FAQ's

New Road Property are an independent and boutique buyer’s agency, who work in the best interests of you, the buyer. They pride themselves on individual service and therefore, only work with an exclusive four clients at any one time.

When they source property they use their creative thinking, industry contacts and market knowledge. Experience has taught them to truly understand a property’s value, how it sits within an area, its history, potential future capital growth and what is simmering around the neighbourhood that could negatively or positively affect its future.

In short, they do not depend on one particular real estate agent or developer. They unearth all relevant properties possible as well as neighbourhood secrets.

Research is king. Miss one little bit of information and you could end up with a horror on your hands, instead of a money-making machine.

Then there’s the negotiations, which starts with knowing the real estate agents and how they think. Elaine Davies, the founder, was a real estate agent and an auctioneer for many years before becoming a buyer’s agent. To Elaine and her team, talking the “real estate lingo” and “listening between the lines” comes naturally.

They have categorised six real estate agent “types” who they know how to deal with to get you, their client, the best results! Using many creative techniques, they know how to get you the lowest price as well as the best terms and conditions possible. It doesn’t always come down to the highest offer – they have won many deals by moving quickly and offering favourable conditions.

In short, engaging Elaine and her team would give you the same knowledge, fierce protection and professionalism that a good real estate agent offers their vendor.

Long before you would get emotionally attached or spend money on something you could never afford, New Road Property do in-depth property and neighbourhood analysis. This comprehensive picture provides a strong indication of whether you can afford it. If they decide that it could be in your price range, they then quickly move onto reports, your lawyer or any other money that needs to be spent to get you into position to put in a smart offer.

Over the 15-years that Elaine has been a buyer’s agent (as well as a real estate agent and auctioneer before that) she has communicated with real estate agents, lived and breathed property searching, inspecting, negotiating, bidding at auctions and dealing with property professionals. In those years, she and her team have got very good at what they do.

Personally, Elaine has been an investor, a home owner, a tenant and a landlord. She has bought and sold with her ex-husband, with a friend and on her own. There’s not much in property searching, negotiating and buying that she hasn’t come across. With New Road Property, your search will be dynamic, fun, powerful and you will NEVER be at risk of buying an underperforming lemon.

While they love property, at New Road Property, their true passion is you, their client. Elaine and her team 100% acknowledge that they are in a service industry and are here to be of service to you during a time that is exciting but can also be stressful, unsettling and frustrating.

Your Brief

Whether their clients are single, in a couple, friends or a family everyone has to fill in an individual brief.

Most couples or groups are made up of interesting individuals and therefore New Road Property take the time to discover each party’s own needs and wishes. Each individual client has to fill in comprehensive brief/s which are analysed for any conflicting goals or unachievable wishes before the search begins. This agreed, succinct brief acts as a foundation and anchor point throughout your property search. This does not mean that an initial brief can’t be changed but changes need to be acknowledged and agreed to.

Negotiations

New Road Property are constantly on the lookout for opportunities They’re often asked, “when are you going to start negotiation” and the answer is, “at the same time the real estate agent starts theirs, which is the second they walk into that first open for inspection”. Under the real estate agent’s warm deminer and dazzling smile, is an arson of scripts designed to combat all of your questions and objections throughout the campaign, not just at the pointy end when you’re putting an offer in.

It’s a game that Elaine and her team like to play they like to kick goals!

They have the knowledge, experience, contacts, time, tools and down right front to take on any real estate agent. To confidently pull off amazing deals for their clients. As one of their clients, Tony, said:

“we’d been looking for a while and were beginning to think that our ideal property just wasn’t out there but then we engaged Elaine. Within a couple of weeks, she seemed to pull a rabbit out of her hat – we just couldn’t be happier with what we bought”. Tony & Amanda

Absolutely! Without it, they only know half the story. Elaine started her real estate career in Bangkok and then Hong Kong. In Sydney, she was a selling agent for 6-years and an auctioneer for two, before becoming a buyer’s agent. This professional background means she knows what it’s like to handle a property’s purchase/sale from all angles. Elaine has firsthand knowledge of what happens behind the real estate agent’s glossy reception desk; she knows how buyers are really treated and how they are talked about. She knows that the real estate agent will work every trick to get the best price for their client – the vendor.

