Your Property Success Mentor Call March 27-03-2020

Success Club. And to everyone who is joining us today. Oh my goodness. Are you at home as well? Goodness. What an amazing time it is in the world at the moment. But without further ado, let me introduce John again. And John will get through the mandatory things we need to do so we can move on.

Hello everyone. Something is staying normal. Anyway, your Property Success Club Q and A call. So I'll just start with the disclaimer, as we always do, that it's important for you to take care and applying what you'll hear on this call or any call. Of course everyone's situation is different. And while we go to great lengths to ensure that everything we share is accurate, what you're about to hear is based on our personal experiences and opinions and not intended to be specific to your circumstances. So in order for us to share this openly in the way that we do, we just need to make the following disclaimer that we're not real estate agents, not financial planners, not lawyers or accountants, and are not liable for any loss, damage or misunderstanding caused by reliance on any of the information provided or inferred back to you. Jane.

That sounds good, John. It's. It's a crazy world out there at.

The moment, isn't it? What? Have you ever seen anything like this in your lifetime? I know I have.

I think my grandparents probably did.

How much longer is your lifetime than mine, did you say? I'm only joking. We never reveal our age. But yeah, it is just an extraordinary time, isn't it? I mean, who would have predicted even three weeks ago that I was just saying to Rob, the plans we're making three weeks ago, they just seems unfathomable now given everything that's happened and how fast it's happened, particularly in that little, you know, three or four day period about a week ago. But yep, different. Different times. And I guess one of the things that we always say is investing for the long haul and I got the feeling we're going to be saying that a lot in the coming weeks and months. Jane?

Yeah. I saw something recently that said something like, just like your face, don't touch your property investments. You know, it's around hankering down and you know, staying the course. And for those of you who've been tuning into my you're prob. Property Success Club or Facebook page and the videos I've been shooting there, you know, just giving you an update. I mean as I said last week, I predicted that they were going to stop inspections and auctions pretty quickly as soon as I watched a video from one of our buyers agents we were working with when she was showing me all these people bumping into each other. So we, we kind of gave people a heads up that that was coming rentals. I had a conversation with someone this morning. We're still questioning whether, you know, people can have rental inspections. But you know, there are private inspections that are going on, John, that we're seeing. And what some of the real estate agents are doing as well as maintaining their 1.5 meters is that they're actually getting making sure that the people are fully approved by their lender before they'll actually be allowed to go through the house wearing gloves, not allowed to open or touch anything. So that is still, still going on. I do know, you know, when I heard on Monday that Barry planted, moved their Saturday auctions to Wednesday, you know, we were definitely getting to the point end where everything was about to shut down. So you know, it's been a really interesting time. And as I said last week, you know, my prediction is that, you know, the property market's not going to go down because if there is no properties to sell, there's nothing to measure it against and therefore there is no market. So, you know, we're watching this very closely and we'll definitely keep you up to date. It is a changing environment every single day. I don't think anyone who says they've got a crystal ball and can tell you exactly what's going to happen with the property market, be it up, down or neutral, really can do that with hand on heart. As I said, it's a speculation. If there's no properties, there's no market. It's just my opinion. But we don't know if it's going to be three months, we don't know if it's going to be six months. But everyone's affected in this. And I think, John, the thing that's really struck me is that we're, you know, everyone's in it together and we're just seeing the most amazing displays of, you know, humanity coming out and sharing. So you know, I know we've had many conversations over the last week about this, you and I and with our mentoring students that we caught up with virtually on Sunday rather than the two day gala weekend we had planned for them. But yeah, we had an amazing session on Sunday with them and we spent two hours actually doing a full analysis around what the industries are that are most at risk, what we're expecting to see the effects of that to be, what industries are going to have the biggest Effect on the economy? What opportunities and challenges come out the other side? And what does post corona look like? You know, where is life for us post corona? And what do we think that, how that's going to affect us as tenants and landlords and homeowners and workers. Workers maybe remotely. So really some really interesting conversations, John.

Yeah, it is really interesting. And the, just to talk to the mentor group over the weekend, which was like, like everything had to be changed to an online event from being an in person event. So everyone's been affected that way. But and it really started with people are just addressing their, their fears and anxieties about what's going on and even that alone, you know, getting them out. And I said, I think I made the comment to someone yesterday, even telling the dog about them at least makes you feel a little bit better about them. But the idea of getting them out there, getting some of those fears and anxieties out and, and verbalizing them is a good, good thing to do in my opinion. It's a good process to do. And when we did that as a group, which I highly recommend you can do if you've got groups of people that you can be talking about this stuff with, is we then went on to, to go, okay, well what's the ramifications of that? What that, what's that going to look like in six months time? What's that going to look like in a year's time or even five years time? Because some of these things are going to change for good. A lot of stuff that even if you just take everyone working from home, there'll be significant, I would predict there'd be a significant amount of people that don't go back to the in person work, that continue to work online as companies are forced to mechanisms for how to do that. Yeah, yeah.

