What makes a good investor?

“The sophisticated investors are proactive, are not relying on waking up in the morning, getting a notification of saying, ‘10 Smith Street’s come on the market’, and then you’ve got a thousand buyers jumping on it. What they’re doing is, they’re being proactive,” Mr Handler told host Phil Tarrant.

“I heard a story yesterday. A guy was looking to buy a house, a family home. He doorknocked an old lady, not sure if it was intentional, [and found out the home] was worth about $3.9 million. [He] bought it for $3 million, off market. There was no stock in that suburb.

“Whether you’re an investor or an occupier – that to me is what the good people are doing. They’re being proactive, they’re letterbox dropping.”

By the same token, making sure you secure a good buyer’s agent is equally important in the making of a savvy investor, Mr Handler said.

“A lot of the good buyer’s agents, they’re doing that [letterbox dropping]. They are looking for a lot of premarket stocks – stock that’s coming on the market onto real.estate.com.au and Domain. They are snapping it up before it goes on there, so it’s scheduled to go on. They’re getting access for their clients before it goes live and then they’re snapping up,” he explained.

“A lot of the good buyer’s agents as well, they’re actually calling property management companies or even real estate companies with property management internal and just saying, ‘Have you got any landlords with a two-bedder between $600,000 to 800,000 for my client that’s looking to sell to do a quick deal?’

“They’re being quite strategic in getting in there and trying to find out strategies around how to get access to more stock. I guess buyer’s agents are doing very similar stuff that I mentioned. They are just doing whatever they can to get access to stock outside of realestate.com.au and Domain.”