Victoria-based broker Cameron Perry of Perry Finance recently sat down for the Elite Broker podcast to discuss how his business is navigating headwinds in the commercial property sector.
In this Q&A, we find out how he became a broker, some of the challenges facing the construction industry, the ups and downs of his career and his top tips for other brokers.
Here’s what he had to say:
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How did you become a broker?
After uni and doing some travel [I] started working for my father’s property business, Perry Town Planning, for a couple of years before I sort of fell into mortgage broking.
It was my older brother’s idea, a lot of our clients in the business were property developers and he had the idea to provide finance for them.
It was a fairly new industry at the time and we decided I would be the first one to go and get my accreditations and see how it would go. We had a little side gig at first, but we realised it had the potential to be our main course of business and it just grew from there.
Do you write loans other than commercial loans?
We mainly have the capability to write business and commercial and that’s where we prefer to focus our attention. But of course, we have all accreditations and a processing team that can handle residential applications as well.
Most of our residential applications have an investment or a commercial element to them so when we’re introduced to the customer to assist with a commercial purchase or business financing or if they’re a multiple property owner who may have reached their limit with their bank and need a bit of extra support and advice.
We write residential loans from a marketing standpoint. We’ve focused on commercial because we see that as our point of difference, but it’s also important to us that we provide a range of services to those clients where if they need a home loan, we can provide it.
Are you seeing clients affected by the challenges facing the construction industry?
There have been a few factors since COVID-19 that have made Victoria a very difficult market for property developers, starting obviously with COVID-19 and the supply chain issues.
The lockdowns, which funnily enough, the building industry probably did better than most during the lockdowns, it was one of the industries that was able to carry on for most of that period.
But at the same time, the supply chain issues were causing building material costs to skyrocket among other challenges facing developers.
We’re still seeing plenty of activity, but it’s probably a little quieter in terms of construction than in previous years.
What are some of the challenges of your career as a commercial broker and what are you proud of?
In the early days, we hit the GFC a few years in, which transformed our business completely because we were referring development deals to banks and they stopped writing them. It caused us to rethink our business.
At the same time, the credit licensing regime came in and we took the course to get our credit licence. We could see what had happened in the financial planning industry and how it would be valuable down the track, having that licence.
Also, we went back to the drawing board of becoming a regular broker, and started writing more home loans and understanding all their lender’s policies.
In terms of what I’m proud of, the thing I love about this job is once you’ve completed a transaction, people are really happy they’ve achieved something. It’s not always smooth sailing during the process.
In a lot of respects, we are the middleman. There’s a lot of factors that go into transactions that we can’t control and sometimes you’ll cop some heat for that during those times, but generally, in the end, you’ve got a really happy buyer because they’ve been funded for what they were trying to do.
What are your top tips for other brokers out there?
I think the important thing is to be a sponge and just try to learn as much as you can.
It’s not just about broking per se, as a broker, you’re also a salesperson as well as an adviser. And in many cases, you’re also a business owner and a manager. You’ve really got to learn about all these aspects.
I’ve always tried to keep learning. For example, I’m not a natural salesperson by any stretch and I had to learn how to sell myself and learn how to manage people.
You can’t ignore the other aspects outside of just broking.
If you’d like to find out more about Cameron Perry and Perry Finance, tune in to the Elite Broker episode, How this broker is successfully navigating commercial property and development headwinds, below:
