In this episode, Scott and Melinda are joined by behavioral finance expert and economic futurist, Evan Lucas, to unpack what’s really driving buyer behaviour in Brisbane’s current property market.
From emotional bidding wars and herd mentality to the impact of interest rate cuts, post-election confidence, and renovation hesitations, this conversation dives deep into the psychology shaping buyer decisions right now.
Evan shares his expert take on how habits, biases, and perception influence demand, and why emotional value often exceeds objective data when it comes to real estate. You’ll also gain insights into what’s ahead for the spring selling season, and how major events like the 2032 Olympics and global economic shifts could reshape buyer confidence.
This episode is your inside guide to understanding what drives people to act and overpay in today’s climate.
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Transcript
[00:00-00:17] Melinda Jennison: On this episode of the Brisbane Property Podcast, we’re joined by special guests, Evan Lucas. Evan has been a popular past guest on our podcast, and today we’re going to unpack some of the behavioural traits that we’re seeing here in Brisbane. Being a behavioural economist, he has some amazing insights. We hope you enjoy this episode.
[00:17-00:22] Announcer: Welcome to the Brisbane Property Podcast with your hosts, Melinda and Scott Jennison.
[00:22-00:34] Scott Jennison: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Brisbane Property Podcast with Scott and Melinda Jennison, and we’ve got a special guest today, returning for another entertaining chat. We’ve got Evan Lucas, welcome.
[00:34-01:06] Evan Lucas: Hi Scott, how are you? Are you special? I’m not sure about that, just an average run-of-the-mill guest that has been back on your podcast. Is this my second or third time?
[01:06-01:34] Melinda Jennison: This is the second time actually, but we will lock you in for a third time. You’re so popular across multiple podcast platforms, I’m assuming that you get multiple invitations and you can’t keep up with those invitations, but we’re grateful to have you back on the show and looking forward to unpacking some new insights that we can share with our listeners today.
[01:34-02:11] Evan Lucas: Melinda, I think the other way to have answered what you’ve just said is that the reason I get asked to do podcasts is because I love talking so much, and therefore I just ramble on and gibber jabber. For those of you out there, I do apologise if I make your ears bleed. I promise I’ll try and say something interesting because I love doing these things; they are so much fun. If you are out there listening, please write into Melinda and Scott if you think you’ve got something to say. I’m sure they’re willing to hear from you because doing podcasts is great fun.
[02:11-02:25] Melinda Jennison: It is, absolutely. Just for a bit of background once again for those that can’t recall the last episode that we recorded with Evan, Evan is a behavioural finance expert, let’s call you. There’s probably better terminology to use, but really…
[02:25-03:00] Evan Lucas: They call me an economic futurist, and the way I describe that is basically taking economics and demographics and merging them together to become that concept because that basically drives out the behaviour that we do every day and the biases that we have every day to basically continue to get in our own way, to be perfectly honest with you, Melinda, and I think that’s what we’re going to go through quite a lot today.
[03:00-03:07] Melinda Jennison: Absolutely, and we’re going to overlap that with how that influences consumer behaviour when it comes to property markets, and specifically looking at Brisbane and southeast Queensland as a whole. Looking forward to this episode and welcome.
[03:07-03:47] Evan Lucas: Thank you. On that, I’m going to ask you guys the question first, I know this is off-cuff. Have you guys seen any major change in the last six months up at your way? There is certainly data that would suggest there are some interesting things, but as people on the ground that do this day in and day out, are you actually seeing it in the actuals rather than in the data?
[03:47-04:47] Scott Jennison: Do you want me to jump in with the actuals and Melinda the data? I’ll jump on the on-the-ground. How about that? Just to start with. So many people in Brisbane, especially in Brisbane, we are seeing so many buyers out and about again. Auctions are huge. We’ve, I think there was one just last week, five or six registered bidders, about five actual bidding, people bidding actively. We’re seeing a lot more activity on the ground. Shoes outside opens, a really big crowd, high numbers, very low listings, which Melinda has more data on than I have, but multiple offers. We’re back to that or continue that, I suppose. It’s increased a bit where you look at a property in a good location, and it’s a good property, we are seeing multiple offers going in there, sometimes in excess of 15-plus offers going in on a property as well.