And that was one of the strings that we really pulled on was if there's convenience of working at home and the question is now do we have to go back to work five days a week? Can people not have to live really close to where they work? And you know, we've seen over the years the ripple effect where, you know, people kind of want to live where they work and as they can afford it, they move out to suburbs, sorry, as they can't afford it, they move out to suburbs further away from the work. But if work now becomes remote, you know, maybe we can have the seed change, tree change before retirement. So I think it's so very exciting all of the, the opportunities that are put up and the conversations and this is the conversations that we want to continue having with you and you know, highlighting you know, opportunities that we're seeing the changes and I'm obviously talking to a lot of the property experts about their thoughts have happening and you know no one's ever seen anything like this. So you know it's, it's a really, you know, as John said, we did the mastermind session with our mentoring students on Sunday. On Monday and Wednesday we participated in another mastermind session to see you know, what was going on. You know I've, I've had little mini meetings with my team about you know, what can we do. You know, obviously as a mortgage broker if there's no properties to sell and the banks are very, very much, you know, reducing the refinance opportunities to people in industries that could be affected, you know, self employed, people who have face to face contact with their clients, you know, people who are in the retail industry or hospitality industry or events industry, you know, all of these interesting times and they're all changing. The banks are pulling in their different policies out and as we put an application in we get more feedback about what they will and won't do at the moment. So, so you know as a mortgage broker we're definitely looking at three to six months without being able to write loans. So you know, we've definitely got capacity and capabilities that we want to share with our communities to help them get through. So more on that later. But John, I don't know if you're seeing any questions coming through on the board on the Facebook page but I thought what I'd do is just run a really, you know, a little bit of a conversation about you know, what is actually happening in some of the numbers and figures that we.

I think that'd be great. Just the current reality. And when you've done there, I'll pull up the Facebook page so I can monitor any questions coming in and also just like to share my experience after that Jane, of what that looks like just in real terms because I've got a property on the market at the moment selling my parents house. Give you a bit of an update of how things are transpired there too.

Yeah, absolutely. So look, I'm just. This has came out from CoreLogic last week. You're going to see a lot of media and information. I've got to be honest with you. I'm looking for the hashtag silver lining on things and promoting that on my personal Facebook page because I think there's enough doom and gloom and I've talked To a lot of people who are getting overwhelmed with this and the only reason they put this slide up is, you know, we've seen this before. There has been instances where there's been a significant shock and you know there's been a change and you know it's came around the stock market crash where over 20% of the market fell within a day. You know we've had recessions, we've had the gfc, we had the dot com burst, we had the Asian financial crisis, the China steel gut. And I guess the thing is this is just giving you an opportunity to see what happened over that period of time and you can see the resiliency in the past of what was happening in the market. And if we have a look at the, I guess Australian equity and housing indices matrices as well, this is just a comparison of what's happening in the share market over the last 15 years and the housing market as you can see a lot more variability in the share market but generally they both trend upwards. And I'm not saying this to say to mask the fact that and saying every time we have a blip the market improves and continues to improve. But we looked at history and we try to predict the future. And I just want to give you a little bit of confidence and clarity about the fact that this too will pass at some stage. And historically we've had some very significant events and they have always passed as well. And I pulled this from the boom and bust report SQM research put out in November last year. I was talking to the guys there on Friday and we just kind of ran through this and that fourth scenario that they have there. The trade talks, collapse, economic weakening, RBA caps, the rates all the way down to zero. This was didn't predict corona. But you know, you look at this and there's still some positive aspects of the market. It was still going up. And when we look at the 12 month period from January 2020 to December 2020 and we look at what the market, you know, especially Sydney and Melbourne's market which is the biggest markets in Australia, but if we look at how they have responded in the last couple of months, we can see that they have also gone up. So I'm not saying that we're going to get the 15 to 20 to 15, 17% these great big numbers that we have seen, know there's going to be a time of neutrality in the market. Also know that, you know there's a recession that's looming as well. So please be aware of that and have a Look at, you know, the biggest industry shocks and things that are expected to happen and the different industries that are expected to, to where the biggest problems here. Tourism, education, hospitality, retail, arts, these things and travel are really going to be the areas that are going to have issues in the future. So just be aware that we do expect that those kind of problems will continue and do know that we know that, you know, this is unprecedented times. This has been almost a complete closure of the economy overnight. You know, we've got one to two weeks where things have completely closed down. So, you know, know that we understand that these things are happening in the market at the moment and understand that this is unprecedented time. So if you do have questions, you know, please put them up there. I can see we've got a question with Airbnb from Therese that came through earlier. But John, you know, just your experience. Do you want to talk to what you're seeing in the market as well?

