a 5% deposit without that awful mortgage insurance. It has just put a skyrocket on the market to try and get land this last week. Yeah, I do the odd house and land package as well for investors. Investors here and there. I don't pressurize it and I cannot find land myself. It is that difficult so that they've defaulted into the mode of EOIs finance pre approval. Nominate three blocks and they'll let you know if you're successful. Now that may sort of temper a little bit after this 5% dies off a bit, but it creates a problem and would I want to buy in that market? Probably not. [00:37:59] Speaker B: Probably pressure. Yeah, we were just having that. Trist and I were talking about that. What's driving the forces at the moment? What's going on in the market? Scarcity. [00:38:06] Speaker C: Well, I'll come back a notch again. And if you look at Australia as a whole, it's migration and we all know that. [00:38:12] Speaker B: Just talking about that. [00:38:13] Speaker C: We know that. But whether we talk about it, like it, whatever it is what it is. Right. So you know, number one, Western Australia is the number one growth by percentage in the country. Melbourne's the number one or Victoria's the number one by volume they had 182,000. Last year we had 91. So that pressure is adding, adding and adding. We take too long to build homes, they're a bit quicker over there and we can't get the supply of the land out fast enough. [00:38:37] Speaker B: What's your average build time Darth at the moment? [00:38:39] Speaker C: Probably I'd say closer to 12 months. 10 to 12 months. [00:38:43] Speaker B: That's really good. [00:38:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I was tipping. Not a big home and not too complex. [00:38:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I was tipping an average of about 18 months for if, if you looked at overall because I know people that have been waiting three years for gone into their fourth year for turnkey waiting. [00:39:00] Speaker C: That's terrible. That's something wrong there. Yeah, look, the project guys aren't doing too badly at the moment. Probably the slowest one of all is the bricklayers. So you know you're waiting two to three months potentially depending on your team to get the bricklayer, then it's, then it's the time to erect the walls, etc. Etc. And brick supply is another one that's starting to get limited where you've only got one supply, supply now since they closed it. So you've got to look at all of those add ons but come out of the jump out of the builder, come back to the land for a second. Getting land on the ground. If your listeners are interested to understand that the complexity that you see when you drive past the land estate and say, oh that's great, we'll have a look at one of those. You've got to come back a notch, a lot of notches to when the actual developer took the risk to a buy the land, negotiate a rate. Whatever the common rate was at the time, the land has to be zoned. If it's not zoned, they might have stuck their neck out and bought it knowing that the zoning would come in one or two or three or five years. You're at the mercy of government departments. If it's a residential zone lot, that's great. Let's say it's 3, 4 hectares and let's say you could yield, I don't know, 40, 50, 60 lots, whatever it is out of there. That's great. So we're at 0.1 now. You've got to go and get some. Yeah, that's not one. Then you've got to pay for that land and then you're starting to pay cost of money. So they're paying for that. You've then got to get a town planner to create a lot Yield plan that's designing your lot sizes. What lot sizes are suitable for that area? What does the zoning allow, what roads you've got to accommodate? Does it need a school site in it? What bushland? What open space are there offsets for other land you've got to purchase? Crazy stuff going on. [00:40:39] Speaker B: So the council will all come back and tell you you need a school site or you'll need a shop or. [00:40:44] Speaker C: Can be the council. You got to go higher than that. It's called the West Australian Planning Commission. [00:40:48] Speaker B: Okay. You're going way up, you're going the. [00:40:51] Speaker C: The God of land in. [00:40:52] Speaker B: In WA parks, all the community services, bus stops. [00:40:56] Speaker C: Yep. So what they do have is they're all Department of Transports, etc, but what they'll have is what they call a district structure plan. And if that's overlaid into that immediate response or that immediate area, that'll dictate how that block of land integrates to the next block of land, to the other block of land, where the school sites are going to be, etc. Etc. So that's just getting the planning yield done to make sure the numbers work. [00:41:18] Speaker B: How are we going with our time frame here, Darryl? Darryl, Darren, in terms of building? So we've just bought the block. We've bought the block. Like you said. We're trying to determine how many lots we can fit on it. How long is this taking, this process. [00:41:30] Speaker C: That process, if you've done so far, if Carlos and Darren were to buy the block across the road from here tomorrow, and we bought it subject to due diligence, that might take us four, five, six weeks to put together that due diligence of getting those sketches done up to get a lot yield. It's a very rough sketch to know what we're at, do the numbers and say, yes, it works or no, it doesn't. It's that simple. And then your margins, would you believe developer margins, generally only 20 to 25% to 30%. If they could get it, it's not huge, so it doesn't give you a lot of risk, wiggle room. So once you get to that stage and you've got it all planned and ready, then you submit it into the Western Australian Planning Commission for an approval. [00:42:09] Speaker B: Right. [00:42:10] Speaker C: So a subdivision approval, once it comes out of there, it could be two, three months in that respect, once it comes out of there, you've now got an approval to build that land. You've just got to build it in accordance with that. So that's the next step. Now you've got to get all the civil construction started. [00:42:27] Speaker B: So I sent you some land over in Hilbert not long ago that had a WAPC approval in place. I remember the plans had overlaid the lots. So that means that as a buyer if say you bought a block like that or something else as a buyer you can come in and get going, start building immediately. [00:42:45] Speaker C: That's a big plus. But the vendor there was a little bit difficult wanting too much the case aside. [00:42:53] Speaker B: But that had an approval in place. [00:42:54] Speaker C: Correct. [00:42:54] Speaker B: All the lots were overlaid. All the. Has the hard work been done on the. [00:42:59] Speaker C: It's eliminating hard work but there's still plenty. [00:43:01] Speaker B: Okay, good. So we're coming up to notch three now which is silly even looking at. [00:43:05] Speaker C: That approvals in place. It doesn't mean it's going to work. So you know, A you got to purchase it at the right rate and B that particular site needed seven and a half million dollars worth of clean fill sandican which you've got to buy from somewhere and then transport it in again. Another factor just to get it up to non flooding heights. [00:43:22] Speaker B: It had a swamp in the back corner. Yeah. [00:43:24] Speaker C: Well if you mum and dad in the future want to build their home there, they want to make sure that place isn't going to get flooded because it's going to come back to the engineers that sign off. So once you get to that stage and you're ready to go to site you've got to have Western Power, Watercorps, all of those utilities in place as well. And I don't know what the current date is or current issues are now but Watercorp, I think they were about three or 400 quotes behind about 12 months ago. So that takes up to 12 months. [00:43:52] Speaker B: Wow. [00:43:53] Speaker C: So you've got all these factors to work with once you start doing the construction. Construction is not too bad. You might do, let's say you've got a 90 lot subdivision. You might do three stages of 30 lots each. You'd never crazily build all night here the cost of it and then try and sell it all at one hit. In this market you could sell it all in probably eight minutes. But that's not the point. These markets aren't as common as people. [00:44:16] Speaker B: Problem? No, no, we said that earlier today. Actually it's not a common market. No, we can sell them but we're having trouble finding the stock as sales agents. Yeah, but yeah, not a common market. [00:44:26] Speaker C: Now that's, that's a dilemma that you've got to take into account that people get sort of not sucked into these Markets thinking that it's a norm and it's going to keep going. It doesn't. It's all, it's all got cycles and they, they'll run out of puff, especially. [00:44:38] Speaker B: New agents coming in. [00:44:39] Speaker C: Yeah. I will say, though, our median price is still one of the lowest in the country and I can touch on that later with booms and busts. But coming back to the land development. Yeah, it takes about three months to get it built now for your listeners to understand when you're buying land and it physically just got finished, they go, yay. Hang on a minute, that's not ready yet. That's only a practical completion. And what that means now is that the actual council, Watercorp, Western Power, all of these departments, gas, nbn, everybody has to come and do what they call a sign off and a clearance and go and have a look at that. That takes another six to eight weeks to 10 weeks. [00:45:15] Speaker B: What about Aboriginal heritage sign off? [00:45:18] Speaker C: Normally, get that up front straight away before you start. Yeah, you take that into your due diligence and you'd have all that on site and meet with them on site and go through all that process, depending on where it is and what it is. But once you've got all your clearances in place and the West Australian Planning Commission can actually finally sign off. Yay. They then handball that to Landgate for the titles, which can take two to three to four to five weeks on top of that. So it's quite a process to get that block of land delivered to everybody that wants to build their home on it. It's not that simple. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Now, you and I were talking about the bowel ratings, the bushfire attack level ratings a while ago. At what point is that coming into play? At what point of the planning process? [00:45:55] Speaker C: Okay, I'm no expert on those in terms of you've got acoustics, I was going to cover that actually.2 of the add on cost to your site works, which I'll come back to that later, is BAL and bushfire attack level and acoustics. But bushfire attack level can be. If there's shrubs, a bunch of shrubby bush across the road, you might be at level one, which is 12.5. Then it goes up to, if it's a bit thicker and more dangerous, 19, then 29 and then 40. So they're rated. What it means is your pocket's getting hit every time it goes up. It's a time frame for. So it's meant to slow the burn. It's not just one item on your home. It could Be a stainless aluminum mesh fly screens and vents and those sort of things. Everything's there to design, to slow the burn so you've got more time to get out. [00:46:39] Speaker B: So based on the bow rating, you need to actually construct your house in a certain way to make it more correct. [00:46:46] Speaker C: It's got to be. [00:46:46] Speaker B: What did you say? Stop the burn. It's about protect the burn. Yeah. [00:46:52] Speaker C: No issue with that aspect at all. And once it gets over that 40 mark, you're starting to get into commercial sprinklers and those sort of things, which is you're adding packets of money. [00:47:02] Speaker B: A good friend of mine works at the council down in Bremer Bay and she's talking about BAL40 for some of the lots down on the southern side. Very dangerous, Very dangerous. [00:47:14] Speaker C: Lots to build on and it's got. [00:47:16] Speaker B: To be factored in. Yeah, but I just, I sold the property here in Safety Bay, Darren, and it was within about 50, say 100 meters of the dunes in front of the beach. That was a bushfire prone area. So I had to do additional disclosures in the contract. If you looked at it, it was actually cutting through almost half of the property. And we're just looking at there with the bio going. I mean the grass is about this high on the dunes. You wouldn't think it would be. Would cause a big problem. But. [00:47:46] Speaker C: And I'd never belittle the safety and the fire aspect to it all. However, you've got to wonder sometimes you wonder. [00:47:51] Speaker B: Yeah, the ocean's right there. There's no bush anywhere. Not nearby anyone. Not within 10k's and we're looking at these dunes thinking, wow, they've been set as a bush, bushfire prone area. [00:48:02] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, I had one recently. I think it was bell 19. It was down towards Mandurah. It was an estate by a prominent developer and I got the property quoted for an investor actually. It added now a standard project. Builders generally don't have all that stuff included. They have a standard project specification and then they add on what's required per site. So in this particular instance it needed acoustics Package B. There's normally an A and a B. B being slightly more severe because you might be nearer a railway, a bit more noise, it's got to have thickened glass, etc. This particular house was only a simple small little home. Package B and BAL 19. It added nearly $25,000 worth to the build. [00:48:44] Speaker B: To your build cost. Yeah. So that's a big alone that you need. [00:48:47] Speaker C: Yeah, it's an expense that comes into it. So you might be buying that land cheaper. And you see these little things on the. On the sales list. BAL and acoustics package doesn't mean. Don't get it just means inquire a little further. [00:48:59] Speaker B: Just ask the question. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. The ones we've been selling have been Balo, which is not too bad, about 12.5. [00:49:07] Speaker C: But that 12.5 is not too bad. [00:49:10] Speaker B: Not too bad at all. [00:49:10] Speaker C: I know where I live in Yanche. We're near the beach, about 300 meters off the beach, actually. We built about 15 years ago. Bell didn't exist in those days and I'm sure if I was to build it today, it's probably 19. [00:49:21] Speaker B: Okay. So yeah, this is the dunes as well. Yeah, this is the shrubs and the dunes, the grasses. [00:49:26] Speaker C: That one's got a park and thick bush and all sorts of stuff. [00:49:28] Speaker B: Yes. [00:49:29] Speaker C: If it's light shrubs, yet to a bit easier. But as it gets thicker it's a burn rate. So the ones I've done recently, Bennett Springs is. Was a magnificent little estate called Bennett quarter. Little boutique one at 91 lots. We're all sold out now. I Wish I had 10 of those because I still get five inquiries a week on that now. Sorry, sorry. That one had 12.5. But as you got closer, it did actually face some bushland on Whiteman Park. Oh, yeah, and that jumped up to 29. [00:49:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it would. [00:49:59] Speaker C: But it was actually a nicer spot to be. So compromise. [00:50:02] Speaker B: Yeah, Whiteman Park's not too bad. We have one of our Mr. Perfect barbecues up there actually. [00:50:06] Speaker C: Oh, beautiful. [00:50:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:07] Speaker C: Gorgeous spot in there. [00:50:08] Speaker B: Absolutely stunning. That's where. Where the guys meet. They just had a big, big sort of big barbecue between all the hosts coming together. I couldn't make it last weekend, but that was at Whiteman Park. Really good spot. [00:50:20] Speaker C: Beautiful. [00:50:21] Speaker B: I'd love to live up there. [00:50:22] Speaker C: The motor museums stunning in there as well. Yeah, yeah, we had. It's a gorgeous spot. And it's only. It's under 16k's from the Perth CVD. [00:50:29] Speaker B: Yeah, not too far away. But I talked about people about Whiteman park when I was inviting them, obviously. Where's that? Where's Whiteman Park? It's. It's a bit too far away. [00:50:40] Speaker C: It's had a bit of a resurgence now. I think that whole corridor, that northeast corridor has gone bonkers for land from Dayton to Brabham to Henley Brook to Ellenbrook. [00:50:47] Speaker B: Well, there's big projections up the Brooks. Big projection. [00:50:51] Speaker C: That Bennett Quarter estate on Marshall Road is that new Hollywood Film studio that's nearing completion. That's magnificent. So lots of activity in the area now. Going bonkers. [00:51:01] Speaker B: 80,000. I thought they were planning for 80,000 new. Well, new residents to come into the Ballsbrook area. I saw that in the news, what was it, three, four weeks ago? [00:51:13] Speaker C: Ballsbrook is the next one. [00:51:14] Speaker B: Is going nuts. [00:51:15] Speaker C: To go nuts because it's the next affordability. Yeah. And it's a bit further out, but your access to it's very, very good. [00:51:22] Speaker B: Yeah. The road's excellent up there. You consider 110Tonkin. Yeah, we're up there. Strawberry picking just over the weekend, one before. Lovely. Absolutely lovely. Yeah, yeah. Great. Easy access into Averley. [00:51:34] Speaker C: That's a great little overly Ellenbrook. You're only about 10, 15 minutes into there and you've got a train station at Ellen, so it's a great spot to be. But that's. You're going to have to get used to that in Perth now. We're getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We've. We've clocked 3 million. [00:51:47] Speaker B: It doesn't hurt, doesn't have to travel. [00:51:48] Speaker C: A bit further, you know, we're not moving from. [00:51:52] Speaker B: No, well, why would you? No, no, no. And all the pressures moving up towards where you are, well past you, isn't it? All the developments, the new estates, they're all coming that way. [00:52:01] Speaker C: So. Yeah, Yanship's a unique one. If you. The background on that one. It was bought by the Japanese in the 60s off Alan Bond and they have sat on that land for a long, long time. But you know, you look at Yanchip, show me a suburb in Australia that has a stunning beach with that phenomenal lagoon. Yanchip Lagoon. You've got a new planned future city which is planned to be the second biggest to Perth. We hear these words here and there, but the Japanese have actually got the train there on purpose already. The Tokyo group, they built it first built it and they will come. You've then got a golf course and then you've got a stunning national park all within 4 k's of each other. Yeah, Find me that one around the country, very, very rare. [00:52:39] Speaker B: It's a stunning spot. You can, you can just tell if you look at the area, look at what Yanchep's doing. You can see where the train station stops, you can see where the road stops and you can almost draw a line to see where it will all be in future. [00:52:53] Speaker C: Well, a lot of people don't realize that Marmion Avenue from Butler to Yanship was actually privately funded by The Tokyo Group, Japanese company wasn't a government paid road, so that could, that was 13 million for 13 kilometers back in 2008, 9, 9, 10, thereabouts. [00:53:07] Speaker B: Don't they usually put tolls on those projects when they're privately funded titles? Tolls? [00:53:13] Speaker C: Tolls? No, no, no, there's no tolls in Western Australia, thank goodness. [00:53:16] Speaker B: Good. That's what happens. [00:53:18] Speaker C: Now what they did do is it was damned if they do, damned if they don't, because if they didn't do it they wouldn't be able to open all the markets for land in Yanchip because the old Yanshik beach road wouldn't accommodate the traffic or the volumes. So they, they open up Marmion Avenue. But then all of a sudden those landholders all opened up to sell, which are Alkamos and Eglinton. They didn't exist. So those suburbs, they had 20 years I believe was the deal to pay them back. But I'll tell you what, we're getting close to that now. Yeah, but now look at Alkamos is they're the district centers so they'll be all the big shops and those sort of things and they're the feeders to what Yanchep will be the kingpin of what it is. [00:53:54] Speaker B: I was doing appraisals up that way up in Butler a few years ago, three years ago say. And I couldn't do better than 420, 430. And it was very close to the purchase price on some of these houses. You know three, three bedroom with a media room or four bedroom houses. Now they're sitting 750, 850. [00:54:14] Speaker C: So why didn't people buy them in Yanship then? Because, oh, it's too far, it's too far. Everybody. [00:54:22] Speaker B: Invited the guys to come and wipe them out. Too far. But it's not. [00:54:25] Speaker C: Remind them of what Warren Buffett said. Be fearful when everyone's greedy and be greedy when everyone's fearful. And you go and buy when you're nervous and it is cheap because it will turn. Yeah, and that's, that's the situation now. So. [00:54:38] Speaker B: But the services are there now Daz, you know you've got, all the major chains are there, you've got the big supermarkets, you've got all the fast food places. This is in Butler, there's a big storage complexes, self storage that have gone in. That's a big indicator of what they're planning for. I mean these things are not small. [00:54:55] Speaker C: Got a freeway accident. Well, the freeway comes up to. What is it? Romeo, Romeo I actually sat on that was under my Rotary president hat years ago. We sat on that committee and that was a very good exercise. We had Romeo approved a long while ago. When Hester was approved, it was all approved in one hit. It was just staged so that