[04:47-05:40] Melinda Jennison: If I can just add to that, a lot of this escalated buyer activity has occurred just in the last three or four weeks here in Brisbane. We saw a stabilisation, we saw moderate demand. We’ve had very low listing volumes for the majority of the year. In fact, this has been a trend in Brisbane since COVID-19 many years ago. Low listings at a time of moderate supply still resulted in price growth, but in April, we actually had school holidays, we had three consecutive long weekends. Following that, we actually had the federal election, and then we had the second interest rate cut for the year. The surge in buyer activity off the back of all of those big events has been absolutely obvious on the ground. If we were to compare what was happening in March and April versus what’s happening right now in June, it’s quite a different phenomenon on the ground, and we’re definitely seeing more buyer activity now, more confidence in the market.
[05:40-06:31] Evan Lucas: My take on that, because again, the data says exactly what the two of you have just said. There’s no doubt about it. The data started in October last year. It wasn’t that we had interest rate cuts, it was the clear prospect of rate cuts that were going to come in 2025 moved confidence and moved activity. But you highlighted the two that I was going to highlight straight away, Melinda, which is the election and the May rate movement. The interesting thing about the election that people normally don’t see is since Howard’s election in 1996, every single Prime Minister, bar Kevin Rudd who ran into the GFC, so not his fault, but ran into the GFC, we have seen a four-month honeymoon post-the election.
[06:31-07:22] Evan Lucas: What we’ve also seen in that, again, the ’96 through to 2025, is the preceding, the pre-four to five months is quite a lull. Even with interest rate cuts that might have happened beforehand or interest rate hikes, it doesn’t actually move the dial. It is clear that the election has that instability of the possibility of, is it the incumbent or is it the new? Now that we have the election out of the way, a very strong result, whether you agree with it or not doesn’t matter, the result is very strong. We have a very clear, very high mandated, stable government. The reaction, what you guys have said, is what history has said happens time and time again. The one that’s been interesting is the second interest rate cut. It’s there. So far though, it hasn’t properly been the biggest dial mover. It hasn’t actually moved the dial with the data from lending. If you listen to the banks and the lending data, they’re seeing slight increased activity, but most of it is people banking it. Instead of actually reducing their monthly repayments, they’ve kept them as they were pre-February as well and are just getting half of 1% less in interest costs through it and banking it for there.
[07:22-08:18] Evan Lucas: That is all from my world. The behaviour world is what we would expect to see because the savings that come with interest rates or the hikes that come with interest rates take a minimum of six months, and the behaviour change takes a long time. It’s a habit, right? You’ve been in a habit for 13 rate rises and then nine-and-a-half, ten months of rates not moving and spending X amount of dollars, you still haven’t got out of that trend or out of that habit, and you haven’t seen a full benefit of half of 1% coming out of your mortgage rate for, you know, basically a full month. I mean, we are talking, we are doing this today, which happens to be the 17th of June, so the full effect isn’t there yet. For me, looking future-wise, you can tell that what is traditionally a good period of time for sellers in markets, which is spring, when everything looks beautiful, there could be three rate cuts into that, and the activity that the two of you just spoke about could be personified again.
[08:18-09:20] Scott Jennison: Just, Evan, just now that you took us off track at the very start. Another thing that, and this is maybe it’s a behavioural thing, I’m not sure, you’re the expert on that side of it, but one thing when we talk about people wanting to buy property, looking and the interest and amount of property, one thing that we’ve probably noticed has continued is the lack of interest in properties that need work done to them because of construction costs. That is something that people are still scared of. Again, when we talk about just recently, another auction I went to on the weekend, great location, we’re talking prime blue-chip location in Brisbane, a nice Queenslander home needs renovating, not a single bid at that auction. People, that risk appetite for wanting that renovation, they just, a lot of people don’t want to touch it. It could be a good opportunity.