Yeah. So we've got my parents house, my father died last year, my mother has gone into aged care and it came time to put the house on the market. And we put on the market about three weeks ago, just as this started kind of happening, which is kind of has its own timeline. It's not the kind of thing that we can sit around and do. You know, I will put it on the market in a couple of months time because it's tied to paying for aged care needs and so on. And so it, it started okay and then progressively the news got worse and worse. And so it was, you know, even just last week, we're still talking about having an auction with people, you know, a 2 meter, you know, square meter radius around them. But now even that is off. And there's talking to the agent, he was saying that there's zero stock coming on, as you, you said there before. And they're looking at different ways to basically sell the property. So one is sealed bid. They're, you know, going to the, the buyers that they've had through. But the, the property, but everyone is, is, I would say probably the majority of the interested parties so far have been quite spooked. So it kind of immediately places a whole new slant on the thing and some real uncertainty on whether the property will sell or won't sell or whether we have to look at other ways of dealing with it and holding onto it for a while. So lots of uncertainty and it moved at such a rapid rate that it was, it was virtually a daily. Daily. Yeah. And even things like it even limits your options if you Think of the options that are available to sell. You know, you've got auction, you've got private sale, you've got things like sealed bids. And some. Some of these things have different names in different states. But sealed bids is. Is one certainly is a buyer that I like the least where you're putting you. You've been in a sealed envelope and you don't know whether you're 100,000 over the. The nearest person. No transparency whatsoever. So there's a lot of people that won't just have a real objection to doing that in the first place. I certainly don't buy that way. Then you've got things like boardroom auctions where they get everyone together and just boardroom. And you've got transparency there because you can see the other person across the table and you're just bidding against that person, which can be quite confronting. But again, at least there's transparency. So it does. The options are pretty limited, really. And it leaves, in our case, really what there is in the absence of some kind of online version, is it will be the old agent calling you up and saying, well, I've got an offer from this bloke and it's this much. And how do you verify that? That's correct. So it's turned the market itself into a pretty funny untransparent process.

It's interesting. One of our done View clients where we select the suburbs and then we hired the buyer's agent and facilitated and concierge, that relationship, they put it, had an offer accepted conditional just on Pest and Building, no finance, right down to the deal last Friday. And I accompanied the Pest and Building inspector around and you may have seen the video. Check it out if you haven't. But one of the things that I put in the contract was that we had access immediately to do repairs and we could show the property immediately for rent and we could rent it immediately as well come May 21st when it settles. You know, who knows what's happening out there in the market. And I know that there's people out there who are thinking about what they can do. So from a rental market point of view, I just want to talk about the risks associated with that. So the reason that I put in these clauses around the rental was we were very happy for the vendor to have that rent in the next six weeks. Like, if we can rent this property at $700 a week, fantastic. However, we're going to list it with a Corona discount for a period of time to get people in who can get in there. And because we had the video from the sale, we've asked to use the video from the sale as an inspection video for the rental. But very much like the conversation we just had regarding who could go into the property and are they pre approved. The people have to be assessed beforehand because we don't want lots of people going through that property. So that's one way if you're thinking about buying properties at the moment. I did think that was probably going to be two to four, four weeks worth of stock to be sucked up if the market continued. The fact that you can't visit properties Australia's don't like, you know, not being able to knock on the walls and test things out and walk through a property. So I don't think we're going to see, you know, the answer isn't, oh, by the way, we can do online inspections. I don't think that's the answer. I think we're going to see it quieten down. If you are buying a property that isn't tenanted and is vacant, please take some of these thoughts about what you can do about putting these clauses into the contract. I don't believe that if the market does dip a little bit, we're already seeing indications that people are saying the stock market and the variability has them worried. Nothing's as safe as bricks and mortar. When the market's back, they're going to put their money into properties. There will be people who will be selling those properties and those people who are selling those properties, the people who are legitimately destitute or having financial hardships, we're going to see people who, I think, you know, we're going to get back to the village community mentality, which is, you know, rather than me thinking, oh, my goodness, you know, I've moved to Brisbane for my career. I wonder how Mum and Dad are going down in Melbourne and I hope