The Market Just Shifted Into Buyers’ Favour. Here’s How to Use It.

George Markoski The correction is real. The balance of power is shifting from sellers to buyers. What happens is the market feels uncomfortable, there’s fear, prices soften, headlines worsen, buyers hesitate. And this is the problem. Right? The slowdown isn’t fixing the supply problem. So the supply gap is growing, not getting smaller. We need to build a Canberra just to catch up. And rents are growing almost twice as fast as wages during this correction period. Property prices have gone up in certain suburbs. What we have to realise. The market has shifted into buyers’ favour. And here’s how to use it. Welcome to the Positive Property Show. I’m George Markoski and I’m here with Christina. Christina Markoski Hello, Christina Markoski. Glad to be back this week. And we’re talking about how the market has shifted in buyers’ favour. This is very exciting news. George Markoski Let’s talk about the news first. So builder collapses. The Bathla Group has collapsed. Right. They’ve entered. Well, they haven’t collapsed, they’ve entered voluntary administration. And developers reported more than $3 billion in liabilities. Now, why this matters, I’ll tell you why it matters. We’re currently trying to build 180,000 properties a year. And this group, they’ve got 500 different companies and they’re building 15,000 of these. 180,000. That’s almost 10% of the whole of Australia’s supply. So if they go under and they can’t build these properties, well, one, there’s going to be 25,000 people affected at the moment. That’s how many contracts are out there, 25,000 people. Christina Markoski But it’s going to affect more people than that because it’s going to affect all the brokers that are doing the loans, the banks. It’s going to have a much broader ripple effect. George Markoski Well, taxes going into government, it is terrible. Now, I’m actually going to be talking to one of the directors online. He’s coming and talking to us next week. George Markoski And we’re going to have a bit of a chat about what’s happening and everything else. And the reason being is we’ve got some clients that are actually with this group and we want to make sure we navigate that and help them go through it all. So there you go. This is the thing, though. So people that signed up in 2025 contracts with this group, because what’s happening, the administrators are going to come out and they’re going to look at the 500 different companies, the 500 different projects, and they’re going to evaluate each one and then what’s going to happen. Is they’re probably going to be divvying it out. They’re going to say, okay, this project here, sell that to this builder. This project here, sell that to that builder. George Markoski The builders are going to come in and what they’re going to do is they’re going to look at the contracts that they’re signed, they’re going to look at the current value and then they’re going to go, okay, these properties are worth more now than what people paid. So then they’re going to send a letter out and say, hey, good news, if you want your money back, all you got to do is sign this form, rescind the contract, we’re going to put the money into your account, and then what’s going to happen is people are going to go, oh, what a great idea. Will do that, and sign away, not knowing that they’re actually signing away money and profit that they’ve already got. Right. George Markoski So there’s 25,000 families out there right now. George Markoski And this is not legal advice because you should really get a lawyer, but this is what I’d suggest you do. If you get a letter and they say, we’ll give you money back, check with your conveyancer or check with your lawyer and make sure it’s correct. Because if they can’t finish the build, do you want your money back? Yes, you do. But if they can finish the build and the build’s worth more than what you paid or the same amount, then you want to finish the build. That’s what you want to do. And in Australia, what happens is, when you pay a deposit, if you do the right thing, if you’re smart, you put the deposit in with a conveyancer and it actually goes to a trust account. George Markoski And the reason they call it a trust account is because you can trust it. George Markoski Great name, isn’t it? Christina Markoski It makes sense. Christina Markoski You want to keep your money safe. George Markoski Yep. And with a trust account, what happens is they’re audited by the government and you really one, you can’t have a criminal record. If you have a trust account, you’ve got to be really squeaky clean and you can’t just take the money out and spend it. So what happens normally is you’ve got a conveyancer, they’ve got a conveyancer, and you put money in their conveyancer’s trust account and their lawyer holds that money in trust for you. That’s why it’s called a trust account, because you trust them