[09:20-10:11] Evan Lucas: Most people are telling the data and telling someone like me in that kind of space is when you ask them that question, and that’s an observational sort of study on this, is why? And the response is the discount price to the actual prices around that are of renovated houses is not large enough. That Queenslander, let’s take it for example, let’s say it’s only 10 to 15% less than buying a fully renovated house, that discount’s not enough because the renovation is going to probably be, you know, let’s be honest, between half and maybe even as much as seven figures, low seven figures period, then you’re paying a premium for the pain and suffering of going through a renovation, which, putting my hand up right now, I’m doing as we speak.
[10:11-11:10] Evan Lucas: But the other thing that’s interesting about the data, before I get back to the behaviour, is that the other thing that’s turning people off is new home builds because new home builds on cost are even more expensive than a renovation. This is, this is the weird thing. If your house is renovated, is finished, and in the areas that people want to live, you’re going to get the premium off the back. That’s because people know that the inflation costs of the last four years is absolutely baked in and hasn’t gone, and it will never go away. What would have been a 300, 400-thousand-dollar renovation is now half, three-quarters, and maybe even as worse as a million dollars, depending on which part of Brisbane and access problems that you get into, which Scott is your domain. That, again, that last two-and-a-half years, the learned habit behaviour is that that’s not worth it. That’s what it is. The answer is that simple. It’s not worth renovating. What is starting to incur though, which is interesting, those that are in-home already, they are starting to see the worth of renovating the house they bought.
[11:10-12:12] Melinda Jennison: Transaction costs are so high and the other thing is that there’s very little to buy in southeast Queensland as a whole. The thought of having to move is problematic in itself. There’s nothing to rent if you need to stage that move, and there’s…
[12:12-13:20] Evan Lucas: What’s also fascinating from an outsider looking in at Queensland is just how incredibly tight your rental market is. It is scarily tight about what’s going on up there. If you’re an investor, happy days and away you go. But the catch that we’ve seen, let’s use New South Wales as the example, is that when it gets that tight, you actually start to push people away. That’s what I’m now waiting to see, is that do you actually start losing population because it’s so tight and becomes so expensive just by pure necessity. We’ve got to remember property is shelter and it’s on, you know, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that if people can’t afford shelter, they will find shelter elsewhere.
[13:20-14:26] Melinda Jennison: Alternatively, the household size starts to increase. We’ve seen more and more people moving in together, you know, multi-generational families, professional couples renting the two-bedroom units again. We do see that compositional shift, if you like, in terms of who’s occupying certain dwellings in certain locations because there’s always going to be affordability caps and then that obviously changes consumer behaviour as well, and I’m assuming that’s…
[14:26-15:21] Evan Lucas: That’s in the data. I love that point, because this is what I love to talk about as well, is that since COVID, we’ve worked out that we don’t want to live with each other. And we got to a point that the average household size in this country was 2.4 people per house. If we went back to the historical average, which is 2.8, you would save about 800,000 homes. You know, if you think about how many people that additional 0.4 of one person per home would be, then the housing crisis that we’re discussing, particularly in Queensland and particularly in Brisbane where the rental market is so incredibly tight, if we do start to see forced returns to collective society living, which I also argue is not a bad thing, it’s just a very Australian-centric thing not to think that way, it would double two-fold. There’s more savings because you’re obviously not having to pay as much rent, the housing issue starts to dissolve because we’re not putting as much pressure on an already tight situation, and third, the living scenario actually gets a little bit more back to the traditional setup of accepting that we do need to have three, four people in a household, not two, two-and-a-half.
[15:21-16:21] Melinda Jennison: Evan, something you said was the four-month honeymoon in that post-election period. I really am fascinated by this phenomenon. I’d like to then also highlight something else you said in that in the spring selling season this year, there’s the potential for up to a further three rate cuts.