everything's okay with them. I think that we're going to have a lot of people going, you know what, it's not worth living away from my family. I want to go back to home. So not moving into home, but back to the home state. So we'll see some of those sales come up as well. So there is going to be property selling. I think we're definitely going to and about to talk to Theresa's point, but we're definitely going to see the people in the Airbnb market definitely have some issues. So they're my kind of thoughts of, you know, if you, if you're buying at the moment, your Property is probably not going to go down in value if it's vacant. You could have some issues. We will talk to the traditional tenancy issues that are coming up. And as I said in the video earlier last week, I had two media outlets ask me about my thoughts on the tenancy associations recommending that landlords can't kick out tenants if they don't pay their rent. So we'll have that conversation. But, you know, Teresa's question was, you know, along the lines of, you know, what are the strategies to Airbnb properties? And as I said last week, you know, some of those areas that have had significant Airbnb property take up, like Hobart or a lot of the inner city areas, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in particular in the apartment blocks, I think you're really going to see a mass movement. And, you know, speaking to a number of real estate agents, one real estate agent had four, five of these requests in one day in Adelaide. And that is a mass movement from the Airbnb short term space, where a lot of people are working at the moment with their property portfolio, to trying to rent the property out for the long term and just secure some money. So I think, Teresa, to answer your question, that we're going to see a flood of those properties come onto the rental market, which is a concern as landlords ourselves, because I imagine there's going to be some desperation and price cutting and Corona discounts that may be offered. So if you do have an Airbnb property, what do you do? Okay, so I think one of my mentoring students I had a quick emergency session with this morning. She's got a property on the market at the moment and she wanted to know, should I let it and rent it out as well? What can I do about this? And we went through her finances just to make sure that if it wasn't let and it wasn't sold, she could pay for the mortgage. We also had a look at all of her other properties and said, what if this continues for an obscene amount of time and everyone loses their jobs and none of your tenants can pay, can you survive? The answer in her situation was yes. In some people's situations, the answer is going to be no. And if that's the case and you can't survive with this property not being able to let, what would be the options? Now, she was in a regional town and one of the things that John and I and our mentoring students talked about being an uplift in need and requirement in the, in the immediate foreseeable future is the fact that there is going to be emergency accommodation that's going to be required for people. Airbnb are perfectly set up because they've already got a property furnished. So there's the people who, from a domestic violence point of view, who are going to have an issue or a requirement that's going to have them stay, have to get out of the property that they're in. So it's about reaching out to people in your community that, you know, maybe it's the Salvos of the Smith family or something, Teresa, that you could reach out and say, this is a potential property. And I'm happy to. I'm used to getting 300 bucks a night, but I'm happy to take $300 a week, which is a traditional. It might be. The traditional market is $350 a week. So you're doing a discount, but you're getting some payment come through. So there might be the possibility for that. You need to then ascertain what you include and what you don't include. So obviously, post people coming in and out of a property, it's got to be cleaned down and sanitised. So there could be some cost associated with that. You don't know if it's. They're in there for emergency accommodation for a week or a night or whatever it is, but that's an innovative, you know, solution. I did see Mark Hodge, who is a short term leasing expert and we've interviewed him before. He has a platform to help people list their property and then he has a concierge team that goes in and sets property up and cleans it and does everything. And he's in numerous states and large regional areas. I noticed that his Facebook group changed from short term stay to isolation accommodation. So think outside of the box is like this high isolation accommodation. There's going to be people who are going to have to be isolated and, you know, they might have. They might be coming, John, back from hospital, for instance, and they have to be isolated or, you know, I don't think there's going to be travelers coming back in the short term, but there's going to be travelers that potentially are going to be stuck interstate. I know they closed some of the borders down last night, so, you know, think about some of this isolation. Now, where would you advertise isolation accommodation? And so try to think about how that might be. There might be the opportunity for you to put that or on your current. The sites that you're listing your property on. So be it Airbnb or whomever it is, and put it down, you know, discounted isolation accommodation weekly rate, you know, not 350 bucks a night, but $300 for the week, you know, so think about things like that. So that's isolation accommodation at risk and that need emergency accommodation. Think about the people where that is. What else could we think of there, John?