to hold it. And funny enough, I mean, when were Buying property in Bali. We bought a property for over a million dollars and the owner of the property, you know, she said, give me some cash, let’s hide the money. George Markoski Put some money in here. Say you bought a watch off me. Put it over there. George Markoski What did I say? No, No, I said, no way. I said, no way. I said, I’m actually going to give you zero. I’m putting it all in the lawyer’s trust account. She’s like, why do you want to do that for? Right. And I said, well, and, you know, why did we do this? We did this to make sure that our money’s safe and that we get the property we paid for. Because imagine this, she gives me a receipt for a watch and then I give us some cash, put all these different accounts and then we come to settlement. And she’s like, oh, sorry, you didn’t pay for the property. Christina Markoski You didn’t buy a property, you bought a watch. George Markoski Exactly. Christina Markoski Look at your receipt. Yes. George Markoski So when you’re buying something, you’ve got to be very careful. Right. And recently this happened in Adelaide, where there was a guy in Adelaide that actually was selling properties and instead of them buying the property directly, had a unit trust and he took the money off him and blew it on something. That’s why we always make sure that all transactions are within arm’s length. As in, you get your own lawyer and you put it in a trust account and the property is in your name, not in someone else’s name. You’ve got to be really careful and cover all that. So talking about trust, basically, whenever you’re putting deposit, don’t give it to the developer directly, put it in their trust account, don’t give it direct. George Markoski And that’s one of the things you gotta do. George Markoski And a lot of people don’t realise that, because if you give the builder the money directly and it doesn’t go through a trust account as a deposit, then suddenly you don’t have control. Christina Markoski Well, that’s just part of the steps in keeping yourself safe, but also knowing how to navigate buying an investment property. George Markoski Yes. And see, if the conveyancer or lawyer releases those funds to the builder or developer for the wrong reasons, then they actually have to give you the money. Because that’s a trust account, they can’t just give it away for nothing. There’s an audit trail and they can get sued, but they’ve got insurance for that. So the moral of the story is you’ve got to keep safe. And the other thing is, if you get offered a deal to get out of a deal, do the numbers first and make sure you’re getting the right deal. Right. Don’t just fall for that, because this happened in Russia. When Russia stopped being communist and became capitalist, every single person became shareholders of every company in Russia. George Markoski So literally sent you all these pieces of paper, shares in a company. And guess what happened? George Markoski These really smart guys came in and offered cash to everyone and said, hey. Christina Markoski And they got them really cheap. George Markoski I bet they said, those pieces of paper you’ve got trade it for money. I only give you money for that. And people like, sure. And that’s how the oligarchs happened in Russia. They all bought up all the big companies for next to nothing. Because a lot of Russians didn’t understand. They were brought up in communism. Before that they were peasants. They didn’t realise that these shares were worth a lot of money because all the companies in Russia were all national. There were big companies with no competition, lots of profit. George Markoski So just like I said, what’s going to happen is with this Bathla, if you’re involved in this, make sure you get a lawyer, make sure you cheque it out and just don’t jump at any opportunity to get your money back unless you’re certain. And what’s going to happen? George Markoski The administrator is going to do one or two things. They’re going to go through 500 companies. It’s like a CEO coming in, taking over, and they’re going to determine, is this profitable? Not profitable. Okay, it’s not profitable. We’re not going to go ahead, give everyone’s money back. This one’s profitable. We’re going to go ahead, try to get everyone’s money back and let’s make extra profit and it’s going to keep going through it all. But if they don’t go ahead, this 15,000 builds, we’re going to be under supplied like crazy. Christina Markoski Well, I think the government should bail them out. Personally. George Markoski The government would be crazy not to bail them. I’ll tell you why. The government’s all banging on about building government housing, but they can’t build government housing. This is their opportunity to save 15,000 properties and make sure they get built. They should get involved, but you know, it’s going to be very interesting. I’m really fascinated to