Hester was done first and then Romeo was done after that. There's no plan as I understand it, they may have changed. There was no plan to continue the freeway up, but it will have to come up to where Yanchep Beach Road is. If people know Yanchep and know the old Yanchep Beach Road, where the old fuel station is, which had a fire in there, that is actually where the freeway is designated. Those owners cannot sell that land to anybody but the government. So they're building right up to that now. So it's getting to a point where it's filling up the golf course, estate, etc. [00:55:41] Speaker B: So what are you looking at? 20 years, 30 years up there? Yeah. Say two rocks for two rocks to. [00:55:47] Speaker C: Two rocks is the next step up. So two is another five k's up. That'll take a while. But that's, that's got thousands of blocks planned. They've got a McDonald's and a Woolworths going up there shortly. Yanchip's got Coles, Woolworths, Aldi or I don't know how many fuel stations we need probably because we're so far out we need fuel but we've got all that. ECU's actually bought a building up there now and they've just bought the site next to and they're building a 1400 square meter medical center. The fire station's been mooted or planned or coming which is a Korea fire station with 30 staff. So personally I'm actually waiting to look at some commercial up there because there's nothing up there at this stage and there'll be some opportunity there. I'm always a believer of jumping ahead of the eight ball, not going with the masses. So you have a look around at what's going on but look at planning if listeners want to understand. Look at what infrastructure's to going coming, look at what government infrastructure is being paid because they're the big spenders. Developers will feed off that as well. And I know there's heaps going up there but the prices have gone up regardless. So most of Perth has gone quite well. [00:56:48] Speaker B: I'd say what 200,000 in the last 12 months up there. [00:56:51] Speaker C: Doesn't matter where you go, it's all gone up and it's not because we're all intelligent, look at me, I'm a great investor, just happened to be in the game. I always say if you don't have a lottery ticket, you're not going to win. [00:57:01] Speaker B: Yes. Well, on the note, we're going to have a very quick break. You're on the Perth Property Bros show with Carlos and Daz. [00:57:07] Speaker A: More music, better mental health only on IPL Radio. [00:57:15] Speaker B: And back again with Perth Property Bros. We're talking to Darren Meekins from Lanhage. Qwa Daz, I'm having a great time talking to you mate. Learning a lot. I think our listeners are getting a lot of. Out of everything you've got to say because you've got a lot of experience and we're going to be talking about the four pillars on your website. [00:57:30] Speaker C: It's good to share info and I hope they do get some value out of what it is. There's many years of experience in that. [00:57:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:36] Speaker C: So if you go back. Yeah, far enough. I mean in the 90s I used to sell new homes as well and help clients that way. I've been involved, you know, in a construction. James Hardy, estate manager there, state sales manager there for a short period. I've been involved in construction all my life. Dad was state manager of Boral windows in the 80s insulation. So it's always been of interest to us. But doing the actual new homes and then doing the land for many, many years, you tend to repeat yourself a bit with the clients, which is fine. Everybody's new, everybody's got to be treated with respect and the same level of energy and input. And what I learned over that time, I sort of coined it into the four pillars of purchasing which the biggest job I believe for a new homes consultant when someone's brand new at this is actually help shape your. You meaning me? What I mean by that is you the customer. [00:58:26] Speaker B: Yes. [00:58:27] Speaker C: Help shape their expectations on how they're going to manage the journey going forward. Because if I build a house tomorrow I'm going to thoroughly love it. Why? Why do others get stressed out and worked out and you know this complaint online and this is an issue. Hey, there's a few things that builders do here and there that may not be intentioned but get walloped. But let me tell you, there's a few customers out there that sell a few perfies as well. So it's a mixed bag and it's a balanced field. I put all that stuff aside. You just got to work through the solutions and look after people. [00:58:57] Speaker B: Where are the designs coming from, mate? Are they. Is Your team putting the designs together as well for the packages, or is this the client's design? [00:59:05] Speaker C: Okay, so that's a good question. A custom design will inevitably cost you probably a bit more because if it's a project builder, they're not used to building that particular home. So they've got a plan for the what ifs. Yeah, ultimately the. That the block layout will dictate what you can and can't do. To a degree. Four walls and a roof is pretty common. You know, amongst the mix up in the. In the middle of all that is up to the. Or the mashup. Kitchens, bathrooms, laundries. How you want to lay it out is up to you. So if you come to the first pillar of purchasing, the four, as I said, four pillars of purchasing. Let's start with the first one. The first one's the big obvious one. [00:59:41] Speaker B: You know what it is, please, I'm dying to know. Money, money, money, money, money. [00:59:46] Speaker C: So if you haven't worked out what you're borrowing, don't step foot out the door yet. Don't go and get tantalised by the stunning display homes, which are all done up as tinsel, which when you look at the plan that you can afford, it's nowhere near that. [00:59:59] Speaker B: I had that conversation earlier today, Daz. [01:00:01] Speaker C: Not majorly wrong. I'm just saying be aware of what you're looking for. So I work with some very good finance brokers, some decent people. One thing I'll say, I'm mid-50s now. I don't tolerate dealing with people that I don't like at trust. So my teams who I work with are someone that I'm comfortable with and I'll work with those guys because I know what the outcome is going to be and solutions will always be found to look after people. I say that black and white and mean it. So with your finance broker or bank, Direct finance brokers have probably got an advantage because you've actually got a bevy of 30 to 40 institutions to choose from. And I will say on that, that. And I'll use a case that I had with a lady, she would have been in her 50s at the time, this is probably 10 years ago. And she bought a block of land and her daughter bought the one next door. Very exciting. They're all chuffed and all very, very rapt about the future. She come in about three weeks later, four weeks later, to the land office, all panicky and stressed out, oh, I may have to cancel, I can't get financing. I said, calm down, let's Go from the beginning, let me see what I can do to help. I've been to this bank, this bank and this bank and they've all told me I can't have it. I said, well, there's your first mistake. You're going to the banks directly, not the brokers. Yeah. And the reason why that is is because all the banks have different policies now, Carlos will qualify for one and Darren might be different. So I might not qualify for what you can get, but I might qualify because I'm a bit older or a bit less money or what. Just depends on the circumstances. Credit histories, deposits, all sorts of stuff. So I said, dependence is a big. [01:01:31] Speaker B: One too, isn't it, das? [01:01:32] Speaker C: Yeah, dependents, all sorts of things. Make sure you have your credit check clear. Please don't have these. I've got five defaults. It was someone else's fault. I've heard that a thousand times. Just get it cleared off and look after yourself and take responsibility. [01:01:43] Speaker B: There is people that can do that, even in our networks that can clean up your credit file just to get it right. Helps people. [01:01:51] Speaker C: It can't be done with a magic wand, though, make that clear. Sometimes the debts have got to be sorted out or cleared up and et cetera, et cetera. But that's a big. That's a toughie because if the bank does their credit check well, they will, and there's a red flag then you've got to have an answer. And you know what the best thing is? If you do have a couple on there and you're working with a broker, disclose everything you know, because that open, honest approach to the institution will actually be in good favour for you because if they find things out that you haven't said, they go right here. What else don't we know? [01:02:17] Speaker B: Oh, Darren, I've seen people that have had gone into Part 9 debt agreements years and years ago and it still comes up. [01:02:22] Speaker C: Yeah, it does. [01:02:23] Speaker B: They're on the National Personal Insolvency Index and I think that's for life. So whether the broker or the lender checks that, I mean, it's going to come up if you didn't tell them or you ticked no on the box. Have you ever committed an act of bankruptcy? Even if you paid it off, it still comes up and you have to disclose. [01:02:39] Speaker C: Something I've always done, which is, I've learned years ago, is I've always tried to keep my nose clean and keep my credit check as best as I can. Communication is the key to that. If you've got a debt and you've got a problem, ring them up and tell them you've got a problem, I need some help. Let's work together and stick to that because it's when you ignore them, that's when you'll get these little kick in the backside. But anyway, coming back to this lady with the story, with that, I got her on. I said, if I may, can I put you onto a finance broker? She said, yes, please, please. And I got onto the finance broker and guess what? She got the loan. And it was a normal loan, but that broker knew, looked at their circumstances, knew which banks weren't going to work for her, by the way. They were the ones who went into and stressed out and got wrong, got it set up, said, right, there's only three out of 30 that's going to suit you. Let's get you set up, get you prepared and then we submit the application when it's good and ready. So there's an art to doing that. Don't rush out. So why I say that is you've got to look at your monetary side, which is the hardest one. Look at that first, get that out of the way. It's easy to go shopping for land in a house and enjoy all that process when you know what you've got. So you've got future considerations, you've got interest rates to factor in, you've got stamp duties, you've got the cost of money, you've got. I'm just going through some listed of settlement costs, what budgets you've got. Are you going to have a future, a family in the future, things like that. You've got to weigh