Aussie Home Loans

Uh, retail shop.

Uh, it was a bank, wasn't it? Aussie Home Loans or something at the time?

Yeah, it was.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Aussie Home Loans.

Great lease.

Yeah.

... and, you know, they're, they're engaging with a company.

And we're ranked number three and four in the country as well for independent broker firm.

We don't do franchise, so we're not competing with big players like Aussie Home Loan.

We have 50 licensed brokers.

So I think it's about finding the right people, having the right structure where you can scale.

In many parts around the world, investing in property is considered to be one of the safest long-term investments, and this is particularly the case in regions with strong and developing business districts where constant and increasing demand for housing supports rental increases and drives higher prices.

According to Aussie Home Loans, the Australian national median house value has increased four hundred and twelve percent over the past twenty-five years.

That represents a per year increase of almost seven percent and was achieved with very little volatility.

Also, the nature of a real estate investment make it very attractive, particularly for people looking to start building their retirement portfolio.

And I, I was really, I'm, I'm, I'm good with numbers, and so I made a decision that, uh, when I moved back to Sydney I wanted to become a mortgage broker So, and, and that's what I did.

I came back to Sydney and, um, and, and joined Aussie Home Loans.

Ah.

And what, what year was that? Let's put everything into perspective roughly.

Uh, that was, I joined Aussie in 2002.

Having joined Aussie Home Loans, Hunter learned many things about the property industry before becoming an independent mortgage broker.

I was with Aussie for 15 months, and, um, I literally hit the ground running.

Um, I remember walking into the office once I'd actually got the job, um, and, um, uh, basically just to get the job I had to, um, uh, let's put it this way, I had to, uh, make my CV look better than what it was.

We've also got...

We've had new modeling and, and research this week from major aggregator and brokerage Aussie Home Loans on serviceability, borrowing power, also mortgage, the rate, the number of borrowers out there that are, that are mortgage prisoners.

Yeah.

So I'd, I'd advise all of you to go and check that out.

Now, the Reserve Bank is widely tipped to lift rates by 25 basis points on Tuesday.

Analysis by Aussie Home Loans has found a lift in the cash rate would be enough to erode any housing affordability gained by falling prices.

The company's chief executive, Sebastian Watkins, said first home buyers can't take a policy promise to an auction.

Joining me now is Chair of Property Investment Professionals Australia, Kate Bakos.

They're separate religions with like distinct beliefs.

Let's check in now on our favourite lucid lefty, Bill Maher, who is somewhat perturbed by President Trump's war with CNN and MSNOW.

Even more perturbed was his guest, Aussie-made New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan.

But thankfully, author James Kirchick was there with a timely reality check about the way the Obama administration treated the press.

So we had other levers to pull like commission, subsidy, pricing, promotions, and it was an incredible period of time for me.

In the mid-90s, I had an opportunity to take those transferable skills into the financial services category, and I went to work at Aussie, running the marketing and product team.

So in Aussie, we had a founder in John Simon with a very strong media profile, and earned media was key.

We went through the GFC, constant rate changes, new products.

And myself with a member of my team, Alex Crompton, we drove genuine digital transformation.

Well, I think as well as marketing capability, I've been very lucky in that period of time to also had accountability for sales teams and also customer service teams.

In fact, at High Pages, we had an end-to-end sales team.

Under the leadership of Rob Tolliday at Aussie, we had a BD team to represent the Aussie brand and product into the broking network and also led a sales function at Optus.

So if you go back and answer your question, what would you, what would you be doing differently if you started again?

What would I be doing differently knowing what I know now? Going back to the broker, we stuck with the same broker and nothing wrong with Aussie home loans.

I see lots of people using Aussie home loans.

He was a really nice guy, but knowing what I know now, we should have moved into a trust structure sooner.

We were coming close to the end of our borrowing capacity and we'd push to four investment properties and we were stuck then with Pepper on like an 8% interest rate and that buckled us.

We would sell a lot sooner and be happy to leave 50k on the table.

We would, oh, a strategic broker from day one.

If you're going to the bank or Aussie Home Loans, I'm not even going to say Aussie Home Loans, whoever, if you need to use a strategic broker from day one, we would have done that differently.