Welcome to James and a way of making better home buying decisions which as a buyer will give you better outcomes. Please note after a few visits you will be asked for your first name and email - this is primarily so as we can provide a better web experience for you.
Resources
At the top of this page are resources provided to assist you. Up to the minute independent Marketnews or the latest Auctions and Results, a thought provoking article on what really goes on behind the scenes in Masterclass or one of our thousands Home Ratings. Just click on something to start building knowledge, so as you can be more informed and make better decisions. Wherever you go the grey navigation bar will always show you how to get to where you want to.
Rating Dial
To help analyse a home we use the James Home Rating tool. James Home Ratings is a logical, scientific, independent and patented buying process that we invented over a decade ago to assist you the buyer maximise your emotional and financial outcomes.
Each characteristic is weighted to reflect its importance against other characteristics, according to our observations over the years. For more information on the logic and laws behind James Home Ratings please download the book.
Clarity - Assess - Value - Negotiate Process
A good buying decision means a better home (you didn't miss it to another buyer) or more money in your bank (you didn't pay too much and you still bought the home) or an option you never even considered (an off market or better alternative). Every home you look at
requires decisions, so why not make them good ones. To make better decisions we have found a process that really works. So whether we are buying a Carpenter St Brighton investment in 1994 for $350,000 and selling it for $2,250,000 in 2005 or a single fronted in Highbury Grove Prahran for $1,000,000 (2007) and the client selling for
$1,500,000 + (2012) when much of the market remained flat, we followed a process. When we acted for the government on a $31,000,000 initial asking price in Torquay that we bought for under $13,000,000 we followed a process - and one that works.
Help Me Buy Now
Can we help you with Negotiation, Values, Dealing with Agents or finding Off Markets. Initially your only commitment is a 5 minute conversation. Call +613 9804 3133
I bought my first home in 1985 and our company, James Buyer Advocates has been in its current form since 2002,
any one of a number of qualified, experienced and local advocates can help you take the stress, time wasting, and misinformation out of buying a home.
You can see your local buying expert by clicking on the Architect Adam section. So relax and open your mind to something completely different when buying and home. Enjoy James, be
informed and watch the stress disappear!
Thank you for your time.
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38 Carroll Street NORTH MELBOURNE
Good buying decisions on 38 Carroll Street increase your chances of good long term emotional, physical and financial outcomes for you and your family.
All buyers have emotion and inherent biases on home decision making and many rely purely on intuition. While intuition can produce some stellar results; test after test shows it is inferior to expert value analysis.
Our role is to provide the home buying client with a proven process and the tools to make good decisions.
We begin on 38 Carroll Street with Stage One Clarity.
Last year we rated 2000 homes, covered 1200 auctions but only bought 80 homes. We're picky! And you should be too.
When buying a home people want to achieve good financial and good emotional outcomes.
Buyers have to make many decisions - some have good results and some may have bad.
To maximise the good and minimise the bad, we at James Buyer Advocates take you through a process called James Home Ratings.
Clarity is the start of the Ratings process.
We can show you how clarity saves time, stress and ultimately money by encouraging you to focus on the important points about the home and only on the homes that really count.
If the home passes your 'sleep test' then it's onto the next, more detailed stages of our process:
If at any stage you would like more obligation free information about how a James Buyer Advocate can help or you then please contact us on 9804 3133
| Emotional | Physical | Financial | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Happy Wife Happy Life | Too far from Future needs (eg secondary schools) |
Too Big A Strain | ||
| A Fresh Start | Expansion for Future Needs (eg unknown addition) |
Too Restrictive on Other Choices | ||
| A False Start | Too Close Internally (parents to kids - growth?) |
Manageable |
| No | Maybe | Yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Will 38 Carroll Street fall within my budget? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2. Do I like the feel of 38 - did it pass my first impressions test? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. Do others like the feel of Carroll - did it pass their sleep test? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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*Three of the questions we ask to establish your needs.  |
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| NO | MAYBE | YES | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clarity Decision: Is 38 Carroll Street the best home for you? |
If you want a near-CBD location and a reasonable land size (367sqm), and can cope with a home that has a few issues that a smart architect could fix, then maybe 38 Carroll is for you. It is a corner block with excellent car access and tandem spaces. Street appeal is good and neighbours are similar. Inside, the home feels a bit pokey and the floorplan is hotchpotch with stairs breaking up the rear living area. One central bathroom is also probably not enough for most and a builder may want to look at the floor. But the land size does offer room to remodel to deal with those internal issues (STCA). The slope to the land is, however, likely to make remodeling more expensive than a flat block and may also mean some indoor/outdoor disconnection. Overall though, if you like the home as the rambler that it is now, this is well located. And if you like a challenge, this has the space to allow solutions to its current shortcomings.
| NO | MAYBE | YES | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assess Decision: Is 38 Carroll Street a good home? |
In working out value sometimes an agent quote can be helpful and sometimes it can be misleading. We understand the quote for 38 Carroll Street to be $1,200,000. Is Gary Fitzpatrick a helpful quoter (reserve within the range) or an unhelpful quoter (step or underquoter). The agent quote often changes during the campaign and there is no legal requirement for it to represent fair market value. The agent is legally required to work for the seller first not you the buyer.
There are a number of ways to calculate a market price. We use versions of two established methods – comparable and summation – forming a double check in the pricing process. We prefer a range rather than a single figure when establishing market price.
