New Broker Q&A: Adele Andrews, director, Australian Property Home Loans

I did buy quite young ... I was in my early 20s when I bought my first owner-occupied home. It was a five-acre property. It was a little bit out of the norm as far as what people in their 20s were buying. I didn’t buy that apartment in the city to have that city life. I’ve had horses all my life and my dream first home was always to have a property with land. I bought a property that was quite rare, it was in a suburb called Bangholme, which is quite close to Melbourne. It’s probably the closest that you will get that sort of land acreage to the city. And that was my first foray into buying property.

I held that for roughly four or five years and was fortunate enough that at the end of that four or five years I was kind of ready to make that move into the city. And literally the week that I made my mind up to sell, a racehorse trainer drove up my driveway and said, “Would you consider selling?” And I said, “Yes, actually I am.” In that five years, I tripled what I had paid for it. So it was a very, very good investment in hindsight. That sent me onto that pathway to investing into further property.

I bought in Elwood … then bought an investment apartment in Brisbane and another one in Melbourne in St. Kilda Road. I still hold both of those investments as well as a couple of others that I’ve purchased along the way.

When you’re dealing with clients, how does that firsthand experience play out?

There’s no doubt my experiences come into play when I’m having those conversations with clients particularly with mistakes I’ve perhaps made — things that you don’t necessarily think about when you’re buying an investment property.

What might look good on paper isn’t necessarily right, realistically. Talking about taking the emotion out of buying an investment property, you’re not buying something to live in. It just comes down to the numbers that have to stack up and I think that sometimes that can get lost a little bit when you are buying an investment property. You ‘want’ to like it and need to have all the aesthetics and all that sort of thing. But location, location, location is everything as long as the demographics in that particular area all stack up, then that’s going to lead you on the path.

And that was a lesson that I needed to learn as well and has since taken into my next investment purchases.

Are you always keeping abreast of the property market?

I’m always on, always. And I think as mortgage brokers, we can’t just be a one-trick pony … our main objective is to get the finance for our clients to realise their dream, whether it be buying a home or buying investment property or whatnot, but we can’t just be that one-dimensional anymore.

I am also an ex-accountant, so I have that fortunate ability to understand financials. It’s really important as a mortgage broker to be able to understand financials.

You’ve got to know what’s going on in the property market and particularly now. We’re in a time where it’s such a dynamic market and there’s so much change and clients don’t necessarily just want to know, “Am I going to get approved?” They’re asking questions like, “What are rates doing and do you expect the property market to drop?” And all those sorts of things.

And while we obviously can’t give advice, I think it’s really important to be very well read on all these topics, whether it be economic movements or property movements. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t either listen to a podcast or read some sort of periodical or some sort of media release as to what the property market is doing.

Looking back a bit, what made you take that leap into broking?

It was a natural transition for me ... I guess you’d call me a relatively mature career transitioner. I did start my career as an accountant, so that was my qualification out of university. And I started with EY as a chartered accountant and then decided that I needed to try industry as well. So I worked for Cadbury Schweppes because I thought that counting chocolates would make accounting even better.

While the numbers side of things came relatively easy to me, there was a big component that was missing for me and I’m very people-focused.

I ended up working in Hong Kong for some time [and] in Singapore for a long time, ending my career with Mastercard and managing their Asia-Pacific operations for recruitment out of Singapore.

While we were also in Singapore, my husband worked in property and we developed our own business in Singapore together selling Australian property off the plan. We acknowledged that if we were going to sell, it probably made sense to develop a finance business that would help these non-residents settle on their property investments. And so that’s where I came into play and developed Australian Property Home Loans. I was more managing or overseeing the operations of it as opposed to being an actual broker.

I did that for a while and that business was still going while we moved back to Australia ... [then] it made sense for me to just jump straight into that and take over it. So out of recruitment and into mortgage broking, did my Cert IV, my diploma, and started peddling my way through working out how I was going to start this mortgage broking business.

Why have you chosen to go independent rather than maybe looking at a franchise model?

It’s something that I wrestled with … and I did speak to a number of other brokers to align myself with. Initially, I never really even gave a thought to joining a brokerage. I just sort of thought, “I’ve had this huge career, I’m old and wise and all that sort of stuff, I’m just going to do this on my own.” And then I got a few months into it and thought, “Oh gosh, I might have bitten off more than I can chew here.” And realised just how complex and challenging the industry and going into a completely new field was. And a couple of times, I reflected and thought maybe I’m better off just joining a franchise and working for someone and just getting my feet on the ground and doing it that way.

