Small Talk Big Ideas - Terry Ryder - Hotspotting

Thanks for joining us for the Small Talk Big Ideas podcast, a podcast to enrich your soul, where we have conversations with inspiring people about all things property, business and life. And now the host of Small Talk Big Ideas, Ian Ugarte.

On today's podcast, Small Talk Big Ideas, we have the great Terry Rider and property analyst that's done amazing work and has been in the industry since the early 80s. Interesting how he started and an interesting point of vulnerability in the middle of this podcast. I urge you to stay on. Listen to the end. Enjoy. Terry Rider, Small Talk Big Ideas Terry Rider, Hotspotting.com yes.

You are a very well respected. Do I call you a property analyst?

Property analysis is probably a nice, a nice way to put it. Yeah.

How long have you been doing that for?

Well, I've been puddling around with, writing about and researching real estate since the early 80s.

That's when I was rather surprisingly unexpectedly appointed property editor when I was working at the Courier Mail as a journalist in 1982. So I've been. That created the specialty that I have today, indirectly.

Like, how did you get offered the property? Like, obviously you had to know something about property.

Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you? But actually, no. Right. And it does say something about the way newspapers are run. Certainly they haven't got any better, I'm pretty sure. But yeah, I, when I remember when I was called into the editor's office and he said, we've decided to make you property editor. And I said, but I don't know anything about real estate. He said, well, that doesn't matter. He, you'll find out it's about houses and stuff.

And stuff.

Yeah, that's what he said. So me being me, I've got to do this. I'm going to do it as well as I can. So I decided to find out as much about it as I can. And actually the real estate section of the Curie Martin those days was like a page once a week and I'd sort of turned it into eight, nine, ten pages a week. And just when I thought it was going really well, I'm starting to learn something. He wanted to move me into some other part of the newspaper and I resisted strongly. No, no. I'm really just starting to find out about this stuff and I'm starting to like it.

Right.

So please leave me there. So I did that for four years, then went to the Financial Review as a property specialist. And yeah. And out of that evolved getting out into the community and doing my own thing.

So let's jump around quite a bit. Covid hit, you know, in March.

Really.

You were just talking then about April and how everyone was very scared.

Yeah, I call April the panic month. Now we had regular customers who were subscribers to some of our products wanting to cancel because they thought they had to batten down the hatches that was going to get really bad. We managed to talk quite a few of them out of it, but we started having conversations about, well, where's the opportunity in all this? So we just decided to start doing more digital things that we'd wanted to do for a long time but didn't really have the time.

And we started marketing in different ways. We started doing a lot more webinars and at that time people were really hungry for information about what was happening and what was going to happen. So we were getting much bigger audiences than we normally would for webinars. And so it actually turned into our best every year. 2020 was our best year for income. And 2021 is looking pretty good as well.

Funny you should say that because we had exactly the same outcome. And I believe that you and I were probably one of the very few that were saying, ease up here. This is actually going to be a really good year. You know, it's like a tiny mid cycle dip that's only going to last a month or two. I me, because of my ear to the ground and being on the forefront of speaking to agents and watching what's going on. You, you're a great analyst. What's the basis of you saying, you know, 2020 was going to be okay and 21 is going to be better?

Well, I think the key thing here with you and me, what we were saying, and maybe guys like Simon Presley from Propertyology, who I respect a lot, is that we are real estate specialists. That's what we do. And the people who are getting all the airplane media are not. They're economists and they turn their attention to real estate and they tend to think of Australia as a single market, but they only think about it, talk about it once in a blue moon. And they, they don't, they're never out there at the coal face like, like you are with what you do. They're sitting in their ivory tower offices looking at computer screens, at graphs on a screen and they say, oh look, Australian property prices are doing X. And as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as Australian property prices. So. But it's really, you know, we're living and breathing real estate research and analysis every day and, and I've been doing it for a long time, almost 40 years, so developed a pretty good understanding of how markets work. And I think that's one of the reasons why we and others like us, including. You got it right. One of the things that we. But I've learned over the time I've been doing real estate is real estate is incredibly resilient. I've. I've seen some major booms in Australia, a couple, because they're quite rare, genuine nationwide property booms in that time. But I haven't seen any busts. I've seen corrections. I've seen prices come off their peak and maybe drop a little, but there's never been a bust. And I've seen real estate perform incredibly well through the GFC, for example, and through the recession of the early 90s. Real estate hung tough then as well. And I think one of the things is that, and what we saw it in evidence last year, when people are in uncertain times and when they're afraid, they retreat to safety. And real estate is perceived in this country to be safe and solid. And I think that's one of the factors, one of the factors that kept real estate strong last year.