up now with settlement, sorry, samp, duty costs. There are some benefits out there with first home buyers, et cetera, and look up those, whatever the latest one is with the government of the time. I know with building a new home, if I remember rightly, you've got a $10,000 building grant and you get no stamp duty up to a certain point. I think it's been increased now. It used to be 300,000, but I think that's been increased now. So you don't pay stamp duty on the land up to that value. So there's benefits in that respect. So money number one, work out what you can afford and then work backwards. [01:04:31] Speaker B: You brought up a very good one earlier during our last session, Darren, about bell ratings and how they're going to affect your, your build, your costs, extra costs involved, up to 20,000 or that's got another pillar. [01:04:43] Speaker C: I'm going to jump into that, that's, that's the site works pillar. So that's coming up and I'll explain to that and what, what that means. But in terms of those costs work backwards. So let's, let's pick some crazy Rand figures. Let's say you've got $700,000 that you can spend on a package you found a block of land for, let's say, I don't know, 300,000. Good luck. But you know, 300,000 if you go. [01:05:05] Speaker B: Far enough away from Perth, you'll find one. [01:05:07] Speaker C: Yeah. If it's available. Yes, you're right. But let's say. So that goes, oh, Great, we've got 400,000 to spend on a home. That used to sound a lot. And then you go, rip, I'm going to go and look at some designs that are 400,000. No, no, you're not. You're going to look at designs that are around the 320 to 330,000. [01:05:25] Speaker B: Okay. [01:05:25] Speaker C: Give yourself a buffer because your site works are coming and that's something you've got to look at. So you've got to factor all these things in. And you also want to personalize at home and have some enjoyment of putting it together and not being told, no, you can't have that, no, you can't have that. You'll have to reduce that, take that back out. That's when you start to get your negative experience. I come back to that point I said before, shaping your expectations. If you get all this set up from day one, you'll actually thoroughly enjoy the process. Because after all, to build your own home and to move into your dream home, that is just the greatest feeling, really. It is the greatest feeling. And what business are we really in? All of us, we're in the business of hope and dreams. And that was said by Mark Burris, that Kerry Packer once told him to that and it was a great conversation by Mark. So I listen to his podcast, etc. All the time. And he's right. So that's pillar one. Pillar two is obviously the house, which I've just touched on. You know, what your budget is and what type of home you need and what your requirements are. Just jump to pillar three, which is the land that's going to determine a lot. Now, where the land is is a bit of a mixed bag of where you want to live, where your work may be, where a school is maybe, and what you can afford. So it's a combination of all of that. Land is king. The house is secondary in my Opinion. So location, the land, the aspects, all of that, that is the number one. So once you've determined, determine that and you found your, your block, you're happy with it. Three, we talked about that earlier. There's your pillars of purchasing. So let's jump into the site works because it's part of the factoring in your budget. Site works. Is any cost related to marrying that block to that house? [01:07:03] Speaker B: Okay. [01:07:04] Speaker C: Now if I take one on a flat manufactured block by an estate in near the beach. [01:07:09] Speaker B: Yep. [01:07:09] Speaker C: It's all sand. [01:07:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:11] Speaker C: They generally don't have rock in them because they would have cleared that out. What is. Or limestone. [01:07:15] Speaker B: They filled it in and compacted it. [01:07:17] Speaker C: They're probably the lowest cost. Sand is the cheapest to build on. That's not reactive soil. I'm not going to get too deep into all that. But a sandy side is easy. If you're nearer the beach, you'll have to have coastal conditions which are stainless steel, brick tires, etc. Etc. That adds cost to the builds. [01:07:32] Speaker B: But just for the listeners, Darren, what is the, the green stuff that they, the coat that they put. [01:07:37] Speaker C: It's just a spray on there to. [01:07:38] Speaker B: Stabilize the sand because of the winds. [01:07:41] Speaker C: Yeah, Correct. [01:07:42] Speaker B: So if big winds come in, the sand's not blowing. [01:07:44] Speaker C: If it's Australia, remember? [01:07:46] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, yeah. [01:07:48] Speaker C: You've got to put the green stuff on to, to try and stabilize that soil. Look, when you're developing, if you come right back to what we talked about before, there are such a thing called a dust moratorium in the September October months where you're, if you haven't started your civil works and done it by that you have to wait another six or 12 months. That puts another year of cost onto things. So lots of factors to consider. But coming back to the site works, the word site works is a collective word. This is a, this is an area that a lot of people get confused with. It's everything from engineering to power to sewer to NBNs, you know, parapet walls, fire ratings, bell ratings. We touched on this, acoustic ratings, all of that I put into the. It's land house related, which are an add on cost. The general figure for site works these days is around the 20 mark, 20 to 25. Now let's say you went up into Kalamunda. I'm being very generic here. And you found a block up there. It's generally going to be clay. [01:08:46] Speaker B: Okay. [01:08:46] Speaker C: It's generally going to be wooded area with a bit of trees, et cetera around. So your bell rating is probably through the roof. You're going to have to do a big cut with the drain, with the clay, and then put actual leech drains, et cetera, et cetera, in there. You're north of 100 grand plus. [01:09:01] Speaker B: Wow. [01:09:02] Speaker C: So you can't underestimate that when you build. That's why you've got to look at your four pillars. If you're stressing about something and it doesn't belong in those four areas, don't worry about it. [01:09:10] Speaker B: This is something the, the reps will. Will talk to you about, talk you through. Should. Okay. But the rest ones. Okay. Are they. Are they estimates or reasonably good? [01:09:21] Speaker C: Yeah, they know what they're looking at. They will do allowances. So you look at what they call a provisional sum, a PS on your build contract, and that's only allowed to have a variance, but at least you're actually allowed to demand the quote for that as well. [01:09:34] Speaker B: So your build cost earlier you quoted about 320. You're allowing a very generous buffer in case that we're going to put it correct. [01:09:40] Speaker C: So let's say it was 330. We had a budget of 400. With 330, we're now up at 355 to 360 before we blink. [01:09:46] Speaker B: That's right. [01:09:47] Speaker C: So now you've got $40,000 to do stuff in your house. Now, that used to mean a lot. [01:09:51] Speaker B: But what about driveway, gardens, lawn, all those extra bits and pieces, peripherals? [01:09:56] Speaker C: People don't even consider that. [01:09:58] Speaker B: They don't do that. [01:09:59] Speaker C: Now that comes down to the build. Now this is. That's a great question, Carlos, because that allows the listeners to say, all right, now when I've got all myself organized and I'm going to the builder, I know what I need to incorporate. So when I see a deal, the best advice I can give you is what are you not getting? Right. So that's a great way to look at it. So your standard project builders, a lot of them don't even have paint on the walls. [01:10:20] Speaker B: I was going to say tiling one of them. [01:10:22] Speaker C: Tiling will be minimum, such as a laundry with one skirting row, no floor coverings. What's in your kitchen, what sort of appliances have you got? What sort of bench? So you've got to look at. If I was sitting there comparing against opposition and the client brings in, I'll look at the value of this house. I go, okay, let's break it down. Then you start measuring all the internal walls, all the kitchen metrics, and then you realize that the other house looks cheap, but it's Actually not that good a value. So don't be bedazzled by the price. Look for a deal that the builder's doing. Get the floor coverings, get the floor tiles, get paint on walls. [01:10:57] Speaker B: I think one of the good deals to get from builders, mate, is when they're selling their display home. [01:11:02] Speaker C: Because you don't pay through the nose. Absolutely. [01:11:04] Speaker B: Because they build those to the nines. You walk into these places and they look amazing, but it's not the product you're going to be buying. You buy the similar floor plan but it's not going to have all the top notch inclusions that at these. [01:11:14] Speaker C: And they'll normally rent those back off you. Yeah, but what I would say, again, be smart, look at the value of the area. Does that house stack up? So, okay, they're charging, they're wanting 890 grand for this display home and the average home in that area, 750. It's very nice, but be careful. Oh, they're going to give me a rental. Yeah, it sounds like it could be built in. It might not be. And that's not a negative to the builder, that's just covering their cost. But that doesn't mean always it's a problem either. So again, just be smart about what you're doing, Bring it down to look at what's going on, look at what the costs are. Is it a good deal? If not, if you're not, ring people, ring external people, ring us, whatever the case is, we can give the advice out and say, yeah, fair enough, we're not trying to sell those things, it doesn't bother us. But yeah, that's a good way to look at it. So there are your four pillars of purchasing and it gives you an idea then. And at 40 grand, if you haven't got a driveway, haven't got gardens, haven't got floor tiles, haven't got paint, haven't got this, haven't got that. [01:12:11] Speaker B: Fencing, don't forget fencing. [01:12:13] Speaker C: A lot of the land developers give you boundary fencing and front landscaping generally. And there's two sides to that. One, it's a competitive advantage to have that included in your land. But two, it actually makes the estate look a lot better. And when the state's looking good, and Mr. Developer here says, I've found another site and I've got a stick syndicate that want to invest and they see that one, here's one we prepared earlier and it looks good, there's a bit of everything. [01:12:38] Speaker B: So you're talking about, say the developer and I am dealing with one at the moment, like as you know. So