[16:21-16:47] Evan Lucas: If you look at all of, it’s not just property, it’s across all markets. If you look at, for instance, let’s take the equity market. The ASX 200 on average appreciates between 4 and as much as 8% in the four months post an election. The housing market has a higher level of auction clearance rates and has a higher level of demand put through it. The price increases are not as easy to gauge because elections are held at different points of the year and unfortunately, therefore you get different cycles and seasonality.
[16:47-17:41] Evan Lucas: You don’t, it’s not as equatable as an equity market, which doesn’t have seasonality inside it. Getting to spring, and what I mean by that, we could have February, May, and more likely than not, either July or August will be another rate cut. There will be three in the year by September, and there will probably be a fourth one by the end of the year. All things being equal, the Melbourne Cup Tuesday is also a very live event. Again, I get to talk really boring economics here, but why are those dates so constant with possible movements? It’s because we keep hearing from the RBA, they’re data-dependent, and all of the major data points that they want to see come out in late July, late October, which are normally the quarterly figures for inflation, employment, wage growth, and the big one being GDP, gross domestic product of the country.
[17:41-18:41] Evan Lucas: The interesting one this time around is that I would have said that was absolutely true for the coming two meetings, July and August. However, the data that has come out in the last couple of weeks to a month has actually made July much more live than it was. We could actually go before we get the full picture because things are slowing faster than expected. There has been no material uptick in inflation, although employment’s still pretty robust. Businesses are going backwards. I can’t deny that. For those that work in business, particularly outside of housing, but those, you know, high street businesses, apparel businesses, goods-exposed businesses, they are going backwards by not investing. What we’ve seen is that their future intentions and their future confidence in their own business is today. By that, what they are doing is basically making sure that the lights stay on, that the doors are open, their people are employed, but they’re not investing in their people, they’re not investing in their equipment or their technology, or they’re not investing in increasing productivity for the future because their capital expenditure intentions are falling like a stone.
[18:41-19:28] Evan Lucas: That scares the RBA. That scares it a lot. It wants to give business the confidence that if it’s going to borrow and needs to borrow to expand itself into the future, it’s at a rate that’s affordable in the current environment. Again, it takes a long time, and they know that. This is, we never got to hear an RBA talk about inflation psychology until what’s happened over the last three years and what it does to people’s thinking and to behaviour. It’s the same with business and it’s the same with intentions, and that again, in the end, it also matters for us because if businesses aren’t hiring or not investing in people, their confidence in their personal lives and therefore in residential property also goes one way as well. There is a feedback to what we do here.
[19:28-20:01] Melinda Jennison: It’s a great summary. It gives a really good broad perspective in terms of what’s happening worldwide and how it may impact, you know, the Australian economy, but also how it may impact each of us in the way we think, in the way we act, etc. And it, I think it leads to something else that I’d love to unpack with you because we could talk for hours about so many different things, but right now in Brisbane, for example, in our property markets, what we are seeing is a lot of buyers missing out. Scott’s explained that multiple offer scenario, we’ve got multiple registered bidders. For every property, there’s one buyer, and there’s a lot that are missing out.
[20:01-21:03] Melinda Jennison: It leads to terminology that I know you use, called recency bias or herd mentality. And what we see now with properties that become available, there’s just that one buyer that stretches to pay whatever it takes because they may have missed out multiple times, and their experience in the last four months has just dictated their actions at that particular moment, but then that becomes the new baseline for value in that area. I’d love to unpack your thoughts on this and how it gets to this point, because is that the market or is that one person driving the value and then other people, you know, using that as a benchmark for where the future value sits?
[21:03-22:00] Evan Lucas: That behaviour there in terms of that goes from being, and I’ll come to herding because you said it perfectly there, Melinda, but it’s what Scott’s is elaborating there is, again, you can’t ever write off ego. You just can’t. That’s a good one. That’s what that is. The way to sort of say it is that money doesn’t kill families, egos do. That’s an ego thing in terms of that trait, that all perspective is lost, rational thinking is gone, and irrational thinking takes over. Now, they may, again, the counter to what I’m answering to this point is that the value actually might be that. The other thing that we haven’t spoken about, did the agents undervalue the property, driving it up by having so many people there, and then that actually the 300,000 over was the fair value in the end because that unfortunately is part and parcel of what we see in a lot of property markets where maybe the guide price was significantly below what was there to drive up demand and therefore drive up interest. Put that to one side.