Yeah, I was just hearing you speak down the bottom there, and you Talked about the 16 different points of why you believe the market's strong. Because, you know, they're talking about the fact that the market is going to boom. But we're already booming, aren't we?

We are. We're right in the middle of it. And I thought, you know, in the second half of last year, I thought most parts of Australia were starting to boom already. And, yeah, I've got 16 dot points I've been thinking about now, why is it happening? And I've been making my list of reasons because the economists keep talking about record low interest rates as the single factor, which makes me. Well, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry because it's so frustrating because media just accept this as a fact. You know, it's record low interest. Obviously, it's interest rates. Now. We've had low interest rates for years in this country. It hasn't suddenly happened. Australians haven't suddenly realized that we've got low interest rates. There's all these other factors and, yeah, 16 dot points. And, you know, as is always the case, it's complicated, it's complex. There's all these different elements happening, and part of it's the human psyche and people in lockdown thinking about their life choices and people being afraid and retreating to safety. Bricks and mortar, expats coming back from overseas.

Vacancies being so low and that's having an impact on rents and then prices. You know, there's quite a long list. Vendors haven't come to the party much yet, so there's rising demand, but listings haven't kept up, so that's putting pressure on prices.

A really simple thing that I picked up was, you know, we do a lot of conversions into co living properties around the country, and every certifier that we were putting stuff into was getting stuff back to us really quickly. I'm going, mate, it usually takes you 7 days, 10 days to get stuff to me. You're doing it in two days. What's the story? And he goes, oh, look, I can't. I can't understand. I don't. You know, all of them were saying the same thing. I don't understand. Two months later, people sitting at home, sitting there, looking at their walls, going, you know that Renault we're going to do, let's get the approval done now? Because I've been here too long thinking about it. And that's when it all kicked in after, you know, two months, after April.

Yeah. It's interesting because the figures just came out quite recently about the level of renovations. So it's not just people buying real estate, not just people moving, but also there's a lot of people doing renovations. And that, I think is a product of lockdown and people with time on their hands or stuck at home or thinking about, you know, people learn how to save. In the pandemic year, I think it taught young Australians who are wondering, how the hell do we get a deposit together? Well, they found out when they're in lockdown and couldn't go out and spend money on entertainment.

God forbid we talk about Smash avos.

I was trying to get through this without referring to that, but. But, you know, that's the syndrome, you know, and I found that myself. And I suddenly started realizing that I've got money left over that I don't normally have left over at the end of each month. What's going on? Well, I, you know, I, firstly, I can't. I love to travel and I can't. No, it can't even go interstate with. With my work. So stuck at home, which is okay. Not spending as much on the things I normally spend on. And I think that's been a factor. People have got money, I've learned how to save. They're renovating or they're putting their savings into an investment cycles.

There's a lot of people out there talking about cycles, you know, Phil Anderson 18 year cycle and you know that that should be hitting in 2026, that the next downturn is going to happen there and it's going to be a bit of a doozy, that's what he's saying. You know, every year there's a guy that comes out from America, he won't mention his name but he's always talking about a dent in the market. It's, you know, how do you, how do you post cycles and, and people that talk doom and gloom like that.

Yeah, look, look, I don't, I don't think in terms of cycles at all. I do notice that in Australia we tend to have a genuine national wide property boom once every 15 to 20 years. They're not very frequent and you know, when I was first getting to real estate people were talking about seven year cycles. I just, it doesn't pan out like that. It's kind of dictated by events that happen and sometimes the events are unexpected. Nobody predicted, well one or two people did predict that the world was going to have a pandemic but nobody saw 2020 coming in detail. Nobody really predicted the, the GFC, although some people subsequently claimed that they did.