he would choose to say put six foot color bond fence, cream color all the way through the estate. So we're keeping it uniform. We're not doing. [01:12:52] Speaker C: You don't want a kaleidoscope of horribleness. Everybody's got their own. I want to do this fence. I want to that fence. Just keep it uniform. [01:13:01] Speaker B: Colors people choose and the heights is just. Yeah, so yeah, okay, that's a good point. The, the developers will, will make a uniform mistake. [01:13:09] Speaker C: Yeah. And also a great one for the listeners as well is when you have limestone boundary walls on your block and you've got fencing to go in, they generally go in the middle of the limestone wall. Otherwise where are they going to, how are they going to stand up? But your, your boundary peg might be on the edge of the wall. Just be prepared for that. It's reality. It's not normal. I wouldn't stress too much about it. It is what it is. So that happens. But they're little nuances that you can pick up. [01:13:33] Speaker B: Any limits made on the height of some of these walls. Darren, that there's another Darren, he runs a show here Talking Talk on Sunday. He's got a place at Waikiki there and he must have a 4 meter limestone wall before the, the actual fence starts. So you walk into his backyard and look up and think, wow. [01:13:53] Speaker C: I would take the safe answer on that is check with your local council because it's going to vary all over the place. And then you've got the WA fencing act and all those things. So I'd check on that. [01:14:03] Speaker B: It's a big fence, it's a big boundary. Just a walk behind his yard. Yeah. [01:14:07] Speaker C: But understanding all that, hopefully the listeners got something out of that. The four pillars, as I said repeating that, you've got the budgeting or the finance, you've got your land, you've got the house design and you've got cost and then you've got the site works, which is the cost, a collective word for marrying all that together. If you go to what you've heard of a class soils, S class soils, all that sort of stuff and what it means is if the soil is reactive, meaning when it gets wet, does it move? The more that goes, the more engineering you're going to, you're going to require. [01:14:37] Speaker B: So we're talking about expansion. Big cracks are starting to develop when it's dry, it sort of fills in again when it's wet. Is this a sort of. [01:14:46] Speaker C: Yeah. So if you've got. So for example One of the ones we did in Caversham was an S class site. So when you get that developed, you'll find that all the actual stormwater drains are built into the estate. So you don't have soak wells on your property. The roof plumber will just tap into the actual street drain and away the water goes down to a central pit and that takes all that excess volume of water off your block. But a standard soil, like a beach soil where we are from Yanchee. [01:15:10] Speaker B: No, it's. Yep. [01:15:12] Speaker C: And that's good as well because it drains. So everything's different, but with clay, the water sits on top. That's the other issue. [01:15:18] Speaker B: So you've obviously been working a long time in. In different areas of Perth, you're seeing different soils. I'm actually curious what. What are we dealing with? We're dealing with sandal along the coast. Sand, you said clay. [01:15:29] Speaker C: That's it, yeah. [01:15:29] Speaker B: Is that. There's nothing else? [01:15:30] Speaker C: Well, there's. It's varying forms of each of it. [01:15:33] Speaker B: Combination rock? Yes. [01:15:36] Speaker C: Yeah, different forms of rock. Albany's got lovely different rock. You've got acid sulfate type soils which you've generally got to dig out and then you've got to put cling filling. However, that leads me to another thing which I'm working with at the moment, which is a magnificent wall panel. It's been around for about 60 years. It's a concrete wall panel infused with Styrofoam B, which is fire rated. Imagine in your mind a 600 mil wide panel, tongue and groove either side on the left and right, and it's about 50mil thick or 75mil thick or 100mil thick. And it's been used around. It's in $12 million houses in Cottesloe, Swanwater, it's been around for years. In Sydney, it's in medical centres. Bottom line is we can put your walls up in your house. Concrete walls, hard masonry walls, in two days. So it's coming and it's the only product that I know of that you can actually have a masonry wall on a stump. Home for modular. [01:16:26] Speaker B: Is that in Qdale there? [01:16:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's part of the Rotary project, the tiny home. [01:16:31] Speaker C: That's part of it, yeah. Yeah. [01:16:33] Speaker B: We went there on a few weeks ago with our club and I had a look at this stuff. I know what you're talking about. We were challenged to pick up the hammer and smack it as hard as we could, mate. We could barely make a hole in it. [01:16:45] Speaker C: Well, this way. When I saw that my history, I'VE put money into it already. I think it's going to be a ripper because it's. What we need right now is to get this stuff. And I'm working on that at the moment with them and with a friend of mine who's a builder. I've known him for a long time and trust him. And we're working through designs and getting that panel. We're going to build a few first to get that up to speed. And we sell the panels to builders as well. So we're just in that early stages of revamping the business to go forward. But that's going to be a ripper. I know it's going to solve the biggest problem. You'll be able to build in five, six months easily. [01:17:15] Speaker B: Yeah. It was a fantastic product. It looked like it had Styrofoam mixed in through the concrete. [01:17:21] Speaker C: Specialized effectively. Yep. And that. That reduces the weight. [01:17:25] Speaker B: That's very light. Yeah. I was playing with these panels. Yeah. [01:17:28] Speaker C: And in a fire, that particular bead will actually just evaporate. So it's actually that same bead is used in mining when they pack the explosives. So it's the same product. So this product is a ripper. And it's easy to. To cut and do. But we're designing the home so that the windows are all set sizes. Don't have to cut. Don't have to do this cookie cutter. But we'll do modular later with those as well for. For country. And we're working on some of those at the moment. But that's a whole. Another copper conversation. [01:17:56] Speaker B: They're about to get very busy. That product will be copied. It's like you say, it's been used in cottage low in. In really big, expensive builds for quite some time now. [01:18:06] Speaker C: Yeah. But I don't think it was run well in the East. It's come over here now. So we're just. I'm working with the owner and what we're doing and I. A few of us are getting together and using our skills. And as far as I'm concerned, we want to get the first rungs of the ladder right. Because this is type of thing that will go like wildfire. You just got to be prepared and ready. So we're getting that organized now and it's. And it's moving, but we're not. [01:18:27] Speaker B: You won't be able to meet. [01:18:28] Speaker C: Meet orders locally, which is another great thing. [01:18:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. Just there in Qdale. Yeah. Good little factory. Well, the. The Rotary Club of Rockingham, they're working on putting some that, the tiny home project that that's coming over here, they're deploying one here. Similar. I think it's those products that they're using. [01:18:45] Speaker C: It is. They've got two of them actually on site now. So we're looking to do those to help out kids. [01:18:50] Speaker B: Not a bad little space. I mean I think the bedroom was probably a king size room. They have a little kitchenette and a really big bathroom. So it was. [01:18:58] Speaker C: Oh, and the undercover area, it's essentially a granny flat. [01:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:01] Speaker C: Which is another area which leads me into some investing discussion as well. And the, the granny flat is what we commonly know it as. If I was to do a residential home tomorrow, what would I be looking for? I would be doing a dual key home because it's all about cash flow, return. None of us can second guess what capital growth is going to be. And I mean no one. It seems to be some magic bullet. No, it's not. Get in the right, get in a decent area with the right infrastructure, the right parameters and then it's all about holding costs, which is cash flow. So rentals are key. [01:19:33] Speaker B: So you're talking about a dual key and a granny flat for three incomes. [01:19:36] Speaker C: No, no, I'll explain it because a lot of people may not know what that is. The dual key is essentially incorporating. It's a new word which is incorporating a granny flat. So in the old days you could only rent out a detached or under main roof granny flat to your family members. That then dropped a few years back and then you could only do a house with a granny flat on a minimum 450 square meters. Then it dropped to 350 square meters. Now it's open because they realize the crisis is there. My opinion is, and we've done quite a few of these and we did some in Bennett Springs. This was only two years ago. We did full dual quays in Bennett Springs for 700 and they rented around 1100 a week. So you've got a three bed, two bath with a single garage and a one bed, one bath. And you've got different configurations. [01:20:26] Speaker B: Of course you do. [01:20:27] Speaker C: So the ancillary is the technical word for a granny flat cannot exceed 70 square meters of living area. [01:20:33] Speaker B: So is it right that you can't exceed five bedrooms on the lot? So you either have three bedrooms on the house, two on the granny flat, four in the house, one on the granny flat before your rates start going up? [01:20:43] Speaker C: Never heard that. [01:20:44] Speaker B: No, no, that was something they were talking about here in Rocking. [01:20:47] Speaker C: Every council's different. So it May be councillors. I haven't heard that in all the other stuff we're doing. [01:20:53] Speaker B: Put it this way, because I hadn't heard the granny flat being rep. Referred to as a dual key. My understanding is. [01:20:58] Speaker C: Yeah, essentially what it is. [01:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah, you've got a lot with two different. [01:21:01] Speaker C: Two front doors. [01:21:02] Speaker B: Two front doors, yeah. [01:21:04] Speaker C: But one title. It's not duplexed, it's not titled. [01:21:07] Speaker B: My understanding of a dual key was where you have a home, call it a, say a four bedroom house, it has a great configuration where you can have. Well, you have to have a connecting door that has a lock on it. So you generally cover those up because. Because what you're trying to do here is run two tenancies, say