Yeah, I think with that it's, I think that's a great thing that Mark came up with with the isolation accommodation. I think that's a really good way to pivot and everyone's going to have to do that in some way, shape or form at the moment. Where I would go from that, just from a, I guess a marketing point of view, is you try and get away from the herd somehow. And if you could get it advertised like you said, or featured somewhere else other than just the normal platforms that might be like you suggested, approaching different groups and so on, that's a, I would suggest a better way of doing it to reposition yourself in that landscape. Now, what was your question, Jane, before I forgot about it.

Any other ideas?

Any other ideas for Airbnb? Yeah, yeah, I think the, that's the way I'm thinking about it. If the, we know that with the restriction of movement that it's going to be very like that the weekend stay and is. Is not there for now, that that market is now gone for at least a period of time. So then it becomes really, what are the other options available for people staying at home? And most of the time, particularly given the nature of the virus, I think you're going to be leaning towards longer term really, or doing whatever it takes to bridge the next three to four to six months to make it happen. I think where you can really get into strife is where you try and apply an old paradigm to the new situation. And I think doing business as usual is going to get people in a lot of trouble because that business has.

Changed and Teresa's put up here as well. You know, I, I also thought about people needing a workspace so they can't work from home with the kids, but a separate workspace. And here's, here's an idea I'm going to share with you. Secret idea that I came up with with the mentoring student too, because I was trying to think, you know, because she's going to now lease. She's got the property for sale, but she's now going to lease it. Also put it up for rent just to see what the possibility is. So we talked about doing a six month lease. Three months was going to be at a much reduced price. So three months at $150 off and then after the three months go back to the normal price, but a minimum of six month lease. But I was saying to her, John and I are offering, you know, our services as much as we can with all of it, the different knowledge and skills that we have to our mentoring students. And I was saying to her that, you know, we've got a lot of capability around copywriting, et cetera. So I was trying to brainstorm with her around the ad that could be written for the rental agent, like do not leave this to the rental agent to write. So this, Teresa, might be something that you can consider as well. But what I was saying was, you know, the ad could be something like, could you really imagine living with mum and dad for the next six months under isolation? Maybe it's time to move out of home. So there's people who are currently living in an, in an environment that would typically be okay, but if you're going to be trapped in there for a period of time, there's people who potentially want to move out. In actual fact, I heard someone say, well, in actual fact, I think moving in with my girlfriend is also going to be a bit of a problem. We've only just moved in together, maybe we need to reconsider this. So just think about the way that the copy could write as well. So be clever about it because it may not just be isolation accommodation, it may not be quarantine isolation accommodation, it may not be post op, which is another way that you can start thinking about the copy for the ads. It may not be emergency accommodation through emergency services, it may not be an alternative for work, for home. It could be something like just the traditional people who are living in an environment with their four flatmates at the moment going, what the. I cannot imagine this. So, you know, having accommodation for a rental or for a short term stay that's fully furnished, a huge benefit there. So think outside the square. As John said, you know, different times, different paradigms, you just throw it all up the wall and see what sticks. And first and foremost I want you to go through and think about your funds. If you get no rent for a period of time, let's talk about what that could look like. If you do get no rent and there is a legislation that potentially comes in that says that your tenants can't be kicked out because they can't pay rent and there's hardship, what can you do? So you know, there's obviously there's hardship, ability to what's the word I'm looking for, John, Hardship. Now, I had a special meeting with my Investors Choice Mortgages clients yesterday. I'm going to be doing those weekly with updates and things and how we're assisting them one on one as well. But with their businesses and their jobs and all the different things that we can throw our resources at to assist them. But one of the things that is available is this hardship clause that most all lenders have to do. Let me see if I can. I'm going to show my screen and then I'm going to somehow jump into a whole different screen.

It's a really good point. Just before you get into the nuts and bolts of that, you make the two. Jane, which really applies to everybody, and I've been doing this lately as well, is just taking stock of the. So rather than not knowing and having it in the back of your mind, look at what the num. The real numbers are, what your outgoings are and just really taking stock of where you would be because then you can play out the different scenarios. And I think, yeah, once you name it, you remove some of the power.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of people, I know the people who joined our mentoring on Sunday morning still started fearful and at the end of that session that we ran, it was like, oh, my God, the future is bright. This is actually really exciting. And I want to give you guys that concept of there is a brightness on the other side. There will still be a property market. We're not going to be losing the age group, let's face it, that are paying rents or paying mortgages. The people who are most at risk of the older demographic, which is not typically our tenants or, or ourselves. I've created this page, investorschoice.com hardship and I've listed down here all of the lenders and the ways that you can actually contact them. Now, it's really, really important to note. John, can you see that on the page?

I can, yep, yep.

It's really important to note that each one of these have a different process. The wait times are being blown through the roof. So NAB's four hours on the phone, for instance, with Westpac, you can jump on and you can request, you can fill in a form online, which is really handy. But when you do fill in the form online, they actually have to ring you back and talk to you about what you're looking at. Obviously, Internet issues going on now to you too. But it's really important that you know that these lenders are available for you and if you are facing hardship then you can negotiate six months repayment holiday on your loan. You can also negotiate just paying a little bit less. Work out what you can. As John said, we're going to be working with you guys around giving you techniques and tips and things about improving your financial position. But knowing how much you are know is possible for you to actually pay. If you know that it's normally $2,800 a month that you can make repayments but you're comfortable in making 800, you can negotiate that. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can do 50% for 12 months potentially. But just know this is not a, oh, I think this could happen. I want to get my hardship, you know, application in and suspend my payments. It's not that you actually have to show it is by application that you are facing hardship. You've lost a job, maybe your tenants have moved out, you know, understand maybe it is that your loans have gone from principal and interest, interest only to principal and interest and you've got the threat of losing your job. You know all these things. If you think you are at risk though, please put in an application sooner rather than later and get the process going because it's going to take a while. If you are at risk as well, be rest assured that ASIC has come out and said that you are not going to have your credit file affected by having a repayment holiday. Now this is really comforting for a lot of people because that repayment holiday is if you think about the fact that you might want to invest in the future and let's say invest in 12 months time you are going to possibly have a repayment holiday. Some banks may want to see you make a six month repayments before they're comfortable in getting another loan for you. So just be aware, it can have implications but it's not going to hit the credit file. And John, I just want to bring everyone's attention here to just down the bottom here. I put in additional services for people who feel they need support. Lifeline suicide callback service, Beyond Blue Mental health line, Kids help line, men's line, grief line. And I think this is really, really important because working from home, having your job threatened, having your health threatened, maybe being remote from family, all of these things are creating angst. The media and Facebook, they're all full of angst, angst, angst. It's not going to be an easy ride for a lot of people. There is help out there and I want you to know that there's some lines here I sent out a communication to my Investors Choice Mortgages clients yesterday. One lady came back and said, God, you know, this is, this is so refreshing that you're doing this. When she was a kid and you know there was a recession, two of her friends fathers committed suicide when they lost their jobs. So know that this is a very, very real thing and we are dealing with it, you know, as best we can in the way that we can. So you know, I just want you to understand that, you know, we're definitely there for you and there are provisions so that hardship is there as well. So there you go. So there's some thoughts about hardship and do not feel bad about putting your hand up.