Look, as far as I'm concerned, real estate markets arise out of local economies and that's why we usually have lots of different scenarios playing out in different parts of Australia. Usually have some that are booming, some that are rising moderately, some that are stagnating and some that are falling, some that are crashing, mostly mining towns. It's very rare that everywhere is doing the same thing at the same time. That's because it's local economies and what's happening in that local economy. So we are interested in what's happening with economies. Are they growing, are they creating jobs and in particular is there an infrastructure spend happening? We both know the Sunshine coast really well. It's been transformed by infrastructure spending big time.

We've got some big companies now basing themselves on the sunshine. I mean UE's on the sunshine coast, although most of them are working from home now.

Talk about that. I mean that's a big hit to the property market in a positive way. People being able to move out of Metro and go to other areas and work from home.

Yeah, it's a huge factor and it's been underway for some time. This population data show Sydney's been using losing population to internal migration for 10 years, Melbourne for the last three or four years. So it's been underway for A while it's about technology and people saying, okay, we can work remotely, therefore we can access a different lifestyle. And more and more people are making that choice. And the pandemic year has kind of sped it up, turned it into a bit of a stampede. And now media saying it was caused by the pandemic, but it wasn't really. It's been underway for a while and so technology is having that impact.

I was looking at an article recently on net migration and sitting in at number two was WO that received another 681 people in the last year. Sitting at number one is Queensland with 7237 net migration from other states. Do you think those people that were thinking moving in the next 10 years also made those decisions to decide to come earlier?

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think the pandemic, the lockdowns had people at home and with time on their hands not able to do what they would normally do. So time to think and reassess. And I think people did reassess their, their choices.

I mean, I made that choice a quarter of a century ago. And you probably made it some time.

Ago, 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah.

But people in that situation probably asking the question, what are we doing and why are we doing it? Because I think a lot of people feel they have to be in the big cities for their careers. And more and more people realize, well, actually we don't really need to, there are some other options. And more and more people have decided to make those choices because, you know, if you move to, I don't know, you move to a Sunshine coast or say a Bendigo in Victoria or somewhere like Orange in New South Wales, you're not really sacrificing much. You know, there's not much you're missing. And, and if, if you want to access what the big city has to offer, it's only in the case of all those places I mentioned, one to two hours away and you can go there and access it. But I live an hour from the CBD of Brisbane, but the only time I go to Brisbane is to go to the airport to fly somewhere.

And even still, you know, how often do you really need to go to Brisbane to fly out of Brisbane? Unless you're going to like, I can fly out to Adelaide from Sunshine coast if I wanted to.

That's right.

And New Zealand.

So I imagine when I moved to a hill change town not far from Brisbane that I'd be popping down to Brisbane a lot. But it doesn't happen that way because everything that I like everything I need is available in some form locally. And so you move to these sorts of places, you're not sacrificing much, but you're gaining a lot, you know, I mean, I live in a town where there's no traffic lights, where you can get a park on the main street and you walk into the butcher and they greet you by name.

And maybe I shouldn't mention, but I will. I never lock my doors. You don't need to.

I've got fly screen in my doors, like at the front of my place that you were just down there. It's just a full fly screen front. So in the middle of summer, if you want to come in my place, as long as you can open fly screen, you're right.

Yeah. And people say to me they're amazed they don't lock my doors. And I say, hell, I don't even close my door.

I don't have a key for the house up here. The two bedder that we've got up here, I don't know where the key is.

But all these things have value. I think Australians generally don't rate safety as much. You know, most people in most countries of the world don't have our level of safety. It's a huge commodity, I reckon. But living in a country town.

It.

Has things that really have value. It's a great place to bring up kids and there's still good schools available and all of that. You're not sacrificing anything.

I recently did a session on Ticker TV about hotspots and how hotspots are a myth. And you've got hotspotting.com au my point around that was that people in the FOMO buy in the hotspots. And even though your business is called hotspotting.com I call them a warm spot. I want to buy in a warm spot or a lukewarm spot because I know there's going to be something happening in the next year or two years. Do you want to comment about that? Because it really drives me insane watching people suggesting dentist and taxi drivers suggesting that they should go and buy in that area because it's just had an incredible last 12 months. It's a bit too late, isn't it?