two separate tenancies. Two separate people that don't know each other from the same house. They've got separate accesses, they've got their own keys, the dual key. But some of the rules, the guidelines would be had to have the connecting door, had to have only one plugged in, say to the main stove. The other one could be a countertop, could only have one internal laundry. The other one had to be outside, which is fine. Easy to do. [01:21:52] Speaker C: Yeah, that's an old version. Yeah, that's very inefficient, all of that. We wouldn't do separate accessing doors. So today when we do a dual key, we've got a proper fire rated wall between the two dwellings. [01:22:04] Speaker B: Fire, yeah. [01:22:05] Speaker C: The access is external, so you've got your own access outside. We have split meters from power, water and nbn. So you actually got your own. It's managed by the property manager general. [01:22:16] Speaker B: So this is a proper separate individual meter or are we talking about sub meters? [01:22:20] Speaker C: No, they're sub meters. [01:22:21] Speaker B: Sub meters. Yeah, it is sub power. A sub water meter. Yeah. So because the project that I'd worked on with the dual key concept, the idea of dual key was that the house becomes the dual key, meeting these parameters with the internal door and the laundry, the kitchen. Then the granny flat becomes the third income on the property. [01:22:41] Speaker C: No. Okay. [01:22:42] Speaker B: And we're not exceeding five bedrooms on the. On the approved. [01:22:45] Speaker C: I don't think that would be approved under a dual key premise. Because you can't exceed 70 square meters on the granny flat. [01:22:50] Speaker B: The granite's only 60 and the garage space isn't. No, isn't counted. Yeah. So it was the little laundry in the back of the granny flat that's counted. But the overall space, well, excluding the office, these places end up being pretty big when you look at 60 square meters. Plus the garage, plus the alfresco, it's a full house. Yeah. So I mean with some of the people I've worked with, they, they've built these things with a view to future for future subdivision. They're like a battle axe. Granite flats at the back, sometimes with laneway access and yeah. With a view to when. When the R codes change, they can subdivide them and it's just. It is a full house. [01:23:30] Speaker C: Yeah. That's a different, different target audience. But in keeping it simple on a general family residential block, I've done some recently in Lakelands and they were in the eight hundreds and they rent for over $1,000 a week. And that's the key that you're looking for is your ratio. Get your hand off your heart, put it on your head, so to speak. It's all about numbers and what can it do for that? Giving the home the best quality for the client as well. [01:23:54] Speaker B: The valuers tend to raise their eyebrows a little bit if they see the. If you've pushed, if you've done a good job on the front house, you've done it up nicely, you've attracted a really good tenant paying good rent, then you've come in with this granny flat at the back that's also attracted a really good tenant. The combined yield is very high. All of a sudden they can't ignore. [01:24:13] Speaker C: This enormous yield and even the councils actually, in most cases you don't need to go to planning anymore. So what does that tell you? Because they need to get these to help accommodate and there's lots of people out there, let's be frank about that. There's lots of people out there that actually just need a one better place and nobody's going to build a one bedder home from an investment point of view. And then you've got apartments. So we learnt that when we did the first few dual keys, we were renting the one bedders out at 500. [01:24:36] Speaker B: A week in Bennett Springs for 60 odd square meters. I mean it really is a one bedder with a study. It's very nice, it's very, it's comfortable. I mean you can use the second one as a, as a bedroom if you really wanted to, but really it's a, it's a comfortable study and a decent bedroom. [01:24:53] Speaker C: Well, you can. We design whatever we like and whatever the budget is and we work it backwards again, like I spoke before, clients got a budget X. What can we get on there to get a good yield? I did one recently in Bennett Springs. It was on A corner elbow block and that one was a three bed two bath with a double garage on the front and I did a firewall from left to right and on the back was a two by one with a single garage with their own driveway. It was a ripper. That was as close to a duplex as you'll get without subtitle subdividing it. So that, yeah, that one, that one's a 12 to 1300 a week rent. So you've got those factors to look at but you need to speak to someone that knows what they're doing. Is my first port of call on that. [01:25:31] Speaker B: Especially the details, you know like the, the sub power board. What's that going to cost? The, the, the sub water meter? [01:25:38] Speaker C: It's another few grand onto all that. It's not too bad. Xeon ratio. [01:25:41] Speaker B: Are there any common areas, is there any common people power that you can't charge the tenant for? How do you, how are you measuring that? Yeah, we did that with a share house once. [01:25:49] Speaker C: Well that share house is, is the new word for that is co living. [01:25:52] Speaker B: Co living. [01:25:53] Speaker C: So that's when you do a four bed, four bath home and you rent out each room individually. They have in their bedroom design you'll have a small, tiny, tiny kitchenette, sort of sink. Maybe you'll have a TV or a little toilet or something like that. You can do those in there. It's almost like one bed apartments in a bedroom, quite comfortable. Then you'll have a decent sized community kitchen. I would design the pantry so you could actually lock off four sections so you've got your own personal stuff just to eliminate problems and then you just pay in your rent which is done by your property manager, would cover your Internets, et cetera, et cetera. So there's lots of alternatives popping up and they're getting good traction. [01:26:28] Speaker B: There was some pretty good. There were some grants for building those co leaving spaces. I didn't see that. 10,000 per room and that was going back a few years ago now. [01:26:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:26:37] Speaker B: Or if you're stepping into a boarding house where you're getting into five, six, eight bedrooms. Yeah, there was some government Australia at. [01:26:46] Speaker C: The moment is, is ticking along nicely. Interest rates are holding. They'll probably come down. Who knows, we're guessing but they look that way. Perth has been running hot for a little while. Investing is all about the long term. Don't try and second guess it, don't try and be smart and try and think I'm going to make some good money in 12 months. It's probably cheaper to go to the Boerswood or Crown and lose your money there. [01:27:07] Speaker B: Month by month, they're measuring gains, but it's not a sustainable thing. [01:27:10] Speaker C: No. Well, a good way to learn how a boom goes is a boom keeps going up, Right. So you think, oh, it's still going up. If you can get hold of the right data. How. What percentage is it going up by now? Is that. If you're looking that on a graph, is that boom. Is that progression each quarter stop. It's still going up. But is that increase slightly lower than the quarter before? Is it slower? That's the beginning of the end. That's how you read a boom. [01:27:37] Speaker B: Sorry, can you repeat that? [01:27:38] Speaker C: So if you're looking at a graph. [01:27:39] Speaker B: Yes. [01:27:40] Speaker C: And this quarter, the property's gone up X amount percent. 20%. [01:27:43] Speaker B: 20%. Right. [01:27:44] Speaker C: And it might have done that the next quarter as well. Great. We're running hot the next quarter. All of a sudden it's only gone up 13%. Still gone up, though. And everybody's still got the news. Going up, it's going up. Then the next quarter, it's still going up. It's to going. Gone up another 8% while the writing was on the wall. [01:27:57] Speaker B: So the increase is starting to. [01:28:00] Speaker C: The increase is declining. So it's starting to taper off a bit. Then you've got to look at other factors. Now. [01:28:05] Speaker B: What's your assessment then, at the moment about the current market? [01:28:09] Speaker C: It's being fueled by population growth. So that's a very healthy boom because that means it's a required one. It wasn't. If you go back to the old 2008 boom that we had, that was a mining boom. So it had nothing. Property caught a cold off that. That's what happened. And we were more expensive than Sydney. That's not realistic. And that's why we're in the doldrums for the next 14, 15 years. [01:28:30] Speaker B: Tristan and I were talking about this earlier. What are the factors driving the scarcity at the moment of homes? And it's immigration. Whether it's new West Australians or new Australians, people coming into the country, regardless, we need to house them. [01:28:44] Speaker C: Well, you've also got this little thing called Orcus in this gorgeous little spot called Rockingham. $12 billion investment, huge. They're going to have 10,000 personnel coming in. There are houses needed everywhere, seven to 10,000 properties. So that's another factor. You've got the West Australian economy is huge. You've got the mining still ticking along. You've got so many factors. You've got the new airports going to be built. They're all gearing up for what is going to be what I would argue Perth is going to be quite a big city. [01:29:09] Speaker B: Well they're planning for. I mean people think that people don't think about. We touched on earlier that they're planning for things like the kids coming in, how many kids are going to come in, where are we going to fit them, how many teachers do we have for these kids? And I think the numbers are high enough to warrant two new schools in the Rockingham area because the kids numbers were underestimated. [01:29:31] Speaker C: I chaired a school board in yanship for 10 years and that one there was rocketing up and we went from 0 to 800 within about two or three years. Let me tell you that adds a lot of pressure. That school was designed for nine transportables. We were up to 13 and we were going to have to make some critical decisions at the time because we thought we were going to lose part of the oval. We pushed and pushed for another school and eventually we got one up there as well and that diluted a little bit and helped out. [01:29:57] Speaker B: It's not just the pressure on people's back pockets, on what mortgages are looking like, what it costs to run a household, what it costs to buy a house, what it costs to rent these days. It's all these other factors, things like August coming in. It's going to put pressure on our hospital