talk to the director and have a good conversation. He’s going to come in and have a meeting with our clients on a Zoom in a private zoom. And this is the sort of access that we get, you know, being part of Positive Property where we get to get all the people. George Markoski Like for example, We’ve got Jack Corbett from Shark Tank, he’s coming along to our two day workshop in Queensland, which is going to be pretty cool. George Markoski So next, Australia’s Big Mac now costs $8.50, has risen 60% over the last decade. I remember back in the late 90s where you could get two Big Macs for $1.50 each. So globally, Australia sits middle of the index compared to around $13 in Switzerland and just $3.50 in Taiwan and Indonesia. So there’s a Big Mac index and what it does, it shows you how strong your economy is by how expensive the Big Mac is because the Big Mac costs different money in different countries. So you look at Switzerland, $13, right, they’ve got a very strong currency, right? You look at us, $8.50, our currency is not as strong, but still pretty strong. You can look at Taiwan, $3.50 indonesia, you know what that means? The currency is very weak. George Markoski And daughter paid her parents $550,000 over 11 years. George Markoski They had an investment property, they said move in and she believed she was buying their Perth home. So she paid them $550,000 over 11 years believing that she was going to buy their home. And her parents said that she was simply paying rent and no agreement to transfer the property existed and they sold the property for $1.1 million. Christina Markoski Wow. George Markoski Right. Look, I think those parents, Sorry, but it’s your daughter. It’s not like someone that you don’t know. Like, I think getting rent off your kids for 11 years straight, telling them you can buy the property and then just selling it and keeping the money is very bad. Bad. What do you think? What do you think? Christina Markoski Very cold. George Markoski Totally, totally. I mean, if our son was renting off us, like one, we probably wouldn’t charge him rent, but two, we’d let him have the property, wouldn’t we? Christina Markoski Definitely. George Markoski Yeah, so this is what I suggest though, instead of doing this, what people should do is get him into Positive Property and we can do the family deal and help them get property. Because what the best way to do this, right, because what they’ve done is they’ve done this and they got a bit greedy. But what parents should do is get their equity, help their kids with equity and help the kids buy their own home and just pay for it themselves. And that way there’s no miscalculation and it’s all going to be above board. Christina Markoski Definitely much better idea. George Markoski So state of the nation, the correction is real. The balance of power is shifting from sellers to buyers now. So 3.5% fall in five capital city dwelling price from the recent peak. So Sydney’s fallen 6.2%, Perth is down 0.9%. What does this really mean? The correction’s real, but it’s not even. And when we’re looking at numbers and statistics, right, this looks scary to people, but really all it is there’s a lot of people that bought during the peak with FOMO that overpaid for some crazy properties that are now a little bit cheaper. So look at the Correction now. George Markoski Sydney -6.2 Melbourne 5%, Brisbane 4.5 Adelaide 3.8 Perth 0.9% this is the correction, but the correction’s different because during this correction period, property prices have gone up in certain suburbs, they’ve gone down in other suburbs. George Markoski What we have to realise is this, there’s 15,000 suburbs in Australia. There’s actually more, but I call it 15 to be concise, because it’s not 16, it’s not 15, it’s somewhere between. And it changes because some suburbs disappear, really literally disappear, because what happens is you’ve got some mining towns or some one horse towns and then suddenly else has left there. Those suburbs are gone. So what’s happening is there’s 15,000 suburbs and they’re not all going up and down at the same time. And by looking at these numbers it’s like, oh my God, they’re going down. Or when they’re going up. See you look at some suburbs and next week I’m finally releasing the no go zones. George Markoski And if you look at some of the no go zones, like for example, I’ll give you one suburbs on the no go zones, it’s still there during the boom. There’s a suburb called Docklands in Melbourne, right? And it’s just oversupplied, it’s never done well. And property prices went up, but in Docklands they went down even though there was a boom. So some suburbs are up, some are down and really what you’ve got to do is be really careful about which ones you choose. But today’s falls are really small by historical standards. The largest correction ever in Perth went down 15.3%. Sydney’s gone down 12.9, Brisbane 9.9, Melbourne 9.8, Adelaide 