Absolutely, yeah. It all depends how you define hotspots. And maybe in hindsight it's not a great name for the business, but I mean it's.

It's a great name for the business, but I don't think warmspot.com would be great. Warmspotting.com you make a good point.

Look, we always take a long term view. So our definition of hotspot is an area that's going to outperform long term. And our whole goal with what we do is to identify areas that are going to become hot spots before they do. So. Yeah, we're looking for warm spots as well. We're trying to tell what. For example, we're in the process of removing certain very hot locations from our reports now because we figure there's no point in telling people about these places anymore. They're really hot right now. And so we're looking for the warm spots. You know, we're interested in places like Toowoomba, which is probably now hot. But you know, when we first started talking about it in earnest maybe six months ago, it was just starting to warm up and we could see what was coming. I've become interested in a place like Bundaberg for example, which no one talks about much, but I actually visit there a lot because my in laws live up there and I'm very impressed. When I drive around it feels prosperous in the country that is the most incredible market garden country, you know, for growing stuff. The richest, reddest soil I've ever seen anywhere. And the state government spending one and a half billion dollars on a hospital up there and the ports expanding. There's a whole lot of stuff happening. And typical houses cost in the 200 thousands.

And it's still got the backlash of the flood that went through there 10 years ago where people are still thinking about that. Yeah, it's an interesting thing because the next question I was going to ask you was about intuitive feel. Like I, I do my research, I look at my numbers and I do all of that. There is a component of what I do in business and in property and where I'm going to purchase that has to feel right. And you say Bundy feels right.

Yeah.

How much of that has come into you over the last 30 odd years to get to point where you are now?

I think it's a great point. That's a really good point. And, and I think it's one of the most important points we can make is that at the end of the day it comes down to a judgment call. And it's based on your experience, your gut feel. Having looked at all the evidence. I constantly encounter people with what I do who are trying to develop algorithms to forecast the places that are going to show the best growth. And I say that's interesting. Good luck with that. No one's Ever succeeded. Because real estate doesn't work like that. You know, you look at all the evidence and then you make a judgment call. And I do that with everything that we do. It comes down to how it feels. And the thing about Bundaberg that I liked was my. My partner's dad took me for a drive because I hadn't been there for a while. And what impressed me was that there were no empty shops. And it's very rare.

Good sign.

Yeah. And all the parks and gardens were beautifully cared for. Everything was manicured. It just wreaked prosperity. And. And those things actually matter because you go to most regional centers, like I was in Mackay maybe 18 months ago, and it's got a big future, I think. But there are lots of empty shops. They've been through some tough times. Bundaberg, none.

Bundy doesn't have an offshoot reliance on mining either.

True.

Mackay does, being a port town and all.

And it just so happened while I was there, I was. I was tuning into ABC TV and they were doing one of those country hour type programs. And there was Bundaberg talking about there was someone who grew strawberries and they were absolutely thriving. And then there was somebody else who was growing herbs. I thought, this makes sense because the. The country around Bundaberg is so rich for growing things. And a big proportion of Australia's, I don't know, macadamias come from there and lots of other things. So there's. There's tourism, there's sugar cane, there's agriculture. There's the fact that there's two sort of major brewing companies based there. I think people get them mixed up and think they're the same one, but the one that makes Bundy, the famous Bundy rum is one of them. Then there's the Bundaberg Brewing Company that makes all sorts of other things like ginger beer.

Yeah. And that. No alcohol.

Yeah. And they're. They're big employers. They're big series businesses. And they've got an export port there and they've got the Mon Repo turtle thing, which I visited recently. It's very impressive. Interesting. And then Bagara, which is a lovely sort of seaside enclave that, you know, million dollar properties reside. So there's a lot to that place that most people would. Most people wouldn't have Bundaberg on their radar screen. But.

Yeah, so you gotta. You gotta feel of a place that feels right, looks right, and. And for you might feel right. For me, when I drive through, I go, I'm not quite sure because that's my level of, of intuition. But to have a Class 5 hospital going in there, that's a big step for an area. When they started announcing those, that's, that's a good outcome.