What is your opinion, the highest other bidders opinion and the seller’s opinion of the land component, the building component and the range of possible emotional components when looking to establish a foundation price for 38 Carroll Street?
In Pricing and Valuing there are no absolutes, just opinions. Those opinions are wide and varied; biased or independent, good and bad..
However there are only three opinions that count
Of those three, YOURS is the most important - as long as it's informed.
To Price and Value homes - we use the James Control Value and Price Tool.
We follow a system like double entry accounting.
We then compare all land + building + emotion prices against similar or comparable homes that have been bought recently - we call this our double entry TOTEM check.
That's our double entry. We support that figure with additional data from our extensive and unique auction and private sales database built up over many years.
Once you have the Three James Control Price and Values you can move onto the final step - Negotiation.
If at any stage you would like more information about how a James Buyer Advocate can help or you want to meet me or another of our buyer advocates for coffee, then please contact us on 9804 3133.
| Value Too Low | Value Well | Value Too High | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Never buy a home | Increased chance of buying the home | Harder to make Bank Loan stack up | ||
| Miss the home to another buyer | Increased Chance of Good Growth | Pay too much - Bigger Mortgage | ||
| Only end up buying what nobody else wants | Lower Chance of Overcapitalisation | Poor Capital Growth |
| NO | MAYBE | YES | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value Decision: Do you have a clear idea of value for 38 Carroll Street? |
Private Sale
A number of clients engage us to negotiate only.
What should your offer be? And what response will Collins Simms give you to that offer? Framing of offers and counter offers are so important.
Is Gary Fitzpatrick the key agent to be dealing with in trying to buy 38 Carroll Street?
Do you have a plan? Is it a predictable one? Do you have an established history with Collins Simms? In other words do they know more about you than you do about them? What are Collins Simms's processes, habits and quirks when it comes to negotiation? Are those processes fair, can they be negotiated?
Contracts, inspections and terms - have you completed due diligence - can Gary in fact sell 38 Carroll Street to you today if you did start a negotiation. Yes or No! If no why start?
Many of our negotiations are win-win eg a fairly priced off market. At the other end of the scale auctions and highly priced homes are obviously designed to be adversarial - look at the bidder numbers on
36 Chapman Street or 38 Carroll Street.
However the current auction hammer rate is 24% which means 76% are not actually selling during that 15 minute incredibly intense process. How will you handle a pass-in such as
38 Carroll Street or ?
It's been on the market in its current campaign since Jul 26 2012. It has a history - what is it? Is now actually a good time to start negotiating?
Negotiation decisions are critical to outcomes and they involve risk versus reward concepts.
Your intuition in negotiating homes is like intuition in anything else - it can work.
However your intuition plus a complete understanding of the process works better and finally your intuition plus an understood process supported by experienced professionals works best as your decisions are informed ones.
Welcome to the final part of the James Home Rating Process.
As the markets mature and the way properties are offered for sale becomes more complicated, it's becoming harder for buyers to negotiate well.
You negotiate to maximise your position financially and emotionally.
To negotiate well, we start with a James Negotiation Plan.
At the top of the plan we ask: What is it you are trying to buy - a price or a property?
On one extreme is the occasional buyer who is focused purely on price. At the other end is the buyer who wants the home whatever the price.
Most buyers fall somewhere in between on the price vs property spectrum.
Negotiation strategy is about risk vs reward: what risks are you prepared to take for which rewards? This will determine your planned strategy.
On the other side of the negotiation fence are highly skilled selling agents using sophisticated selling processes. Many agents employ two key techniques to maximise their clients' (the seller) position.
These are:
These techniques are used in both auctions and private sales.
A common variation of the above techniques is Step Quoting, where the asking price rises each time you have contact with the agent. It may start, for instance, at $2m when you speak on the phone, go up to $2.2m when you ask at the door, rise to $2.4m before the auction and then when the property is passed in you discover the reserve is $2.8m.
How do you deal with that? For more information read our article on Step Quoting.
Auctions are all about pressure. They're about gathering all the combatants into a ring and letting them fight it out. How do you know who your opponents are?
Sure, anybody can bid at auction - but even in good markets it's still less than 1 in 3 that are bought under the hammer and then the most common Bidder number is - yep - One, You. You are bidding all by yourself.
Do you understand how clouded many deals are with smoke and mirrors? While you are looking at your reflection is someone else doing to you what you needed to do to them? We won't let that happen.
Private sale is all about process. It's not a simple, consistent, easy to understand stated process either, but a protracted complicated process that's designed to maximise the price.
Not sure what we are talking about - its another one of the unknown knowns.
But surely anyone can negotiate!
Perhaps! But can you do it well?
You're simply more effective if you have professional representation protecting your position.
We use sophisticated technology, combined with years of experience and solid agent relationships to read the play, plan our next strategies and understand your true position.
All this is within the James Negotiation.
And remember, sometimes negotiating is not all about the money.
Sometimes the best strategy is Happy Spouse Happy House.
If at any stage you would like more information about how a James Buyer Advocate can help or you want to meet me or another of our buyer advocates for coffee, then please contact us on 9804 3133.
| Offer Too Low | Offer the Right Amount | Offer Too High | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miss to another buyer | Pay a fair price | Be seen as a woodduck | ||
| Not be taken seriously | Buy the home | Pay too much |
| NO | MAYBE | YES | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Negotiation Decision: Do I go it alone or seek professional assistance? |
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