Dash Dot Buyers Agents

Hi all

Anyone worked with Dash Dot - Glenn Goose Mcgrath? Buyers agents in Melbourne.

Looking to buy my first IP and set up a 10 year strategy. Any recommendations would be welcome

 

Can you not back your own judgement and source your own Property?
There will be plenty of (free) info here to help you form the best criteria to purchase one.

 

This is one of the relatively young and relatively new investors who has trained as a BA and is using facebook heavily to market. Facebook ads present an image of the advertiser that they desire, not necessarily fact. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with him but how much actual real, first hand experience does he have of sustained,successful (wealth creating) property investing? The deals that I see lots of these guys post up are very average. You need to ask directly about his own investing, portfolio and results.

 

If you ask, he's quite open about the fact he's only just started investing himself.

Personally I've found that clients who've bought through BA's have actually bought worse properties than the investors who DIY. Not to say that's the case with these guys, but it's important to be aware that there's no guarantee you'll end up better off buying with a BA...

You just have someone to blame if it doesn't work out

It's a good time saver, and probs a better option than not doing any research and winging it yourself, but there's something to be said for having the skill set to find good properties yourself...and taking responsibility/ownership for the same.

 

Spot on @ellejay.

@Lottsg If you are looking for a trusted advisor, with a strong track record of results, I think you can do better. Not sure of this particular company, but a lot of these entrants are a product of a marketing course that goes along the line of "quit your job, come and be a buyers agent- its really easy and you make heaps of money"

Ask around this forum if you need help, lots of experienced buyers agents/ recommendations here. Or search PIPA/ REBAA sites for Member Buyers Agents and Qualified Property Investment Advisors.

 

Hi @Lottsg,

I thought I would post a detailed review of our experience with Dash Dot Buyer Agents from just a couple of months ago. This is my opinion about our experience only. I'm sure others have had their own different experience.

We got in touch with Goose and Gabi after seeing some of their facebook ads and set a time to chat over the phone.

I had a 30min initial phone call with Goose which I would say is the "Qualifying call". Goose says they are super picky about who they choose to work with (I'd say this a tactic to give the illusion of scarcity) but it was a good opportunity to check out if we were on the same page and for Dash Dot to determine if we were serious about investing and if we had finance sorted to buy property etc. We had a good chat and agreed to a second call with myself, my hubby and Goose a week or two later.

Before the 2nd call there were some homework tasks, from memory, there were 3 Dash Dot videos to watch which talked about their strategy and how they select properties for their clients. Probably about 45mins-60mins of video all up. Some of it was interesting, most of it was vague and didn't go into the finer details of the strategy.

We had the second call with Goose about 2 weeks later. This was an interesting call. We chatted about some of our goals and our whys - this is where I feel things started to go downhill. Goose really wanted to dig deeper into the "why", which is fine, but it was almost aggressive after the third or fourth time of him telling us, no you've got to go deeper, etc. It came off a bit cheesy to be honest but I think it's a part of an "Investment Guru" persona that Goose is going for.

The strategy presented to us seemed to be about them doing an Australian wide data crunch of sales listings using their "proprietary" method to narrow down the best investment opportunities. Mostly it sounded like choosing regional properties with value add potential that were undervalued and they would negotiate a below market price. Sounds good but difficult to verify without real data which we did not see. It then seemed like equity would be used after some time (subject to Valuation) to purchase the next deal.. Nothing earth shattering or original in this strategy.

What was earth shattering (for me at least) was that at the end of the sales pitch, the "ASK" was a $15,000 upfront payment to engage their services, "Would you like to pay that with Visa or Mastercard" he said. This was before you were even given an engagement contract or agreement to review!! **Alarm bells!!*** I said, yeah right, nice sales tactics and I asked to see a contract first only to be told we'd need to give a $1,500 (refundable) deposit to see the contract.

We paid the deposit, mostly because I was curious and wanted to see the contract. I'm not sure if this is standard, but they had a clause in there about exclusivity to use only them as buyers agent for a period of time (standard I guess) BUT also that we were not able to buy any other properties even if we bought it on our own (without a Buyers agent). There was no way I was going to agree to that. We requested our deposit to be refunded and it was refunded with no issues.

Overall, the experience felt very like a very strong sales masterclass approach rather than an experience of engaging an experienced professional who knows what they are doing. I also remember thinking, if there strategy is so damn good, why don't they have more properties themselves (I think they had 3 from what they shared with us). At $15,000 per property I didn't see how that was a good investment, especially for low valued properties, it would take far too long to recoup such a large expense on top of all the other buying transaction costs. We decided that for $15,000 per property, we'd spend more time researching and learning before we take the plunge at buying any more properties. Knowledge is power right??