So probably a good process is. I used to have a. A motorhome. I called it my mobile office. I had all my insignia all over it, the branding. I used to go out on research safaris and, and visit places. I just don't have time to do it now, but it was a great thing to do and I would discover places like Bundaberg and I mean, one trip I went all the way down to South Australia. I was in Adelaide, I went down to Wialla, came back through Broken Hill and went to places that I normally wouldn't see. And, you know, you can do a lot of research and tap into media, online, all that sort of thing, but until you visit a place, you don't get to feel it, you don't really get to understand what it's about. And I kind of wish I had more time to do that now because it was really informative and it alerted me to places that I needed to put on the radar screen and, and get some more data on.

Is it just you? You've got. Obviously got a few talent, a couple of talent in the office that I know about. Like, are you the man or do you have someone else helping you with pulling data and putting stuff together? I mean, I've got Rebecca that pulls data for me.

Yeah. I've got a team of half a dozen people in various forms and the team's growing and I hope it'll grow a bit more so I don't have to work so many hours, but it's a little bit too reliant on, on my expertise. But there's, you know, we've got a core team of five or six people doing data and.

Digital things and marketing, I think.

Let's talk about Terry Rider, the person I mean. Born in Brisbane.

No way. Born in a very small town in the south island of New Zealand.

So you're a Kiwi. You know, Australia's already claimed you, they've claimed Russell Crowe, you're. You're number two.

And Sam Neill and anyone else who's successful until they stuff up completely and then they become Kiwis again. Yeah, yeah. I was. There was. There was something on Facebook. Facebook, you know, they shut me down.

Actually, I was going to bring that up because it was only just this morning. They've, you know, to me it sounds like Facebook's throwing all the toys out of the cot because the Australian government was putting pressure on them. And you've been shut down as well.

Yeah. And I'm saying, why am I caught up in this? I'm just a real estate researcher. Analyst. But no, they shut down my Facebook page, which ultimately I don't give a damn about because it's not really terribly central to what we do. But.

Yeah, but just bad behavior. And I think they're going to shoot themselves on the foot big time.

They told you that they're going to reinstate. Have you got any?

Well, no, they don't. They don't condescend to speak to underlings like, like us. They didn't tell us they were doing or why they did it. We're making inquiries to find it. But the people on my team who, who deal with these people regularly say, you know, that's Facebook. They're incredibly arrogant.

They just, they are.

You know, they think.

And they're bullies.

They think they run the world. But anyway, going back to the original point, there was, there was a question on what, what is that where you're from? What's it best known for? And I had to put down a, A, a renowned sheep stealer because my region was named after this guy who actually was a sheep stealer and his famous dog has got a statue just up the road at the. The lake that's just up the road from my hometown.

What's the name of town?

Fairly.

Fairly.

Yeah. Yeah. I used to call it fairly awful.

But actually I used to. I always refer to my hometown as Bug Tussle. And Bug Tussle was the town that the Beverly Hillbillies came from before they struck oil and went to move to California.

Yep. So how old were you when you left it?

19.

So you grew up, then your parents stayed and you left?

Yeah, I couldn't wait to get out of there. And every time I moved, I moved further away. It's a beautiful, you know, New Zealand's gorgeous, the South Island. I love it. I go back a lot, but. And the towns in a valley surrounded by mountains. It's. But I didn't want to be there and so I went and studied journalism up in Wellington and work for newspapers in New Zealand. And then.

I came to Australia for a year to play rugby and, you know, just have a working holiday and then go back to New Zealand. But I never went back.

So. Union league.

Union.

Union. And so you never went back. So you came to Brisbane straight up?

Ipswich, actually. I worked on the Queensland Times at Ipswich because I was A journalist. And then I went from there to the Courier Mail in Brisbane.

So I lived in Brisbane for a while.

Yeah. And looking back on those days, the most important lesson to impart to young people watching and listening today is you own good real estate, you never sell it. Because I sometimes drive past the real estate like in a good suburb of Balmoral, not far from the center of Brisbane. I bought a home for 850 grand sitting on a hill with views up the river.

