We continue to follow the journey that Nhan Nguyen started 4 weeks ago where he is attempting to flip a property in 30 days and turn over a tidy profit. It has not been smooth sailing but boy, are we learning some lessons from his experience. Hear what progress has been made in the last week.

Our feature chat this week is with Brad Beer from BMT Tax Depreciation. We find out what he looks for in an investment property, what and who moulded his property thinking, his first property and he gives us some finance tips. We talk about partnerships, the areas he likes and the struggles that most investors experience.

President of the Real Estate Buyers Agent’s Association of Australia, Rich Harvey, slams real estate companies misrepresenting themselves as buyer’s agents and offering free services. He is angry at claims by a company called Seekology, that is out to disrupt Australasia’s property market by offering a service to buyers that is free.

We talk to Tim Godden from Seekology about why he would offer to work for no fee in helping buyers secure a suitable property.  Just what is the business model and how is it going to work?

Michael Yardney reveals why why '70s apartments rock in his opinion. Is it the architecture, where they are located or is he just reminiscing about his youth? He gives us 5 reasons he likes them.

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Transcripts:
Group threatens the status quo - Tim Godden
Kevin:  The term game-changer is quite often bandied around in the real estate industry, a lot of it lately because there are some changes occurring in how agents work. This one is particularly interesting because it came across my desk a couple of weeks ago. It’s about a new business called Seekology. It’s an organization that will help investors and owner-occupiers find the ideal property.

I won’t spend too much time doing any more explanation other than that, but I want to introduce my guest, Tim Godden. Tim is the national director for Seekology, and he joins me.

Tim, thanks for your time.

Tim:  No problem Thanks very much, Kevin.

Kevin:  When I received your first release, it told me that you were operating in an environment where you were not going to take a fee for investors; in fact, you were going to be achieving your income by taking a referral fee from agents. But that has since changed, I understand.

Tim:  We have revisited that pricing model or the structure of the business in that reference and we did that because when we launched we found… As you said we initially said that we were going to receive a fee from the person selling the property. We revisited that because we found that there was firstly a bit of skepticism around that and that is because there are people obviously within the industry that do receive a fee and perhaps give advice based on the fee they’re receiving rather than what’s in the best interest of the buyer. We didn’t want to get confused with that.

What we actually have changed it to be is the fact that we are a free service for property investors – a free buyer’s agent service for property investors – but we do charge for people that are looking for a property to live in.

There’s a number of reasons why we charge for owner-occupiers, and that comes a lot down to the fact that it’s very much an emotional decision; from a buyer’s agent’s point of view, it’s not such a matter of the facts and figures. For an investor, obviously, there’s a lot of research that goes into it, but it does come down to the facts and the figures rather than an emotional attachment to a prope