Working with New Road Property will provide you with well-rounded, real estate knowledge that takes on the real estate agent at every step and at every level, with no qualms.

It’s true that many people still buy on their own but man, do they hear some horror stories 👻. Buyer’s may laugh and say things like, “oh, I know I overpaid but I’m just glad to be out of the market” or “it was far from ideal, but we’d been looking for so long, we were glad to buy anything”. All too often, behind their smiles and defensiveness, Elaine can see that they know they’ve made an expensive mistake, that they will have to live with for a very long time.

The reality is you can endeavour to do anything yourself, like defending yourself in court but would it get you the best result? If you’re willing to pay a real estate agent to sell your house, why not work with New Road Property when you have the opportunity to buy the right property, at the right price, that will exponentially come up in value? Buying the wrong property can lead to no profit or worse, it could financially set you back for a very long time.

As for so called free, online information, most estimated property prices come from computerised algorithms. In reality, it takes time to build a picture of a property and a neighbourhood and then compare it to similar recent sales. No computer is going to delve into:

• The size of living areas, bedrooms, bathrooms, the laundry
• The aspect. Dingy and dark Vs light and bright
• Whether it’s renovated
• How good or bad the street is
• The size of the land
• Any upcoming infrastructure
• Any upcoming developments
• So much more

And then compare that information to the recent sales in the area (including off-market ones). It takes time, a sharp eye and experience to build a total and objective picture of a property, the area and its true value.

Talking of time, how much is yours worth? While you’re a professional in your field, New Road Property are in theirs and they really know what they’re doing.

Such a large and important purchase should be prioritised, not squeezed in on a Saturday morning between coffees and the gym or birthday parties and naps. Elaine and her team know how much physical and emotional time it takes to buy the right property.

In short, they would be your spy, your researcher, your negotiator and general protector. By the time you would put in an offer, it would be with eyes wide open – you’d be comfortable with your maximum walk away offer or bid for that particular property. They would then fight to get the property for less than you wanted to pay.

When buying with Elaine, you may still have some emotion around the purchase (we are all human) but it would be an informed and a powerful decision where you would have far more control of the process.

Experience and knowhow are hugely important and novice buyers, who go up against Elaine and her team, would be hugely disadvantage. Why not make sure you’re the buyer with the advantage?

Once you become part of the team, New Road Property do everything for you around your property search. Finding the property is only part of their service so if you do find one that they haven’t presented, you would send it through to them for the New Road Property treatment. If they felt it was a viable option, they would inspect it, do all the research, analyse whether it’s in the right budget for you and find out if it is, indeed, the right property for you at the right price. Once Elaine and her team have been engaged to provide their full service, you can choose to be super involved but they always like to see their clients sit back, relax and have everything done for them.

Oh, and by the way, this rarely happens! Usually, when a client sends a property through, they’ve already decided that it’s not up to par.

Because you only get one chance and auctions are well-orchestrated performances, designed to get the inexperienced buyer swept up in the emotion of the moment. To push them past that all-important maximum bid (that should have been set before stepping on the auction floor) with hype, FOMO, and overwhelm. All too often, the buyer’s meticulous pre-auction planning (if there was any) flies out the window!

However, at New Road Property, they know how to:

• Calculate when other buyers are running out of money
• Unsettle other buyers (without them noticing)
• Break the rhythmic and seductive tone of the auctioneer
• Ignore the real estate agent’s patter that’s being whispering in their ear
• Handle the vendor’s bid – no vendor wants to buy their house!
• Handle an auction that has stalled

Auctions are great when you’re confident and know exactly what you’re doing but real estate agents and auctioneers can sense the following a mile off and know how to work them all:

• Nerves
• Desperation
• A competitive nature

With so many moving parts, in one of the most unpredictable settings and under one of the most stressful situations imaginable, why would you go it alone?