So sorry, 850 or eight and a half.

Sorry, no, for 50.

50 grand.

$50,000 for this humble house, but on a great block of land with views.

Up the river and probably Dulott. Ah, dual lot, single title.

No, it was like a quarter acre block.

Yeah, right.

And.

I noticed when I drove past there because my, my daughter's actually flat just down the road from there going to uni in Brisbane, someone had knocked it down and built a mansion. In fact every property in that street has been knocked down, replaced by, you know, serious million dollar type houses. And I thought there's the lesson reinforced yet again. You should never sell good real estate. That's. You know, there was a. Someone.

Doing a podcast with a central questions, what would you say? What advice would you give to the 25 year old you? And that would be the advice I would give. Start early, never sell, hold on to good asset.

Yeah, because yeah, I mean there is a doubling of property at some point at some time and sometimes 10 years, sometimes seven, sometimes three.

Yeah.

We saw Sydney 85 to 88 which is absolutely cray cray. So now you're in Brisbane and so you bought that.

Met partner kids, Met partner, moved to Mulaney.

And almost had kids, but not quite. Yeah.

And that moved to millennia was a tough decision.

Or not initially. Yeah. And it was the question I asked then, which is I think more and more people asking right now. And because this one we're going back to the early 90s with this was doing what I do, which was working from a home office. And so at that stage I was doing research and stuff for people primarily in commercial property. The question was do I need to be in the big city to do that? I thought I was taking a bit of a risk that I might lose clients if I moved. But I decided what the hell, we'll do it anyway. Because one of that last. We used to go up to Malan like a lot of Brisbane people do for weekends and loved it. So I made the choice and found that there was no negative consequence for my little business at all from making that move out of the city. So. Yeah. Haven't regretted it.

I don't mean to pry, but I noted a level of softness that came in when you just said about almost had children.

Yeah. My wife at the time was pregnant with twins. They died the same day they were born. So that was a very important turning point in life. Changed a lot.

And when I look back, I'm probably with a certain sense of gratitude that it was an incredibly tragic event and took me a long time to get over it, but it did precipitate some changes that are probably good ones to be a little bit less workaholic, because I've been a workaholic my whole life, probably. Yeah.

So it gave you a turning point to say that there's more than. More to this than just going hard.

Yeah. And. And then later, when I'm. I met a woman who had a couple of toddlers. I was very motivated to be a good stepfather because I thought I'd never get a chance to be a parent again. And.

I'm no longer together with their mother, but my relationship with the girls are now in their 20s. Going to ENIES is really strong.

But I think my strong motivation to be as good a step parent as I could possibly be.

Came out of the fact that what happened with those babies that didn't survive.

Proud of bringing those two girls up.

Very much so. And it wasn't easy because their natural, or I call me their unnatural father, was a bad man. And we spent seven years in family court fighting to keep those girls safe from them. And that's the thing I'm most proud of in my life today.

I'm currently going through separation. We're still working the business together and it's incredibly amicable. And I can't imagine how awful it would be and how going through a separation that would be so vindictive like that. Seven years of your life, you know.

Yeah. But that was fighting it. That was my partner and I. Yeah. The mother of the girls fighting against. Yeah. For her. Incredible.

And that drags you into it too. I mean, you know, you're raising these two children.

Yeah. And in really, really difficult circumstances. And, you know, we could talk for hours about that. I was actually watching last night on Current Affairs TV talking about changes that are proposed to the family court. I spent seven years in the family court and it's utterly diabolical. It's. The system is appalling and we found a way to afford barristers and solicitors and get ultimately good results. But Most people can't afford that and they get chewed up and spat out by the family court. It's. It's a terrible, terrible place. Yeah, I never set foot in that building ever again. Yeah.

So.

Do you see? You said, you said you're going to slow down. Can you see yourself really doing that?

Well I have actually of because and I started my, my current business hot spotting 15 years ago and it was just me. I don't know how the hell I did it because I had more reports, bigger reports and no support. Yeah that's probably why. That's probably one reason why that relationship didn't last.

But now I have some serious resources and we've rationalised the reports to something that makes sense so I am working a lot less and getting a lot more done.

