Buyers Agent vs Property Investment Advisor

Start here, because it is the fact that reorganises the whole comparison.

Buyer's agent describes a licensed activity. In Queensland, acting for a buyer sits inside the real estate agent licence under the Property Occupations Act 2014, so anyone doing it should be on the Office of Fair Trading register and you can check them in a minute.

Property investment advisor is not a licensed title. There is no register of property investment advisors, no qualification required to use the words, and no regulator that removes someone from a list for doing it badly.

That is not an accusation against the firms using it. Plenty are careful and competent. It is a statement about what the title itself proves, which is nothing.

The practical consequence: with a buyer's agent you can verify the licence and then assess the person. With a property investment advisor, the title gives you no starting point and you have to do all the work yourself.

There is a second licence in this picture and it matters more than the first.

Advice about financial products, which includes superannuation and most investment structures, requires an Australian financial services licence. Advice about which house to buy generally does not, because real property is not a financial product.

So a firm can lawfully advise you on a property purchase without an AFSL. The moment the conversation turns to using your super, restructuring your finances, or whether property beats another asset class, it has moved onto ground that needs one.

That line is genuinely blurry in practice and it is where most of the risk in this category sits. A conversation that starts with a house and drifts into your retirement plan has crossed it without anybody announcing the change.

The check is simple and worth making: ask whether the firm holds an AFSL or is an authorised representative of one, and ask which entity the advice is coming from. Both are on ASIC's registers.

The differences that matter are about payment and about scope, not about which sounds more professional.

A buyer's agent engaged and paid by you has no financial interest in which property you choose. That is the product you are buying, and it is why the fee is substantial.

A firm paid by the supply side costs you nothing directly and has an interest in you buying something specific. Neither model is dishonest. They are different arrangements with different incentives, and the incentive is not hidden unless somebody hides it.

What makes the second model acceptable is disclosure. You should be told, before you commit to anything, who pays the firm and what happens to that payment if you buy nothing.

If you cannot get a straight answer to who pays you, that is the answer.

We are in the second group and we would rather say so at the top of a page than have it inferred at the bottom of one.

FAA Property earns a commission from builders and developers when a property purchase proceeds. The strategy session itself costs you nothing. Because we're paid by the supply side, you should weigh our recommendations with that in mind.

On licensing: FAA Property Pty Ltd holds Queensland real estate agent licence 4220395, which authorises acting for buyers. No FAA entity holds its own Australian financial services licence. Financial advice sits with other FAA Group companies, which are corporate authorised representatives of Lifespan Financial Planning Pty Ltd, AFSL 229892.

We do not describe ourselves as a buyer's agent, because we are not independent of the supply side and that is what the term claims. We also do not describe ourselves as a property investment advisor, and the reason is the one this page opens with: the title proves nothing, and using it would be borrowing credibility rather than earning it.

What we are is a licensed Queensland real estate agency that sources new-build investment property and manages residential property on the Sunshine Coast from our Maroochydore office.

This is a question about your situation rather than about which model is better, and the honest answer sends some people away from us.

Engage and pay a buyer's agent if you want the established market searched, you want someone with no interest in the outcome beyond your side of it, and you are comfortable paying five figures for that independence.

Talk to a supply-side firm like us if new-build investment property in south-east Queensland is what you are after, you want to understand the numbers before committing to anything, and you are content to weigh the recommendation knowing how we are paid.

Talk to a licensed financial adviser first, in either case, if the question involves your superannuation, your overall asset allocation, or whether property is the right vehicle at all. Neither model above is licensed to answer that.

And if someone is offering all three at once, ask which entity holds which licence. The answer is usually informative.

Five questions. They work on us as well as on anyone else, and the answers are more revealing than any amount of positioning.