I spoke to a lot of people in the industry … and it was just a matter of me digging a little bit deeper into what it was that I wanted to do and where I wanted to go.

It wasn’t until I then made the decision to engage Sue Hayter as my mentor that everything just fell into place. And I think that that’s probably one of the key things when you’re looking to do something like this. Doing it on your own can be a very lonely place and it can be probably the quickest way to set yourself up for failure.

It’s so important if you’re going to join a new industry, find out who the top players are in that industry and give them a call. And it is such a wonderful industry. People are so generous with their time and they’re so willing to speak.

I think that’s one of my biggest, what I have the most gratitude for, is that people have been so willing to share their experiences. And I have picked up tips from every single person that I’ve spoken with. And it’s helped me kind of form where I am today ... And been the catalyst behind going out on my own.

What are some of those hurdles faced in the first two years you’ve overcome?

A lot of it is doing it on your own … and that was where I found myself completely floundering. By engaging Sue Hayter as my mentor, it changed everything. From there, I was able to get my processes right, get my filing system right, get my compliance, which is just such an integral part of what you’re doing as far as this business and particularly in this industry, getting that right.

While everybody in the industry is incredibly supportive and incredibly willing to help and give advice, everyone’s running their own show, so you can’t rely on them to draw from when you’re in a spot of bother. So having that mental support network is absolutely crucial.

And then I think once you know you’ve got that support and once you’ve got your processes, it’s just a matter of just hitting the pavement and putting in the hard yards.

I guess another lesson that I learned, I was very fortunate in my first year that I had a couple of referrers who were wonderful, they were both in the house and land construction area. And then of course this year, things have gone a little bit awry with construction and builds and land so those referrals dried up and I learned very quickly this year, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I don’t think you can ever have enough referrers.

How have you changed your strategy to seek more referrers?

I’ve simply changed my marketing. I just got to the stage where I was looking at things like Eventbrite and going to anything to do with property and finance.

I was doing a lot more, and still am doing, a lot more in my community as far as speaking to people in shops and all that sort of thing. And I know that seems like a no-brainer, but it wasn’t something that I was doing. And a lot more with social media. So I’ve recently been doing more videos and reels, which I had never done, and they scare the hell out of me — they have almost been a bit of a game changer for me.

It’s really important that the messages that I’m getting out there are educational. I think it’s not just for attracting clients. I think it’s also from a market perspective for people in other industries.

I’ve seen a lot more coming through as a result of those. And again, now I guess from last year, having that client base, I’m starting to get referrals from my clients as well. So it’s getting a lot of momentum. I’m getting a lot more leads almost daily now and I’m starting to feel like it’s coming together.

Teaching financial literacy also seems like something you are really passionate about. Do you run women in financial literacy classes?

Yeah and particularly now, it’s such a turbulent time and we’ve had such a lovely time of it with these lovely low rates and now it’s been a big shock to the system having all these increases.

I think people just need to perhaps take a breath and review budgets and do all those things that they probably haven’t done for a long time now that surplus cash is not necessarily there to enjoy the spoils that we have over the last 12–13 years.

You’ve also made the decision to continue your mentorship program, after the two-year tenure. Why is that?

I just think it’s really important to continue to have that support network. The industry changes so frequently and there are so many different types of loans that come through. And it’s really important to have that network to be able to bounce ideas off.

I’ve come up to the end of my tenure with Sue and she has been absolutely wonderful and invaluable to my development and where I’ve got to today. Now I’m kind of looking at more of a business coaching mentor arrangement. So I’ll be joining Mario Borg and Andrew Tan to take that to that next level … doing a lot more marketing. And Mario’s run very successful, very lucrative, broking businesses. And if he can do it and he can teach me how to do it, well then I’m all for it.

As I referred to before, I’m very passionate on education and I’m very passionate about that women demographic and in particular, very cognisant of that homelessness in women over 55. And so I’m very big on bringing awareness to that demographic while educating on finance and getting home loans.

I think that you always need a mentor. It doesn’t matter where you’ve got to in life, in your career, you always need a mentor because you can always learn. And this is now my next stage of learning and I am ambitious and I really want to grow this business. And in order to do that, I want to grow it with people who can mentor me who have done it in a way that I ultimately want to get to.

[Related: New Broker: How Adele Andrews changed strategies to success in the first 2 years]