Yeah, absolutely.

John. Some other things that are available. The government has said that people can pull their super out early. So $10,000 before June, 10,000 after June. The super funds are saying, look, if you don't really need it, don't do it. The fact of the matter is that they only have a certain amount of cash in liquidity. So you know, just be mindful of the fact that maybe if you do your numbers and it's all okay and you probably don't need it, you know, you may not want to pull that out tax free, but for a lot of people it's going to be a real godsend that's going to assist them as well. So just be mindful of that. But from the hardship point of view, I just want to let you know that there is provisions for you. So if for instance, you do lose your job or your tenants are not paying rent, please talk to your lender ahead of time before you start defaulting on the mortgage. They don't want that. And from a refinance point of view, I spoke to my Investors Choice Mortgages clients yesterday and I gave them a heads up of the wording to say when they ring the lenders to see, say, by the way, can you give me a cheaper interest rate? And we do this part and parcel of annual reviews with our clients every year and so far I think we're up to about $36,000 of savings in interest that we've been able to negotiate in discounts. But $11,000 for one lady. So it's possible to do that but without a full new application. And just be mindful of the fact that you have to be able to compare like with, like with when you ring up, just don't say, I would like to have a cheaper rate. If you're with one of the top four banks, just know that we've got, say Westpac and NAB are giving, you know, $4,000 for refinance. If you move to them ANZ St. George, they're giving money back as well. So the conversation is, if you're with one of those four banks, choose one of the other ones that are giving the money back or, and have a look at their cheaper rate and say, look, my mortgage broker has said I should probably move over here to get this rate or get this cash back. I don't really want to move. What can you do? So quote, like with like, do not quote to Westpac, Eubank. So I'm probably like, you know, shooting myself in the foot here, giving you all the inside tactics. So you don't need a mortgage broker. But, you know, there are different lending structures. So Eubank is online, they do not have a retail outlet. If you go to Eubank, if you go to Westpac and say, you know, Eubank's offering me 2.5%, Westpac's going to go, you know what, we've got shops and we've got all these other overheads, we can't really match that. If you go to Westpac and say CBA is offering me, they're possibly going to mosey up. So just be aware that that is one group of lenders, another group of lenders like Macquarie bank and amp. So you're with one of those, use the other one as a comparison. It takes this equivalent of effort and cost of losing three clients to get one new client. So the banks are going to do pretty much everything that they can to keep you. So if you're worried about interest rates, that's another way that you can save some money if your job is not at risk. If you are not in the retail industry, you're not in a self employed, if you're not in the travel industry, if you're not in the hospitality industry and you're, you know, you've got a job that's not face to face, self employed, face to face is the problem. You've got a job that's not at risk with the coronavirus and what we're seeing, then please be aware that there's potential to do the refinance, so get a cheaper rate and get the $4,000, for instance. So, you know, we're talking to a number of our clients with that. At the moment we're kind of waiting for the lenders to shut everything down, but at the moment we're doing whatever we can to make that happen. So know that that could be A potential for you as well. I did have something else I wanted to share with you. What would that be? Got so many things going in my mind. Just know we're going to be. I'm going to be doing lots of little videos in the your property Success club. As things come up and opportunities come come up, we're going to be working with people, you know, if at the moment I've got a number of clients, for instance, that we're trying to get loans for who are in a difficult space. So, you know, I'm speaking to some of them and seeing what we can do to assist them. You know, I've had 15 years as a small business. I've moved from corporate to. What would you say, John? Corporate to self employed. I have been a student of digital marketing and online marketing and getting courses online, as has John for the last eight years. John and I are looking at ways that we can help support our people and help you keep your income as well. So watch for emails and some thoughts that we have around that and things that we can do to assist you during this time. You know, as I said, you know, for the next three to six months, I'm not going to be writing loans and earning any income from there. I've made a commitment that, you know, we're going to be doing what we can to assist our clients. If you were looking at the ultimate guided renovation course, you know, we were offering that in the last two weeks to people who wanted to come and join us and, you know, start this study renovation and you know, at the moment I've just completely stopped that because I want people to concentrate what's important to them and, and I know buying courses and thinking about renovating is probably not on your mind at the moment. So, you know, we're shutting all of that down. I have the resources. I've committed to assisting people. If you think that in any way that I can assist you with brainstorming a way that you can help your business at the moment or promote your business or maybe a course that you're thinking an offer or maybe a negotiation with lenders, maybe there's a property you want to consider if you can sell or not. I've set up a little google form. Investorschoice.com borrowmybrain. You know, if you're willing to share your story with others and share the, you know, brainstorming that we come up with together and I'll make it like a video or podcast or something so that other people can benefit from it. You know, please Go there and apply for that because I'd love to be able to help you. We'll get on a call like this together, we'll spend, spend an hour, share it with others and just come up with something that suits you. Maybe you're worried about how you're going to earn an income or you want some assistance with budgeting or whatever it is. There's so many things that I have done and been fortunate to be doing over the years that we want to be able to assist you, we want to assist others. I'm getting maybe 14 or 15 SMS people saying, here's my details, what can I do? Can you help me? And I can't help everyone individually obviously, so this is a way that I can help the community. So get onto investorschoice.com borrowmybrain, put an application in, tell me where you think I can help. We'll organize a time, we'll get on a call, we'll share it with the others so everyone can benefit from it. But we are here to help. We have lots and lots of experience and many, many different things you may not even know about. Get over onto that page and just check those out. But know that we want you to know that we're here for you and we're going to do whatever we to assist you. My time at the moment at home is my own, so it's all about serving the community and helping them. So as I said, turned off all the courses. You can't buy my courses at the moment because I don't want you to be buying my courses. I want you to be able to be looking after your own self. So, you know, just know that we're here for you and we're going to maintain our efforts to help out in any way. And you know, if you've got problems and issues, please either go to Borrow my brain, jump onto the your property success club community if you need anything. There's so many people in that community in different areas that I'm sure that if you put your hand up and say, you know, I've got a bit of a problem, that there'd be someone there to help out. You might need to have accommodation yourself and there's people on there who have got properties that they are, you know, desperately trying to rent out, you might be able to come up with an agreement. So just know that this community is such a very, very special community and you know, a lot of people who have joined us in the last year have joined us because they've made a donation to the pupilepsy foundation as well. So we know that you all have heart and as do we, that we want to make that commitment. As you know, not sending out an email, going, you know, we work offline. Like a thousand emails we've got. And we're Corona free and here's our Corona policy. We just want to know that from. From our hearts that we're here to help you.