I want to finish with two points which is sort of one point I am a devout hater of the four bedroom two bathroom greenfield house and land package.

And then added to that people that are sold house and land packages and Ipswich and Logan are being told it's Brisbane and same with Caboolture.

What's your view on the house and land package?

Yeah look I don't have a strong anti view. I have a. Perhaps a personal bias towards established housing.

And I do like the idea of investing in things that have certain uniqueness about them that aren't just you know, spat out of a production line but nevertheless there is a place for investing in new.

I just think people need to be very careful about the numbers, what they're getting, what they're paying for and where it's located in particular. Because one of the problems with new is it tends to be in the new development areas which are on the fringes of cities where there's no infrastructure. Because the question I think people get seduced sometimes by like sort of like a duplex setup and the, the. The rental yields might be 7 or 8% and that's very seductive. But my question is what's going to drive the growth and if it's sort of. I mean there, there's merit in Logan City but I think in the, the suburbs they're close to the transport spine Y the ones, the new ones are way out west where there's no infrastructure, there's no train connections.

The shopping centers and the schools aren't there yet and that's what I think people need to be mindful of. So it you. You can make an argument for new product for various reasons but it needs to be well located in the right.

Spot because that's the Thing, you know, you go and buy a house and if it doubles in price, it's not the, the box that sits on top of the land that goes up, it's the land underneath. And when there's an excess of land, then that's an oversupply for a short period of time anyway. We saw the Sunshine coast suffer that in parts of the early 2000s. Really, people bought at peak and it dropped away then.

Yeah, timing's important. Timing is always important. But one of the big problems that investors in Australia have is that they essentially herd animals. And the smart investors, the old rule, you know, you buy when others are selling, sell when others are buying. The Warren Buffett principle. But most people pile in when they read pop. People are piling in now because they're reading there's a boom on the smart people would have actually bought in those locations. They're buying in a year ago or two years ago, but they've been sitting on the fence waiting to see what happens. If you're reading the booms on it started at least six months ago. Yep, probably 12 months ago ago. And so, you know, it's the independent thing is the people who detach from the herd run in the opposite direction or lead the herd that succeed, but most people don't. And so they get pretty average results out of property investment.

What would you say, and we'll finish up here. What would you say to those millennials that are looking at the property market right now and saying they can't afford to buy in? I've got to wait for my parents to die.

I would say, and I've been saying this and I truly believe it. There's never been a better time to be a first home buyer. Yeah. I mean there's never been such a high level of government assistance at state and federal level for first home buyers. And there's never been a time when interest rates have been so low. It's a great opportunity. And I would also, I think the lockdown periods showed young people gave them some clues how to save a deposit. And I also use as an anecdote one of my kids who 2019 was going to uni in Melbourne, flatting with friends, long way from home, full time at uni, part time job. She saved almost 15 grand that year because she, she decided she wanted to have the next year, 2020. It didn't happen because of the pandemic, going to uni overseas. She wanted to have some money behind her. So she, she somehow managed to save and that environment 15 grand. Now if two young 20 somethings, both working, can't save a deposit. Given that you only need 5% when the current situation to get say an apartment in Brunswick in Melbourne, something like that where you might be paying four or five hundred grand. They can't get that together. There's something wrong with them with all the assistance with the low interest rate. So yeah, great opportunity. Get off your asses and do it.

For anyone listening, how do they get something? How do they find me out more about you?

Well, hotspotting.com they're always welcome to drop me a line, an email Riderhotspotting.com and we've got a website. We used to have a Facebook page but we don't anymore.

And you can find me@warmspotting.com today. Terry Ryder, thanks for that last little chat. That's been awesome and very informative for a lot of people.

Yeah, great. No, always happy to chat about real estate and myself, of course.

Yes, thank you. There you go, Terry Rider, you know where to go and find him. Hotspotting.com you can always follow us at smallersandyourbig.com or ianygarde.com or any of our social media outlets on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Let's see you on the other side in the next podcast.

Thanks for tuning in to the Small Talk Big Ideas podcast. We hope we've succeeded in our goal to inspire and challenge you and we look forward to catching you on the next episode of Small Talk Big Ideas with Ian Yugate.