[22:00-22:42] Evan Lucas: The other thing would be what my answer was, which is that, again, rational price and rational supply and demand gets overcome by, again, this is the only supply offer of this property type in this area, and therefore the pure economics is that you get price that goes through the roof, or more likely, ego comes into it and these two bidders wanted to outdo each other, no matter come hell or high water, blah, blah, blah. The other thing you spoke about before there, Melinda, which I want to go all the way back to is is herding. That’s the term for it. The best example I’ve ever heard of of how to explain herding is Warren Buffett. I know you came to a PIPA event where I was speaking and I used his quote, which is that the five words that will kill anybody in investing, so let’s also take housing, investing into housing or even just buying a home is, “everyone is doing it.”
[22:42-23:41] Evan Lucas: It is the biggest killer because if everyone’s doing it, it must be right. We know that’s not true. We know that. I mean, you look at property developments where people were spruiking developments that looked incredible and then you turn around, they’re completely flawed with issues come hell or high water and all those kind of things. This is where what is so tangible but also so dangerous about property is you used the other term that I love to use, which is value. Value is so hard to define in behavioural economics and behavioural because value is not just capital, it’s not just the pure price on the house. It is all the other values that people will see from it. Is it the location and therefore the schools and the access and the cafes and the lifestyle that it has? Is it the time, the belief, the ethics, the environment, the community? If all of those other things that have value net absolutely trump what Scott just said before, which is that the capital value goes ballistic because people see those collated net positions meaning that actually the value of capital to make it all together is up here, then that’s where you lose it.
[23:41-24:32] Evan Lucas: This is why property, for me, is a fascinating study because it isn’t just about the price. And you’ll always hear, “oh, this property went 300,000 over ask.” Somebody saw the value in that, not just from a capital perspective, they saw that value from other things. And those other things will be, as I said before, value is a very open term that has a lot of other parts to it. And that’s why, again, property, I’ve said this before, the thing about property, it’s the only asset class out there that you can tangibly touch. It’s the only thing that is physically there, and it’s the only thing you can physically alter despite what we said at the start of this. People aren’t renovating as much as they probably should, but you can. You can go down to Bunnings, buy a lick of paint and change your house. You can’t do that with anything else you invest in because if you own a business, you’re more likely than not have business partners or investors, a board, shareholders. If you’re buying fixed income, which is government bonds, the government controls that. Cash is exposed to inflation, you can’t improve cash. Housing is the only one you can.
[24:32-25:12] Melinda Jennison: That’s so true. We often talk about this with our clients when we’re representing them. We’ll say, we can help you understand where we see objective value based on the comparable sales and where the property sits.
[25:12-25:39] Evan Lucas: Objective value. I love that term. That is the term that we use, objective value, but there’s always going to be an emotional value and we don’t know what that means to you. Especially home buyers because, as you’ve rightly pointed out, being in the right school catchment or next to the transport corridors or in close proximity to the cafes and the lifestyle precincts, for different people that has a different, you know, value and we always leave the emotional value proposition to our buyers to determine. We’ll help them with that objective value, which is obviously something that science can do. The art of valuing property is very difficult because it’s subjective.
[25:39-26:29] Evan Lucas: It is subjective. It is that simple. Why does one area or one suburb have so much more interest in it than the suburb next door to it?
[26:29-27:26] Melinda Jennison: I guess it brings us to the role of a buyer’s agent in helping people through that property transaction. We’ve rightly pointed out, property is tricky, and it is the only asset class that, you know, you can add value. There’s this objective value, there’s this emotional value. We can help buyers to understand objectively where things sit, but there’s also, to guide them in terms of where other buyers might be seeing emotional value. We can help people understand the depth of demand in the market because that can also impact on what people are prepared to pay, and that can also come into what we’ve talked about, that herd mentality. If people see, you know, 15 people bidding at an auction, straight away, emotionally, that can mean, “wow, there’s so much value in this because everybody wants it.” And we can see that sometimes happen at auctions as well. It’s an interesting concept and human behaviour is fascinating. I think your line of work will always have a place for it because we’re always so influenced by what happens around us.