6.2. That’s the biggest they’ve done in history. And even during those times people still made money, so it doesn’t matter. George Markoski So what happened during Periods Corrections? Well, 2011, 2013, RBA cut rates. George Markoski Brisbane, Adelaide rode right at the bottom. Then they boomed 2019 there was policy certainty. Sydney plus Melbourne at the bottom, they went up. Then one month later, RBA cuts, rates easing begins. Two months later, Perth bottoms. The pattern. They’re always moving up, moving down, moving up, moving down as they go along. So 2028, the RBA expects inflation to return to the midpoint of its target. So that gives the RBA little room to rush into rate cuts. And this is the problem, Right? The slowdown isn’t fixing the supply problem. See, weaker price and clearance rates reflect buyer sentiment. But the underlying challenge of delivering new housing remains. Less confidence today doesn’t create more homes tomorrow at all. So the supply trap. Less is being built, more people arriving. George Markoski The maths are simple, really simple. We’re 27% behind the housing accord target massive. George Markoski We actually require 240,000 homes a year, but we’re doing about 180 and now 180,000 minus 15,000, if that don’t happen, is even worse. So the supply gap is growing, not getting smaller. We’re short 112,000 homes now. New home sales fell 23% in just four months. New detached houses, large builders. Look at that. You know, first home buyers. There’s less first home buyers now after the tax changes than before. Christina Markoski And labour justified it by saying that it was all to help young people own their own home. And first home buyers. George Markoski No, no. Christina Markoski That’s how they justified it. George Markoski What did they say? Easy Albo like, no, he just, he’s justifying it, but it didn’t happen. Now, this is the very interesting thing. The lady, what’s her name, the head of the RBA, she just bought a very expensive property investment recently. Christina Markoski Interesting timing. Do tell more. George Markoski Now, I’m going to tell you the facts next week because I don’t have them on me. But you know, when it comes to property, you’re actually allowed to use inside information. Where in shares you’re actually not. Christina Markoski Like the stock market. George Markoski Yeah. So in the stock market, if you use inside information to get rich, you go to jail. In property, if you use to get rich, you get rich. Is that amazing? George Markoski What do we do? I’ll tell you a secret. I use a lot of inside information. I am the king of inside trading when it comes to property investing, because I know a lot of developers, I know a lot of what’s going on and I’m always finding out what’s happening. And when you look at the access that we get to one of the biggest builders in Australia, that’s the sort of access a lot of people don’t have. And access is where you get the information. So a lot of people, it’s not the knowledge that holds them back from making money, it’s the access to the deals, the access to the real information, which you don’t get publicly. So 460,000 dwelling shortfall in Australia. That’s like a little mini city, I reckon. George Markoski Canberra. What’s Canberra? Anyone tell me in the chat, how big is Canberra? George Markoski Probably about that size. We need to build a Canberra just to catch up. Christina Markoski Only going to get worse. I don’t see it getting better. George Markoski Yeah, well, established homes lost a tax advantage. Negative gearing change were intended to redirect investment demand towards new builds. Buyers pulled back. Established homes lost a tax advantage. Negative gearing change were intended to redirect, developers felt it. Stockland and Mirvac both reported weak activity. Land sales forecast to fall 36%. Combined residential land sales are forecast to fall from a typical 50,000 to 32,000 this year. What do you think is going to happen there? So fewer land sales today means fewer homes tomorrow because you need land to actually build. So normal annual demand of 50,000 lots. Now if we drop that by 36%, which is 18,000 less, that equals 32,000 for 2026. That means fewer new housing projects in the pipeline. George Markoski What happens is that risks deepening the shortage in the future. So prices are falling, but rents are not. That’s the opportunity here. George Markoski Even people earning $130,000 are hitting housing stress. Capital city median rent has reached $724 a week. That consumes 30% of take home pay on $130,000 salary and 56% on a $70,000 rate. So rents have risen at over $48 a week, or nearly $2,500 a year since March 2025. And I guess what’s happening here, frontline workers are locked out of rentals in the area they work in, which is sad. 40% Increase in national median advertised rents over the last five years. That’s an extra $10,600 year for renters. And rents are growing