system, our school system, our teachers. It's just like a chain reaction, isn't it? In all directions. [01:30:17] Speaker C: So asking about that question about Perth, if our median price had skyrocketed and was level with Sydney, I would suggest we've got a bit of pain coming but we haven't. This is a remarkable. We're still lower than Adelaide 855. Yeah and Melbourne's around the same sort of figure. Now that all depends on which research sector centre you're going through. [01:30:35] Speaker B: Yep. [01:30:35] Speaker C: I know domains are different to Correa, to Rhea or whatever the case, but let's just keep it at one which is a real estate institute. You're talking Melbourne as a housing market, not the city stuff that's very expensive but the general housing. Melbourne's about the same as Perth and Adelaide and it shouldn't be. It's too big a higher class city, way too cheap. To me that's an area that you want to look at because it's very undervalued in my opinion. [01:31:00] Speaker B: Future growth form. [01:31:01] Speaker C: It's already starting. It's already starting and put it this way we've set up that conduit now we've been looking, I've been looking at it for a while but I've got a very good friend over there that runs a land company like mine. I've known him for about 20 years and I'll only deal through them because I know what we're going to get. We get trust but we have got house and land packages in the Greater Melbourne area out to Bendigo, out to Shepparton in the five hundreds with a five on the front of it. Now for Perth that's just like. You've got to be kidding. [01:31:27] Speaker B: How far out does from Melbourne? [01:31:30] Speaker C: CBD is not that far back, about 30 odd k's out. [01:31:33] Speaker B: So the drive it's a different commute though. [01:31:36] Speaker C: Don't know exactly. You're probably, I don't know 50 minutes plus. [01:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Taking into account traffic and what. And what would you compare it to in Perth in terms of distance? [01:31:47] Speaker C: About 55k's about probably an anchor tail distance. [01:31:52] Speaker B: Okay that's not bad. [01:31:53] Speaker C: It's not bad at all. So you've got varying products. You've got the south, you've got the sorry the east and the west. The west being the Geelong side and then the east being the Cranbourne side those sort of things. We've got brand new townhouses just finished in the 600 thousands and early sevens. We've got brand new houses finished. We've got something over there called home pay which if you're going to build a house there's no repayments while you're building. We've got superannuation. Super. So people are interested in that. I've set up a very good professional team here. I've got an accountant that does all that and sets up the self managed super fund and will give you independent advice. Make it very clear we don't get any money out of that. We're not interested. We get paid from the house, that's it. But I'll set up a good team around you so you've got right advisors and they'll set that up. There's products for super you can even access. There's a product available, you can access 20% out of your super to buy your own home. [01:32:50] Speaker B: What are the sort of conditions on that? [01:32:52] Speaker C: It's a bit complex to go in here but it's got to be set up and there's another fund that gets paid into it's actually quite transparent and quite open. It's not a bad product but like with all of These sort of things enter them with caution. [01:33:03] Speaker B: But you're not having to because if you're buying with a super fund, then basically all proceeds have to go back into the super fund. But this isn't the case with this, it's a separate one. That's right. [01:33:14] Speaker C: That's getting a security super. [01:33:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's a security from your supervisor. [01:33:17] Speaker C: You can't lend it directly to yourself, it's got to go via another fund. But that fund is very cheap in reference to what it is. But that's a more complex area to go in. But keeping it simple. And you're looking to invest. A lot of people who have been homeowners here now for a while will now have plenty of equity. What's it doing for you? [01:33:32] Speaker B: Of course they do. [01:33:33] Speaker C: Don't risk it, as in give it. [01:33:34] Speaker B: Away that they've doubled it. [01:33:35] Speaker C: If you've got equity to do there, you can actually go and look at getting a property, look at what rent returns you're going to get, look what you can afford to pay do. And if it's starting in the fives or sixes. Well. [01:33:47] Speaker B: There are people based in Perth here that. I mean, you're discussing this idea of buying a townhouse in Melbourne for 600,000 or high fives or whatever the product is. How safe is that for people to. To be investing over there in another state? Different laws. How is it different? [01:34:05] Speaker C: It's no different. [01:34:06] Speaker B: No different? No, no. [01:34:07] Speaker C: It's just buying property. I've been in dealing with property, Queensland, Victoria for 20 odd years. There's a few little nuances on the buying contract and those sort of things and you can do your homework with some of the property management laws, but other than that, not a great deal different. [01:34:22] Speaker B: The reason I ask is it seems like a big feat. I can't get people to drive to Whiteman from Rockingham. [01:34:29] Speaker C: The old adage is to invest in the home across the road so I can keep an eye on it. [01:34:33] Speaker B: Yes. [01:34:34] Speaker C: Let me tell you, that's not the smart, smartest way to invest. [01:34:37] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:34:37] Speaker C: We hear it a lot and I do understand it. [01:34:39] Speaker B: It's safe and it's a. It's a smart move because Melbourne is on the move. [01:34:43] Speaker C: What's fear? Generally lack of knowledge. So if we can help you with the more knowledge you can understand. We're not pressured. [01:34:51] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, mate, well, let's have a quick break because the time has flown by. We'll come back after the break, after a few songs and we'll do a quick wrap up. Hey, Mr. Does sounds good. You'll listen to the Perth Property Bros with Carlos and Darren. [01:35:04] Speaker A: The best music from the 60s to today. IPL radio. [01:35:10] Speaker B: And we are back with the Perth Property Bros with Carlos and Darren Meekins today also the president of the Rotary Club of Scarborough. As we were just discussing. [01:35:19] Speaker C: I wear several hats. [01:35:20] Speaker B: Several hats. You're not just developing land in Melbourne. All over in all areas of Perth. Huge, huge numbers in terms of land and. And lots that you develop. But you're the president of the Rotary Club and big numbers. You're pulling in with new guests, new visit. Sorry members. Guests of visitors I'm sure as well. [01:35:40] Speaker C: Look, Rotary for me is something I'll never leave. I actually don't even think I'd like. I don't know who I would be without that as a personality. I think it's a wonderful aspect and it's the volunteer side of it. I'm a second generation Rotarian dad was in for. [01:35:54] Speaker B: I didn't know that. [01:35:55] Speaker C: 5:36 years he was president of Scarborough as well back in 84. [01:35:58] Speaker B: 85 Paul Harris fellow. [01:35:59] Speaker C: Oh definitely one. And mum and we would just grew up with you know over 35 exchange students over many years in the home which helped cultivate our mind culturally and understand the world and learn. Mum and dad were very hospitable. We were on the Japanese exchange committee for about 11 years. They took teams up there. So did I. There's a. There's a hole history of Rotary and I love it. But the Scarborough Club has been around since 1956 and we're based in Scarborough of course hence the name what we're famous for. We've done a lot of small charitable aspects and acts all over for years even helping the surf club etc but the most notable are if you've ever been down to the Scarborough beachfront, you've seen the big clock tower there. [01:36:43] Speaker B: Yes. [01:36:43] Speaker C: Well that was from US in 1979 so that represented Western Australia's 150th and Rotary International 75th. There are two time capsules located underneath that. When they've got a plan but it's a good question. [01:36:56] Speaker B: We don't know when they're going to be. [01:36:58] Speaker C: We might need to open one soon. We'll have a look at that. Actually our club is actually 70 years old. Next year maybe I'll just. [01:37:05] Speaker B: I'm coming. [01:37:06] Speaker C: I've got an idea. [01:37:07] Speaker B: I've always wanted to open a time capsule. [01:37:09] Speaker C: Yeah, so that's from 1979. [01:37:11] Speaker B: So. [01:37:11] Speaker C: So that's that one. Oh can you imagine when they canvass the public in the day this is a bit of trivia for everybody. They canvass the public in the day and said what do you want down there? They said we need a clock so our kids know what time it is to come home and that was hence the starting go a few years back I think the city of Stirling which are great people and Mark Irwin's a great fellow we know him well the mayor I remember they were going to. They were doing all their work this is prior to Mark's Mark sitting at the time and they were going to relocate or store the clock tower and put it back later at a later date and we went yeah, maybe not. So we heritage listed it so it's. It's all lock, stock and barrel now. So she's good as gold. [01:37:54] Speaker B: These things have a way of disappearing or not going back mate. [01:37:56] Speaker C: Yeah, correct. So it's an icon for the area so it's a fantastic item. Another one that we do is the Karen Up Swap Mart that you may have heard around it's been around since 1989 so 36 years now. [01:38:07] Speaker B: That's at the shopping centre? [01:38:08] Speaker C: Yep, that's underground Every Sunday morning or just about it's karenupswapmart.org au we're trying to rebuild that. We got knocked around a bit with the COVID and also Karenup had a massive amount of construction works and redevelopment which is just an amazing shopping centre it's the number one in West Australia it turns over a billion dollars a year now they have 13 and a half million visitors a year. It's just a stage stunning shopping centre and it's a great feel going there but they've looked after us immensely so that's why I'm very proud of the relationship with them and shout them out for the Karan Ops Shopping centre management. [01:38:40] Speaker B: Well you run a Rotary event there. [01:38:42] Speaker C: It's a charitable event where $2 entry, $10 a bay and it raises good funds and that leads me to the third item which is critical because without that little old swap up this third item doesn't exist. Now to