[27:26-27:54] Scott Jennison: Thanks again for joining us on the podcast episode. I think we’ve unpacked some really interesting insights yet again, and I’m sure it’ll be another popular episode for our listeners. Thanks for coming on.
[27:54-28:29] Evan Lucas: Thanks very much, guys. Evan, it’s always great to chat. I know that we have a bit of a guide when we, before we sit down and talk to you, and we go way off track, but it’s always so entertaining and it’s a pleasure to chat and to listen. I look forward to when we can catch up next time. I’m thinking it’s the REBA conference coming up this year, which we’ll catch up again for sure, and get you back on the podcast. It’s always great for our listeners to hear you chat and share your thoughts on things as well. Thanks very much. Thanks a lot, Scott. Thanks, guys, for having me.
[28:29-28:50] Melinda Jennison: It’s been our pleasure. Thanks again for joining us on the Brisbane Property Podcast. As always, if you have enjoyed this episode, please share with friends and family. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and leave us a review to share your insights so that we know that we’re on the right track with the content that we keep creating for you. We hope you have a fabulous week and we look forward to speaking with you again soon. Until then, bye for now.
[28:50-29:19] Evan Lucas: Brisbane-specific here. Now, obviously, as you’ve touched on earlier, we’re probably all going to be driving European cars shortly, even though we won’t be able to afford the fuel to put in them because the fuel costs are going to go up so much. The Olympic Games coming up, what does that do to people, when you talk about herd mentality and all those types of things? The hype around that type of thing for a place like Brisbane, how do you see that playing out?
[29:19-30:23] Evan Lucas: The first way to answer that is a really simple statement: build it and they will come. That is clearly what the state government sees from the Olympics. And again, if you look at Sydney, which is the only way to sort of evaluate it from a modern time, it’s certainly improved the area of Homebush to now that it is one of the most exclusive areas in Sydney. Now, again, that would have happened probably naturally anyway by the spread of Sydney, the size, and the time. We’re talking 25 years since the Sydney Olympics. But that is the same concept with all infrastructure spending. The Olympics just adds an extra layer of hype, it adds an extra layer of excitement and drive. It’s more about the infrastructure that it will create that probably wouldn’t have been created if you didn’t have it. I know there’s been so much said about what’s going to happen at the Gabba, and pros, cons, there’s been costings, cost-outs. We’ve finally got to a conclusion with the new state government finally putting into what’s going to happen in the parklands.
[30:23-31:17] Evan Lucas: The argument from our perspective would be, it’s in the right area, you’re going to get a Tier 1 asset by the end of it, which is again, attracting other short-term economic spikes to not just host the Olympics, but what it will mean for rugby league, for AFL, for cricket, and therefore that drive, but it’s the infrastructure. The rail infrastructure that’s clearly going to be developed, that for me is more important. The increase in road development is also there, and then also the land development around it. The difference this time around though, this is the only caveat, the difference this time around is there’s more rejuvenation rather than new. The Olympic Villages that normally get built are a bit different this time with Brisbane to get around those incredible costs that we’ve been seeing pretty much since, realistically, the Athens Olympics back in 2004. I mean, it was starting to come out, and then London in 2012 as well. Beijing is a different beast, let’s put them to one side. But the cost of running an Olympics has got so bad that Rio almost went broke off the back of it.
[31:17-32:11] Evan Lucas: The only caveat is that we won’t get an Olympic Village of the scale that Sydney got. It’s a rejuvenation, and the housing it creates is a little bit lower, but overall it’s more about, it’s not just in the village itself, it’s the train lines that will extend through it. Therefore, the stations that will get increased supply of trains, that will therefore get redevelopments that will get updates that just brings more attraction to those areas. Particularly the north-south corridors that are going to get redone. They, that makes anybody living in those areas that will see increased supply of transportation, being a winner, if you want to be an Olympic fan. It makes it very appealing.