almost twice as fast as wages. Rents are growing at 5.9 wages are growing at 3.3. Rental listings are dropping at 5.3%. George Markoski So when rental listings drop, it creates more competition, creates more demand, less supply, which puts more pressure on the rents going up again. Christina Markoski Should we be expecting to put our rents up as investors? George Markoski Unfortunately, yes. Or fortunately. Right. Now, look at this, right, this is very interesting. So let’s say you’re making $70,000 a year the last place you want to live, you’re making $70,000 a year is Sydney. Right? Because in Sydney, if you earn $70,000, rent’s going to take up 69% of your salary. Christina Markoski You couldn’t even afford to rent a car park out for that. George Markoski In Sydney, if you’re a single person, you just, you know. And Perth 61, Brisbane 59, Melbourne 55. Adelaide’s still cheap at 50%, but even at 50% it sucks. So really, you’ve got to be living with someone you know. Cohabitation has become the new norm. It’s funny because after Covid, everyone decided to move out and live on their own because they were sick of living. The people that live, you create a lot of divorces. People were stuck together where normally you go to work, you don’t see the person for eight hours a day. And now the rents are causing people to live together again. So the investors win, aren’t smarter, they’re earlier. Right. So what happens is the market feels uncomfortable, there’s fear. Prices soften, headlines worsen, buyers hesitate. Opportunity. George Markoski Competition falls, negotiator power improves. White, we’ve got more options, confidence, the market feels safer. George Markoski Competition returns. The difference between comfort and discomfort. So now we’re going to my favourite section. Real people, real results. Why smart investors now? Ben Wallace. There’s a picture of me and Ben. Ben Wallace bought a property in Raceview, Queensland. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one car. $452,700. And he paid 30% deposit using his SMSF, $135,810. Selling in June 23 for $452,000. Current market value, $720,000. So $267,000 profit. This is the thing that $267,000, because it’s an SMSF, he’s going to get it tax free. Christina Markoski Awesome. George Markoski Won’t have to pay a cent of tax on that. Christina Markoski Well done, Ben. Congratulations. George Markoski Ben didn’t just stop there, he kept going. He went to Caboolture and bought a three bedroom, two bathroom, one car for $589,000. 10% Deposit using equity. So literally zero. It settled in December 2025 for $589,000. The market value is 715. Now the profit’s $125,000 on this. Now on this profit because it’s in his personal name, he’s going to have to pay tax if he pulls it out, but he gets to use it straight away. So current profit over three years, $392,000. Okay. Christina Markoski Well done Ben. Hi Ben. George Markoski Hi Ben. Ben Wallace Thanks guys. Christina Markoski Well done. It’s amazing. Just under $400,000. Ben Wallace Thank you very much. George Markoski Okay. I can’t hear that well, Ben. Hoping I can hear you better but I’m not hearing you that well. Yeah, let’s try about those and let’s see how that works. Christina Markoski Getting a lot of love for Ben in the comments here. Everyone’s saying good work Ben, great results. Congratulations Ben. George Markoski Well, Ben’s a part of it. Christina Markoski Awesome mate. George Markoski Hello Ben. Let’s talk again. Let’s try this again. Ben Wallace Hello, you there? George Markoski Yep, that’s good. That’ll be fine. We’re going to work on that. So Ben, you joined the three years ago. Just want to hear a bit about your journey. When did you first realise property investing was the thing for you? Ben Wallace I bought a property close to where I live and I had it for about eight years and I sold it and I probably only profited $100,000 from that over the eight years and I bought that primary place of residence where I am now. I saw a lot of growth in that self-managed super fund really quick, really fast which I didn’t see in that previous property. George Markoski You had your property for quite a while beforehand and obviously you were interested in property but maybe you didn’t know exactly how to do it properly. Ben Wallace Yeah, I used to watch a lot of Robert Kiyosaki and that’s why I came across you, dude. George Markoski Yes, of course. When me and Robert did a lot of training together. That was probably about three or four years ago. Ben Wallace Yeah, that was the best thing I did stumbling across you. George Markoski And how did you sign up to join us? I suppose partly because Robert Kiyosaki endorsed me. Ben Wallace Absolutely, yeah. And I spoke to Michelle straight up and she hooked me straight up. She got me keen and I was ready to go. George Markoski Great. Well you got two properties with us so far and how much did you make out of those properties? Ben Wallace 392. George Markoski $392,000. Ben Wallace Yeah, absolutely. George Markoski Couldn’t have dreamed of that in three years. And how long would that take you to save if you were to just put money away every week, mate. Ben Wallace Yeah, I like them. Absolutely. George Markoski So how did our investment compare to yours and why was it different? Ben Wallace Oh mate, you guys have the growth areas. I just picked a place that was close really the only available one at the time. But you guys have got the strategies and the know how and the due diligence that you do. George is next level. George Markoski Okay, excellent. And how’s your future looking now that you’ve you know, you got a few properties under your belt. Ben Wallace Yeah, really good. I want to go again maybe in the next year or so. But the future is good, mate. Like, I want to set up retirement a bit earlier than what I anticipated and also have something to pass on to my kids as well. Yep. George Markoski Beautiful. Excellent. What was the hardest part? Because it can’t be all easy. Because sometimes it’s difficult. Ben Wallace Yeah, it’s definitely not easy taking that first step. For me, George, when they talk hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s a bit daunting. But, you know, with the confidence that you guys give us, I get excited there. I really do. George Markoski I suppose what happens is we get put into our brain. Debt is bad. And I think going to debt to get all these properties is difficult for people because we’re taught to get rid of debt, but we have to understand that bad debt is bad and good debt is good debt. And a lot of people just put everything in one lump sum. And that’s the thing, Right? Because without debt, you wouldn’t have made, you know, nearly $400,000 in three years. Because on your own, how would you do that? Right? Ben Wallace Absolutely wouldn’t. Very appreciative. Best thing I ever did. George Markoski Awesome, awesome. And I’m very appreciated to have members like you that love what they’re doing and work hard and make it happen, because it takes a lot of confidence to do that, especially the first step, because, you know, you’re jumping into the unknown second time, it’s easier once you’ve made the money. You know, after your first deal, you’ve made all this money. The second time, I think the third time, you’re going to be able to do it without even trying. It’s funny how the first one’s so difficult. Ben Wallace Yeah. Well, I think the third one’s going to be much easier. And the circle of safety. And Charmaine, my coach, is amazing, and it gives you the confidence to leap into it. You know what I mean? George Markoski Yep. Yep. George Markoski And you’re part of the community. How’s that working for you? Ben Wallace Great. Yeah. Great. I’ll be at Gold Coast in October. Me and my partner. So looking forward to that. George Markoski Great. Ben Wallace I was down at Adelaide a couple of years ago. That was my first time. And that was a bit of an eye opener, but, yeah, very good. George Markoski Awesome. Yeah, we keep trying to make each event better and better. So we got a super yacht this time, which is going to be exciting. We’ve got oysters. Ben Wallace Oysters and champagne. George Markoski It’s going to be great. It’s going to be a lot of fun because we want to make it an experience as well, which is going to be good. What would you say to people that are looking at Positive Property that are watching this live show now, thinking about investing in property? They’re probably a little bit scared. All the news is negative. Ben Wallace Just jump in, you know, just do your homework, jump in, trust the process. 100%. trust the code. Yeah, that’s what you got to do. George Markoski Awesome. Ben Wallace And don’t sit on your hands, get into it. George Markoski Excellent. Ben, I really appreciate you. Looking forward to seeing you. I think it’s like six weeks time in October in Queensland and I’ll see you there. Thank you. Christina Markoski Awesome. Looking forward to Gold Coast. Hopefully I can be there with everyone. George Markoski Gold Coast is going to be great. It’s going to be awesome. I think this is what we do because there’s a few things I want to talk about. Private group that we’re not going to talk in the public group. Everyone in the public group. Thank you for joining us. Really appreciate you. I’ll see you next Thursday. Now look, if there’s any session that you need to come along, it’s next session because next session I’m going to be going through the worst 100 suburbs in Australia. You should avoid the no go zones and I’m going to be telling you why to avoid them. And I might give a few people some hints about what you should buy instead. I might even give some people what we’re going to be doing. George Markoski So you need to come next week. I’ll see you next Thursday night. Cheers. Christina Markoski See you next week.