That's great. And we've got a couple of minutes left, guys, if you'd like to. Anyone got a question, like to type it in? Jane, fire away. And then I guess we'll be back into the real world. So tell us. Why don't you tell us you're experiencing what a lot of people are experiencing right now. Jane, working from home. How's it been? Tell us about the experience.

It's kind of interesting. My son's school last week taught them all how to use Zoom, and so they're actually continuing education, even though the Victorian schools have shut down. So I've got.

It's the same teacher, same classroom, that kind of thing?

No, no, it's different teachers, every classroom.

Okay, so subject by subject.

Subject by subject. You know, I reached out to one of our Investors Choice clients yesterday and said, look, I know that you've got a, like a gym type arrangement and everything's been closed down. I'd be more than happy to do a bit of brainstorming with you about getting online. Here's my experience with Zoom. You know, if you're doing Zoom for kids, you can lock the room. So you want to lock it for privacy. You know, you can use breakout room. So I sent them a couple of emails on how to do that. One of our mentors that John and I have been working with is one of our business coaches from, like 2013, Dean Jackson. He has a podcast called More Cheese, Less Whiskers. And I found to posts from people in that fitness space that he's been able to help get online. So I've sent them those as well. So, yeah, I think that we need to know that there's going to be a bright light at the end of this. And although this seems extreme measures, and I know that I'm so very fortunate in the fact that I have a home where my husband's taken all of his art out of the art studio and he's up in the attic. I've taken all of our office and I'm sitting here in the kitchen at the moment. My son's in the next room doing his classes with his school we were so fortunate because we could separate the three of us. We're about to go into two weeks of school holidays. I know remote schooling is something I can't do. I tried it last Wednesday when he was sick and we were in screaming matches because I do maths a whole different way apparently to what you do in 2020. But the fact that the teachers have moseyed up and really helped out, you know, schooling for from home, not so bad and you know, could be something I could consider in the future. So just know. And thank you for the comment. I can't see who said that, but I think changing how we feel is the first step. So thank you for doing that. We know that people are scared, but we know there's a bright spot. We've been forced to be at home and we self isolate to keep the curve, dampen the curve because we know that by restricting the people who turn up at hospital helps our financial people to not financial people, our medical people to serve the really sick and needy. So you know that this is a choice. Although it seems that the government are forcing us into doing this. They're forcing us into doing this so that we can actually be in this together and help our medical staff. So there's going to be a lot of things that come out and you know, bunker down, keep safe, don't touch your face, you know, wash your hands. Just all of those basic stuff that we learn in preschool. Play nice with others, talk to your friends with respect and have connection. You know, for me, the first thing you need to look after is yourself, then your family and then your financial security. And you know, you know, by staying at home, you can look after yourself. Please have connections with your friends. Faith is going to be the thing that's going to get you through this. Hope on the other side that things are going to be brighter. And know that they are because, you know, we have been able to very quickly as an economy and as a social group, change the way that we've been doing things for many, many years. And look, you know, we're okay so far. Reach out to your friends and talk to them regularly. Use zoom if you can. It's a really great little tool. I'll put some photos up later of what my zoom room looks like. It's a lovely virtual background. Looks like I'm living in a lovely penthouse as opposed to sitting squished at the end of the kitchen table. But, you know, just know that there is hope on the other side. If you have a property, nothing is going to Happen for a period of time. If you have got worries about not being able to pay your mortgage, there's a way out of that. This is okay, you're not going to lose your property to take action. If you think your tenants are not going to pay, then, you know, take action there and be proactive. And this is the thought that I had about that that I didn't want to let you go with. I'm going to come up with ways that you can be proactive in supporting your tenants. So I've spoken to a hamper group about getting a bit of a hamper together for your tenants that between 50 and $75 that you can just send them to say, hey, I'm thinking of you and I hope everything's okay. So I'm going to be putting some details up about that. So I think you can do that. I also think there's an opportunity for you to send some Easter eggs in a week's time and just go, you know, get through this, mind you, get to the supermarket now and get them because there's probably none left so soon. But just know that there's ways of doing this or if you can't get out then and post them, just think of ways that you can actually, you know, potentially send them a Netflix voucher. Think of something that is going to support your tenants because they're going to be sitting there worried as well. They're going to