31: Castran Gilbert's Paul Castran - Real Estate Tricks and Surviving Crises

[i3] Institutional Investment Podcast

Paul Castran is a Senior Consultant with Australian real estate firm Castran Gilbert. He is a veteran of the industry, having conducted over 2,000 auctions. In this frank interview, Paul looks back on his career, the Australian real estate market with its ups but also its downs and answers some tricky questions about the business, including about underquoting, starting auctions below the reserve price and tips on how to deal with banks and whether to renovate before selling. Paul Castran podcast overview: 3:30 What was real estate like pre-internet? 5:30 Getting my first crack at real estate from Jeffrey Sutherland 8:00 Buying my first shareholding in a real estate business 10:00 The most expensive property you ever sold? 12:00 Considering the horrible set of economic circumstances, what was it like to sell property in the 1990s? 13:00 The 1987 crash 16:00 Only people with real money saw very strong capital growth 16:30 Was there ever a moment that you thought this the end of my career in real estate? Many! 17:30 Every tenant I had went broke, bar one. 19:30 What have you learned from that period? 20:00 Don’t deal with just one bank 22:00 Play the game as hard as the banks play it. 25:00 Is there such a thing as THE property market? 26:00 How do you value properties? 35:00 When do you not use comparable sales? 45:00 Are council site valuations any guide on what your property is worth? 48:55 How do you make money flipping houses in Australia? 52:00 Busting property myths: foreign buyers 55:00 Auction tactics. 1:01:00 In the current market, wait for the auctioneer to say: ‘It is on the market’. 1:04:00 How much below the vendor’s reserve do you start? 1:07:00 You can’t trust the numbers. 1:09:00 Can you tell which suburb is the next up and coming one? 1:15:00 Underquoting, does that still happen? 1:18:00 Does staging a property make a difference? 1:21:30 Does a renovation add value or just over-capitalises the property. 1:26:00 Lessons learned the hard way.