You may also want to remain anonymous or maybe you simply can’t be there in person. As you don’t have to be there, Elaine and her team will always protect your identity and work with you virtually.

There are many strategies they can utilise that could make the difference between you being the winning bidder and missing out

In the world of real estate agents, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Why would they be so kind? Tread carefully and ask yourself:

• What’s in it for them?
• Are they really working for you, with no strings attached?
• Will you give them your property to sell if they are successful?
• Would you recommend a friend to them?
• Have they done their research and know what your absolute walk away offer/bid should be before you overpay?
• Do they even know if you can afford it?
• Do they know what they’re doing?
• How many auctions have they bid at?

Also, combine their lack of experience on the auction floor with their lack of knowledge around your individual situation and they tend to be a little too gung-ho, often bidding too fast and too furious which only manages to quickly push up the price. Real estate agents often don’t understand or even look for the nuances of the other bidders and have no desire to slow down an auction. Forget fighting for every last dollar!

Getting a vendor’s representative, to bid for you, could lead to all kinds of conflicts of interest.

No and never. While Elaine is a fully licenced and qualified real estate agent and auctioneer, she is here to give you, the buyer, 100% representation with no conflict of interest.

Great! Working with New Road Property turns your property search from B to C (business to consumer) to B to B (business to business). The real estate agent knows that they will go onto do future deals together, leading to greater transparency and mutual respect. When Elaine, or her team, talk to a real estate agent or walk into an open for inspection, their reputation precedes them. Real estate agents assume that their buyers are serious, have the right budget and could quickly present a clear and solid offer for the right property. Even if negotiations get a little intense, communication is key. They ensure that negotiations are always tough but charming!

The difference between a buyer’s agent and a selling agent is who they represent. A buyer’s agent should fiercely and exclusively represent the buyer just as the real estate agent represents the vendor (seller).

When the buyer’s agent and real estate agent work together, it becomes business to business. Two professionals speaking the same language with (hopefully) a level of mutual respect in a world where negotiations need to be treated with careful thought.

If you have the time to search for your own property then New Road Property have the ideal service for you; The Power Package: click here to find out more. You find the property and bring it to them for evaluation – if it passes that test, they would move onto negotiation and hopefully a successful purchase. They also help your search by regularly sending your brief to their database of real estate agent to try to unearth off-market properties for you too.

For the right buyer, this can be a cost-effective way of using their expertise.

Yes and many. With the relationships they’ve built up over the years, they get emails every day from real estate agents with ‘off-market’ properties which may never go on the open market and ‘pre-market’ which may come on the market at some stage. The thing is, they are not always great opportunities - in fact they can often be over priced rubbish, from an opportunistic vendor.

On top of that, again because of our relationships and reputation, they have other real estate professionals as well as ex clients calling them with properties they know of.

Absolutely! Until you put your name on the front page of a contract for sale, there would be no need for anyone to know that you are working with New Road Property. If you wanted to stay anonymous from the real estate agent, the vendor’s solicitor and the vendor you could buy in a trust, or something similar.

Elaine doesn’t feel it would be honest to answer “yes” to that question but they will never take on a brief that they think is impossible.

Life is complicated and people’s goals and situations change but from their end, they will keep going until the job is done. New Road Property and Elaine guarantee to protect you from making a mistake, guide you in the right direction, leave no research stone unturned, negotiate smart and hard, and to fight for you at every step of the way. They always think creatively and move quickly to buy you the best property, for the best price possible.

What they do is point you in the direction of the right property for the right price. A property that will come up at the median or over the median of an area and be one of the best money-making places around. On the other hand, what’s a bargain today, will probably still be a bargain in 10-years, with a heap of exponential financial growth lost. I guess the question is, “when they’ve found the right property for you, will they negotiate hard?” You bet they will! New Road Property always aim to save you more than their fee.

New Road Property go as hard as possible to negotiate back your fee.

There are many, many times when their fee has been blown out of the water with the savings they made for their clients. That’s what Elaine and her team live for.

After all, all they have is their reputation.

Definitely.