the listeners out there that heard of wheelchairs for kids I'm sure you have have. We founded that Scarborocha in 1998 and the history of that was one of our members brother in laws was in a Queensland club and he went to Fiji and he got the idea of making wheelchairs out of bicycle parts so they brought it back to Queensland and the idea got around. Long story short they put a big fundraising together I believe I Could be wrong, but I believe Ray Martin was involved, the famous. And they raised probably eighty hundred thousand. But then they realised they weren't really equipped to run it, didn't know what to do next. So the linkage come back to us and Scarborough in its day was full of captains of industry and still have some pretty heavy hitters. Now. We've worked well all of the Osbourn park region and they brought it over and the rest is history. And Gordon Hudson, bless him, he's 92, he's one of the foundation members. He was CEO for 20 years. He was the one that ran it all. You've probably heard of our gorgeous fellow brother, Ollie Pickett. He came in about a year or two after it started. So not founding, but in about a year or two after, as we love Ollie, he's now the West Australian of the Year. West Australian Senior of the Year and Australian Senior of the Year currently. So the accolade for that, by the way, when he got presented by the Prime Minister in Canberra straight after that speech. And for the next month, nearly quarter of a million to $300,000 coming in, donations from all around the country. Just out of the blue, Wheelchairs for kids is amazing. So that's up at Wangara and we've made over 65,000 wheelchairs now. [01:40:22] Speaker B: He spoke at the Rotary Conference. Yes, yes. I actually didn't see the wheelchair up close. So it is made from bicycle parts. Is that still the case anymore? No, no, no, no, no. Okay. [01:40:32] Speaker C: It's about. I forget what model it is now. 5, 6, 7 or 8 or something like that. But it's. It's now actually WHO, World Health Organization. [01:40:39] Speaker B: Approved, it's a different standard. It's. [01:40:40] Speaker C: It's got an element of cerebral palsy that it's approved for and it's adjustable as well, so it will grow with that child. And it's robust, that it can go into these villages with mud, sand, soil, whatever the case is. [01:40:53] Speaker B: I remember Ollie talking about that. [01:40:54] Speaker C: A shout out to all the other peripherals that people don't get. You've got 250 volunteers up there that make these with a line to get in. But then we had Beppy, who's an amazing lady. We've got Beppy's Corner there where we've got all the quilts and the fluffy toys come through there because with every chair that goes out has a quilt and a fluffy toy for them to. For the child to actually enjoy. So look, it's only not even scratching the surface around the world, but we're the only company in the world, or any charitable organisation in the world that makes them and just gives them away. On that level, we don't charge. [01:41:24] Speaker B: That's incredible, Dan. [01:41:25] Speaker C: And each chair is about 375. I think nowadays with the way costs have gone up, it's not that expensive. Not in ratio to a child's life. [01:41:33] Speaker B: No, no. And with the donations and the, the money that you raise, I mean, you can actually put out quite a few chairs. [01:41:39] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but Scarborough Club, we've redefined it a bit. It's not an old man's club as the old perception is. We're quite vibrant. We've got a mix of people from mid-20s right up to 90. We have a networking evening once a month in the very fancy City View Room at the Karen Up Shopping centre. [01:41:55] Speaker B: That was the other. [01:41:56] Speaker C: Bringing people together. You've been to that one. Just there to chat and learn and the connections are what life's all about. The relationships and things happen when you, when you get together and just talk to each other and do our amazing work. So, yeah, that's my other whole world. [01:42:09] Speaker B: No, it's an amazing world. And I'm always in awe of you, Daz, because you, you run the Rotary Club of Scarborough. You've grown the Rotary Club of Scarborough. A lot of accolades coming from the DG about how that works, how the work you've done, bringing people in. You're running all these projects and you're running a development company and you're dealing with Melbourne as well. You've got a family. [01:42:30] Speaker C: Yes, I think I have. [01:42:31] Speaker B: You think you have? [01:42:32] Speaker C: Last time I checked they were still there. No, they're very good. [01:42:35] Speaker B: No, it's a balance. I've met the kids, they're quite beautiful. [01:42:38] Speaker C: Remember the four pillars of purchasing. It doesn't all happen at once. [01:42:40] Speaker B: No. [01:42:41] Speaker C: So we, we separate it all out and we do bits when you've got to do bits. So I don't think I could sit at home twiddling my thumbs. No. [01:42:48] Speaker B: We were discussing this with a Rotarian from, from Bruce Rock the other day. Her name's Alison Vance. I don't know if you've met Alison. [01:42:54] Speaker C: The. [01:42:55] Speaker B: I think if we hit that one Powerball, mate. If I hit that one Powerball, I think I'd still be. My week would still look very much the same. I'd still be doing the radio show but it'd probably be Rotary based show. I'd still be going to Rotary, I'd still be doing my Marine Rescue B and I would become Mr. Perfect or Rotary. [01:43:11] Speaker C: Look at all the things you do. [01:43:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I do them because I love them and I still keep doing them, you know, and I think that's the sort of passion that you have for your work. So it's. [01:43:21] Speaker C: I think if I got the Powerball, I'd probably just play in property for my own amusement and I'd probably be a Rotarian full time. [01:43:27] Speaker B: To be quite blunt, I would step into being a Rotarian full time. [01:43:30] Speaker C: I love it. [01:43:31] Speaker B: Definitely professional Rotarian. Then you'd have the time to do, to step up into the big roles which need a lot more time and energy. [01:43:38] Speaker C: It might be a cliche, but it's not corny. Helping people, helping others. There is nothing greater, no feeling greater, than giving and doing it properly. Not giving with want of a reward, just give. Because the world has a wonderful thing that comes around and taps you on the back. So there you go, you've done a good job. Something will come from somewhere. [01:43:56] Speaker B: Service above self. [01:43:57] Speaker C: Yeah, that's our motto and I love it. But our club's full of genuine top people and so are many Rotary clubs. [01:44:03] Speaker B: Lovely. [01:44:03] Speaker C: Go on, son. [01:44:04] Speaker B: I've been to your club, it was a lovely club and hopefully you're going to come to mine. Tonight I'll introduce you to the team. We were having dinner at 6:30 at the Safety Bay Bowling Club. [01:44:11] Speaker C: I think that'll be good. [01:44:13] Speaker B: So I'm looking forward to introducing you to the team. You've met some of them already, but no, Darren, it's been incredible having you, mate. I'm so glad that you made the trip all the way from Yanchep. Hopefully the traffic won't be so bad for you on the way back because there shouldn't be any. [01:44:26] Speaker C: You've only just scratched the service, mate. But hopefully your listeners got some value added today and that's the whole objective, to give them something to chew on and learn and maybe gain. If you can go out with some of that knowledge, it might save you a fair bit of money when you go to buy a property just because you're armed. [01:44:40] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Right. Now, in terms of reaching Darren at Land HQWA, his mobile number is 0418-856-7727. [01:44:50] Speaker C: Not 956956? [01:44:52] Speaker B: Yeah, 0418-956727. I'll repeat that again correctly. 0418-95-6727. Or Darren at Land HQWA. So you can reach out to Darren on all things Rotary, all things land and Melbourne investment, which sounds quite, quite interesting. [01:45:14] Speaker C: You Know you're getting older. A bit of trivia when I've had that mobile phone number since 1992. [01:45:20] Speaker B: An 0418 number. Yeah, well, I actually, my number starts with 0419 because Dad's first mobile number was an 0419 number. And I thought I really want an 0419 number from back in the. Back in the day. Now, just a quick plug for the Rotary Club of Rockingham. We've got the Mind, the Walk. It's a mental health walk that's happening on the 2nd of November and it's actually a really cool event. It's actually a bit of a tour around Rockingham. You go off in different groups with different guides and they'll give you a bit of a heritage tour about Rockingham and all these different key points of interest. It's a fantastic morning. It kicks off at about 8:30 for the guided tours and they leave every half an hour or so. But there's heaps to do for the kids. We're gonna have a musician there. West Eyes Wildlife is gonna be back again. The greyhound's gonna be back again. We're gonna have some mini DIY facials in half an hour. Book slots, raffles. And Margaret river to you. Gifting, which is an amazing, amazing business which I use for all my sales. I send off all my gifts with Margaret river to you. We've got the yoga back, we've got the bootcamp, the swing dancing, castaway sculptures by the sea. It is a fantastic morning. Sunday 2nd November will be at Rotary park, so don't miss it. You're welcome to come. [01:46:36] Speaker C: Sounds good. [01:46:37] Speaker B: Go for a beautiful walk around the town. So again, I appreciate you coming down. There was so much information today I think we could do. We might even have to do a two or three or four part series on all the work you do because there's so much information even over the break talking about how much it is that you know and how much it is that you do. We can't just jam it all in a couple of days. [01:46:57] Speaker C: I really only just touched the surface and if the listeners are interested, I'm more than happy to come back. [01:47:02] Speaker B: That's right. So remember darrenandhqwa.com and the website www.landhqwa.com. all right, Darren, I'm gonna finish up with a song and then our next show is coming on. [01:47:16] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. [01:47:16] Speaker B: Thank you very much for making the trip down, mate. I hope you can visit us again. You can always call in as well. We can always do a call in and you can be our Yanchip correspondent if that interests you. You've been listening to the Perth Property Bros with Carlos and Darren Meekins today from Landhat. Qwa, thanks for listening, guys. We'll be back again next Monday and hopefully Josh will be better. [01:47:38] Speaker A: More music, better mental health. Only on IPL Radio.