 

That's more than enough for me to say sayonara no thank you and leave.

 

Thank you all thats really really helpful and @Curious2019 that's really great to hear ahead of my scheduled call tomorrow. I think I will walk away - I feel that it's very NLP speak and sparkly marketing which is ok for some but I will continue to educate myself. I am curious though as to what other BA's charge as a comparative rate if anyone can shed some light.

Thanks again -

 

@Lottsg it would be interesting to see how your call goes tomorrow. Please let us know what your experience is like, perhaps it will be different to mine?

Fair enough @Simon Hampel. I wasn’t sure if that was standard or not as this was my first interaction with a BA. Also, it could have been explained before the $15k was asked for - I felt like that was a bit misleading.. I only saw the clause after reading the contract myself. What if you had lots of money and bought most properties yourself but just wanted BA help in one certain area or interstate? I can’t imagine those types of investors would want to be restricted to the BA for any other purchases.. it’s definitely been a good learning curve!

I agree with your other points too @Simon Hampel.

@Sackie Yep, the sales pitch very much reminded me of Kerwin Rae, a marketing guy I’ve seen give a similar pitch at a sales conference before, where they ask you lots of questions to get you used to saying yes right before the payment question! It can be very effective if you aren’t aware of it - I just asked Goose if he was a Kerwin Rae fan (he said yes) and he was a bit surprised that I knew who Kerwin was lol
Goose had also mentioned that they had recently had a client use their services and not pay their fee, so maybe they are trying to avoid that again by getting paid upfront.. That also rings alarm bells if customers are not happy with the service and don’t see value enough to pay..

On a side note, what professional uses the nickname Goose?? I thought that was a bit interesting...

 

@Curious2019 and @Lottsg may I ask what made you want to engage with these guys in the first place?

 

Appreciate the detailed write up

good luck with names of "glenn mcgrath" and "goose" , a cricketer and a bird that is seen as clumsy!!

 

Hi @fols
That’s a great question! For us I think it was impatience mostly! We’ve been sitting on some cash from the recent sale of a property and we wanted to buy something.. and we felt a bit unsure in our own knowledge so was looking around for someone who knew more than us.. maybe a lack of confidence in ourselves?

The good news is that we are learning that building wealth is a slow burn and a lot more patience is needed to prevent rushed decisions or decisions made on a whim!

We are also lucky that we have a really good team that we check in with before we make big decisions - including a great lawyer and a great broker. We discussed the proposal from Dash Dot with them and they challenged some of our thinking on why we were looking for a Buyers Agent and why we couldn’t educate ourselves a bit more first.

 

Thanks for sharing. Some great learnings for those just starting out. Stick around here , you’ll learn plenty! Nothing wrong with using a BA, just needs to be a good one!

 

thanks @fols, The forum has been great, some amazing knowledge and experiences are shared here!


@Lottsg how did your call go yesterday? Would you mind sharing?

 

Some people want to go from beginner to guru, and skip the boring job of getting 20 years of experience in between. Facebook ads are great for this, simply pay $10k or so for a 'Build your own 6 figure business and get your $10k back with your first client' course. Repeat everything parrot fashion that you've been told to say by your mentor, without the experience to be able to be flexible and voila, you're a $15k fee buyers' agent.

 

Below market value
20% under asking
Growth corridor
Cashflow positive
Granny flat potential
Instant equity.
Quit your day job
Own your financial future.
Let our experts show you how

 

From my FB feed, I think most of the property people on there are experts at social media marketing - I don't know if they actually have knowledge and experience in property. If you want to use a professional, look for someone on these forums instead.

 

I've been dealing with buyers agents for about 15 years. There's a few that I'd be very happy to recommend and I think offer excellent value for money even though the fees are significant.

Also more recently, I've met a few buyers agents following a different business model...

They're often small agencies (often an individual) offering services Australia wide. Clearly they don't have good local knowledge. Instead they're using online services to select properties, some of these services are becoming quite sophisticated and can get a lot of detail. They then employ a property manager to do a local inspection (probably on the promise of management of the property). I've seen fees quoted of a few thousand to fifteen thousand for this type of service.

Comparing this to some of the BAs I've worked with, there's a world of difference in the service, experience and value between them.

I've worked with many of the buyers agents that contribute on these forums. They're all great at what they do and I'd happily pay for their services myself (which I have in a few cases).

I wouldn't use the model offered by these newer BAs. I seriously doubt most of them are investors. I suspect there's a lot of real estate agents that couldn't make ends meet during the 2017-2018 downturn have switched to the buyers side using online resources to find properties.

If you want to use a BA, look to those that contribute to this forum. There are plenty of good BAs out there that are well worth it, and plenty that aren't. Those on this forum wouldn't last long here if they weren't good at what they do.