People often ask New Road Property, “when looking at properties, what do you see as the difference between an investment and home?” The answer is, “not a lot”!

Whether it’s a home or an investment property, long-term wealth through capital growth is a must.

With an investment property, one important question is, “would you have lived here at some stage in your life or would you let your children live here?”, if it’s “no”, then it becomes quite clear that their clients should move onto to a better property. Smaller and nicer is better than bigger and awful!

Then there’s yield Vs capital growth. Spend too much and your yield will probably be pretty rubbish. So, Elaine and her team advise to split a big investment property budget in half and buy two smaller places.

The same strategy works for home owners – the best property for the best price but there is usually a tighter brief around it such as where people want to live and of course, it’s often more of an emotional purchase.

Yes and as Elaine used to sell property in Hong Kong and Bangkok, she understand much of the foreign market. Australia is recognised as one of the best countries to live in, so New Road Property are fully geared to serve expatriates, interstate and foreign buyers and have been doing so for many years. Buying a property can be difficult at the best of times and while technology has made it easier to view the property, through them, “first hand”, the most important part of working with an out-of-town client is clear, concise and educated communication.

Whether you are anywhere from Byron Bay to Beijing, Ulladulla to the UK or Adelaide to Auckland, being your eyes and ears on the ground and using all of their specialised property knowledge to secure you the right property for the right price is imperative. New Road Property are here to ensure that your property purchase is as stress free and exciting as possible.

Click here to discover why it makes perfect sense to engage New Road Property

It’s never about how long it takes to find a property but more importantly, finding you the right property for the right price. New Road Property don't believe in putting a time limit on your search but they do believe in open communication throughout your search. If they feel that you have rejected properties that suited your brief, they would need to discuss why. Again open, two-way, communication is always important. On average, a turnaround time for investors is a month and for a home owner between 1-2 months.

New Road Property do extensive price research, comparing the property that you are interested in buying with other comparable properties. They go through the positives, negatives, size, aspect, parking and so much more. This research is then read by you, their client and discussed amongst them all. On top of that, their market knowledge brings an educated “gut feel to detailed research. The price research creates the foundation of their negotiations and even if their clients decide to overpay on a certain property, for personal reasons, they will be going in with “eyes wide open”. Ultimately, how much their clients pay is their decision but that decision has to be made with a clear head and high-quality knowledge.

As New Road Property don’t work with more than four clients at any one time, the chances of this happening are be very slim. However, if it did happen, they would not take on the second client or ask them to wait until that “slot” became available.

Historically the 15k ring of Sydney’s CBD with a heartland of the Eastern Suburbs and the Inner West. However, things have changed and they now help people throughout Australia.

Yes, of course and on top of that New Road Property may suggest a few places that you haven’t thought of. They are here to stretch your thinking and offer alternatives. The journey of discovery is very important.

However, more than one area, which are quite far from each other, would need to be discussed on a case-by-case basis.

New Road Property will work with any property or area that they deem to offer great buying for their clients.

What they stay away from or are at least very wary of, is off-plan developments, especially interstate where the developer is promising all kinds of things like a guaranteed rent payback – don’t think for a second that’s not being added onto the purchase price!

They believe in solid, older, blue chip property that will offer strong capital growth i.e., long term wealth. With that in mind, budgets that they work with start at $700,000 - anything lower and they will research and negotiate on your behalf or introduce the perfect buyer’s agent.

They can advise on any property budget in any place.

This is a service that will probably save you more money than you spend, on the right property that will then make you good money over the long term.

Just like people pay a real estate agent to sell their property, a buyer’s agent is affordable.

Many of New Road Property’s clients are first home buyers or singles and every one of them have felt that they bought a much better calibre of property than they would have on their own.

Investing in their 20-years of property knowledge, real estate agent negotiations and their contacts is quite magical – it will make you money and save you money all at the same time! They are passionate that their clients know they did the right thing in hiring New Road Property.

As Jenny, a nurse said when Elaine tried to talk her out of the service, “no, Elaine, I know you can do a great job for me and I want to be your client”. The apartment that Elaine bought her was a financial rocket and opened up her life in the most beautiful way, but that’s Jenny’s’ story to tell.