[32:11-33:26] Melinda Jennison: It’s something we talk about a lot on this podcast, and behavioural economics, it’s a fascinating area, and I’m sure that we could keep talking for hours on so many different aspects. But I just wanted to say thank you once again, Evan, for joining us on the podcast episode. I think we’ve unpacked some really interesting insights yet again, and I’m sure it’ll be another popular episode for our listeners. Thanks for coming on. It’s always great to have you. Thanks, Evan, I’ve got one more for you.
[33:26-34:03] Scott Jennison: Just a quick one on that herding, and that recency bias as well. How does that play out then, and I’ll give you another example, where there is a lot of people at an auction, there’s a lot of registered bidders, but no one wants to start the bidding. Where’s that coming from?
[34:03-35:00] Evan Lucas: That is the perfect example of herding because if nobody wants to be the person that sets the mark and therefore be wrong, then you actually find a lull. The other one that’s even worse than that is a silent auction, which is becoming more and more popular, which is where you put your best bid forward, and you don’t find out until after the fact if you were close or miles away. The actual herding effect on that is that you probably underbid by as much as 10 to 15%. I am now seeing a lot more anecdotal evidence and actual data that shows that silent auctions generally get a worse outcome for the seller than they do for an open auction. That’s because if you had 15 people in a room that were all bidding, they would probably get an extra 3 to 4% because they would have to outbid each other to get to that price. Whereas if you are doing it on a silent auction, you’re not going to put your best foot forward in the same way because you are worried that you are overbidding.
[35:00-35:36] Melinda Jennison: You don’t have that social proof. You don’t have that social proof that everybody else is prepared to pay this, “oh, I’m prepared to pay more.” And then you get into that competitive environment. That’s a perfect example of what a buyer’s agent does. A buyer’s agent does that for you because they have the objective view of “this is what we need to get to.” And therefore, if they go into a silent auction or they go into a pre-auction offer, they are in a position to be able to give that advice with a non-emotional attachment to the property.
[35:36-36:31] Melinda Jennison: That’s right. We look at the data, but then we have to overlay the depth of the competition to understand where that market sentiment is going to take prices. Scott, you had another question. I did have another question on that, you talk about the herd mentality as well, and we’ve got the Olympics coming up. Where do you see that, because we’re talking to a lot of people at the moment and they’re saying, “we want to buy in Brisbane because the Olympics are coming.” Where do you see that and that herd mentality, what is that going to do here in Brisbane?
[36:31-37:04] Evan Lucas: I will argue that there is a difference between herd mentality and genuine understanding of what the Olympics brings. The Olympics itself is not the reason property prices will go up. The Olympics is the reason that infrastructure spending will occur, and infrastructure spending creates jobs, creates livability, creates access. And that is why it is more important. If it was just the Olympics, you’d get a three-week sugar rush, and then it would be a sugar low for the next two years. What we are going to see, however, is a very different Olympic Games to any that we’ve seen since Los Angeles back in 1984.
[37:04-37:37] Evan Lucas: We are now in a new period of what the Olympics are about. We are not building brand new stadiums that are going to be left to rot after the fact. We are redeveloping the Gabba, we are redeveloping parklands, we are redeveloping areas and improving the infrastructure around it. I think that’s the difference this time, and why Brisbane will do well out of it in the long term, is because it is a long-term investment, not a short-term sugar hit. And therefore, the herd is right, but for the wrong reasons.
[37:37-38:08] Melinda Jennison: That’s a great point. I think we will have to get you back on because there are so many other behavioural biases that I’d love to unpack with you, but I am mindful of your time. Evan, thank you so much again for your wonderful insights. It’s always a pleasure to have you on the Brisbane Property Podcast. We really value everything that you’ve been able to share with our listeners today.
[38:08-38:31] Evan Lucas: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, and I look forward to coming back and having another chat.