be sitting there worried that they're going to lose their job and how they're going to pay the rent. Potentially you want to reach out and make a reduction in the rent. I wouldn't push into that if you don't need to at this stage. But it's something you're going to definitely have to consider because you just don't want them to default and not pay at all. So you want to be front foot on this and know that you're in it together with them. So be a face rather than the landlord. I can rip off and tell them that I've lost my job or I've got reduced hours and I'm not going to pay my rent. But if you're someone with a bit of a face and a name and you have that heart behind it, think about sending them something. And as I said, I'm working on something for you guys that you can potentially get and get out to your tenants. May cost you 50, 75 bucks, but I think that goodwill is something that we need to encourage. And it's not about your bank account at the Moment it's about your trust account, building up the trust and getting familiar with people. So that's something else I'm going to be doing for you. So watch for that as well. And here's someone else who said, I have a friend setting up an online con Mary course. We'll check with her if the group is interested. Not sure what con Marie is. We don't promote things within the group so just know that we don't do that promotion. If there's something that you feel that might potentially go outside of that, that we, we can evaluate for you, send me the details. Just JaneVestorsChoice.com and we'll do a review and have a look at it. But you know, we've had people in there trying to flog their stuff and you know, we want to be really respectful of people's attention and where they are at the moment and if, and making sure that there's something that people are looking for. But know that, you know, we have a very, very wide network of people, people throughout Australia and overseas that have some amazing courses and things and at this stage, you know, we, we just are very mindful in fact, as we've pulled all of our, you know, courses down and not promoting them at the moment, that we don't want people spending money on things that potentially they don't need. There might be a need at the time in the future. You might in two months time go, well, I know the market's going to return and I want to be able to learn how to, you know, find the market and do analysis and stuff. It might be relevant then but it's not at the moment. Just bunker down, get safe, look after yourself, your family and you know, the finances, just getting things under control. So that would be my thoughts on that. John, any final words?

No, I think that's, that's about us for now. I think it's good to have a bit of a state of the nation and talk about what some of the ramifications, the way it might play out over the coming weeks and months. As you said though, and as you've always said is it's a, we're playing a long term game, we're playing a 10 or 15 year game and it'll be nice to look back at some point in the future in, in 10 years time and say, oh man, it even, it did really well and it even went through coronavirus, you know. So I think that's what he's saying. It'll come back and market through its own to normal and they'll have their ebbs and flows. We will come out the other side of it. It's just a matter of time and the measures are necessary. But at the moment, yeah, it's certainly, it feels like a really unprecedented situation. But even that starts to, I would predict, normalize in the coming weeks and months too. And we'll get through it and we'll come out the other side and we'll have the same skills that we can then apply to make money as the market comes back on again.

Absolutely. There's those two sites that I mentioned. Look, know that, yeah, these two will pass. This is okay, look after your health, just maintain that, that the market will be there when you come out the other side. If you have any major problems, borrow my brain, you know, get on there and we'll be there to, you know, help you out. The community itself, if you've got a property that you think someone might, might be able to rent or, you know, you've got some desperate accommodation needs, please put the details here. After all, we're all here because we love property. So know that we're here. We want to send you a message of love and support and know that at the end of the day, this too will pass. And at the end of the day, your property success is going to be a lot about mindset. So keep yourself positive, do what you can to keep yourself fit. Keep. Do some meditation, try something new. I don't. I know there's a lot of people saying, you know, we're just hanging out at home doing Netflix, etc. Most people are actually working from home. So, you know, we know that work does go on and there's extra stress of doing your work in an area that you're not used to. So get yourself a good area, get yourself a really good discipline. Wake up. At the same time, if you're a female, put the makeup on. If you're female or male, put your nice clothes on, dress up and turn up for work. Because attitude is going to be everything through this. So watch the videos. We're going to keep sending you some positive messages, some thoughts and tips and resources that we can do. We're going to keep a monitoring onto this market and making sure that, you know, if there's something comes up that is innovative or interesting that you can take advantage of, we'll be sharing it with you. So stay cool, look after yourself, don't taste your butt, don't touch your face and wash your hands. All the best. And here's to your property. Success.