Overpaying or buying an underperforming property would cost way more than their services so if you find you’re stuck, nervous, overwhelmed or just in analysis paralysis come and find out for yourself how they can help you. A conversation costs nothing.

Or check here to see all the services that they have, to suit every budget.

New Road Property has many different services for many different property buying needs and budgets. Why not book in an appointment with them today to find out if there’s one to suit you here? Or for more information on their services, click here.

Your fees may be tax-deductible when buying an investment but we don’t believe they are for a home. However, this is a question for your accountant – we’re a great believer in asking the right professionals the right question and would hate to give you the wrong information.

If you decide to cancel your search for any reason all New Road Property request is seven days notice in writing. Please note once you have advised them of your cancellation in writing, your registration fee is non–refundable. Should you put your search on hold, for a reasonable amount of time to be discussed, your registration fee remains valid so that you can resume your search at any time.

Saturdays are showtime for real estate professionals, so yes, Elaine and her team work at the weekends. Though, more importantly, when needed, they don’t hesitate to work any day of the year – if it’ll get your ideal property into your hands, they’ll be there!

Yes, they are a professional organisation that reaches all of its expected obligations, in all areas of business. Elaine Davies a fully licensed real estate agent and auctioneer both of which give her an additional insight into how the vendor’s team works.

Elaine has written a book to help buyer’s called Mind Body Sold!  Here is an excerpt of questions to ask when interviewing a buyer’s agent.

Choosing Your Buyer’s Agent

Again, do your research, interview two or three buyer’s agents, and ask them:

Q: How long have you been a buyer’s agent?

Q: How many properties have you bought? How many in the last six months?

Q: How well have those properties done financially?

Q: How many were “off market” (i.e. not advertised to the general public)?

Q: How often do real estate agents contact you with properties that are “off market” (being sold on the quiet) or pre-market (will be coming on the market sometime soon)?

Q: How long does it generally take you to buy a family home or investment property?

Q: What areas do you specialise in? Why?

Q: Who is your typical client? Why?

Q: How do you research and determine a property’s worth?

Q: What due diligence and research do you do? How good a property sleuth are you?

Q: Do you enjoy bidding at auction and fighting for your client in negotiations?

Q: Have you been a real estate agent and/or auctioneer?

Q: Why did you choose to become a buyer’s agent?

Q: Can you provide three testimonials from recent clients?

Q: What happens if the search takes longer, say more than six months? Is there an extra fee?

Q: What are your fees, when are they due, and what do I get for my money?

Q: If there’s a retainer to be paid, at what point do I lose it?

As always, cheapest isn’t usually (often) best. Experience takes a buyer’s agent a long way!

Also, check with the relevant state’s department of fair trading to ensure they are appropriately licensed and insured. They should also have the relevant qualifications.

The short answer is “no” but Elaine has built a to-die-for little black book of the best, reputable industry professionals who she believes will be perfect for you. Elaine is always happy to share her contacts such as mortgage brokers and property solicitors with her clients. As for building and strata reports, more and more vendors are paying for them – whether you’d use theirs or commission your own is a discussion you’d have with New Road Property at the time – every part, of every negotiation can be different.

They will always go over and above to make the experience of property buying with them as seamless as possible.

No. New Road Property’s strategy is to specialise in buying properties for their clients. In their experience, if a buyer’s agent try to do it all, then the actual property buying, which is the foundation of what you’ll renovate or rent out, is often an afterthought or a secondary service.

As always, once your property has been bought, they are happy to open up their little black book and recommend property managers, builders and designers who we feel are at the top of their game.

No, it’s not what New Road Property do but they know an excellent vendor advocate who helps you to choose of the agent, negotiate their fee and stays close all the way through to exchange. Contact us here for their details.

Contact New Road Property here and Elaine or a team member will get in touch with you as soon as they can. Elaine and her team are excited to chat 🤩

Or watch my quick video HERE on "Buying Property Like a Pro"