With Diplomas in Property and Business Studies and over 20 years of practical experience, Miriam has successfully bought and sold over $200 million worth of properties for 100’s of clients both interstate and in Victoria.
Miriam has won Top 10 Australian Women Entrepreneurs 2019 by The Entrepreneur Magazine and been nominated as finalist for Real Estate Business’ Women in Real Estate Awards Finalist – Industry Thought Leader of the Year 2019, Australian Small Business Champion 2019, YIP magazine Finalist 2018 Buyers Agent – Property Investors Awards, REB Finalist 2017 – Thought Leader of the Year, REIV Finalist 2014 and 2013 – Buyer’s Agent of the Year and YIP magazine 2014 – National Buyer’s Agent of the Year ( Runner Up).
She is an Accredited Property Investment Advisor, the bestselling author of Property Prosperity and a regular real estate and investment media commentator . She has published articles in Australian Property Investor, Property Observer, Smart Property Investment and Your Investment Property magazines, as well as having appeared on Sky Business News, The Business, Your Money, The 7.30 Report, Channel 7 News and radio 3AW, ABC Drive, Real Estate Talk with Kevin Turner and in metro daily newspapers such as The Financial Review, The Herald and Domain.
Nominees three achievements
1 COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION
Our corporate social cause is to support the homeless. Every time a client engages our services, we donate by purchasing a bed from Backpack Beds by Swags for Homeless.
We are proud to have donated in excess of $11,000 since 2013.
(Backpack Bed for Homeless provides emergency relief Backpack Beds to street sleeping homeless people without shelter. They work in partnership with 450+ homeless agencies across Australia to reach homeless people who do not have any other form of accommodation. The Backpack Bed is study proven to improve health, dignity, sleep, warmth, comfort and safety).
On a personal note and as CEO of my business, I have been blogging and contributing to the media since 2013 on matters of underquoting, homelessness, foreign investment and affordable housing.
In mid 2015, I met with the elected government and in particular the Hon. Martin Foley at Parliament House to discuss several topics, including matters regarding 10,000 vacant DOH houses, homelessness and the high levels of vacant property in Victoria and the effects of such in the community.
I pitched solutions re bringing those vacant homes back into the supply pool via ‘stakeholder tenants’ and the concept of taxing vacant property where investors are “house and/or land banking”, which is having a negative effect on many local communities and affordable housing. The idea behind the introduction of a vacancy tax was to generate additional revenue to go towards repairing the 10,000 vacant DOH homes and affordable housing.
At this meeting, I was able to provide further insight regarding underquoting and the problems that consumers were suffering as a result of it, to further push that issue. I had already discussed this matter at length and privately with Mr Foley in 2014, again in the lead up to the Victorian election.
After commencing a petition in 2014 to stop underquoting and after three years of highlighting the issue, in May 2017, the Victorian Government implemented changes to the Real Estate Act to finally address the issue of underquoting. While not perfect, it was a step in the right direction and has made a substantial change and more transparency as to how real estate agents in Victoria price and promote property.
My proposal to government to reinstate 10,000 DOC homes was to try to solve some of these problems. Allowing stakeholder tenants to invest (such as single parents) and thus use their money to reinstate the properties in exchange for the tenant having a proportion equity share in the property. They would then occupy and maintain it better than someone with no financially vested interest. It would also create employment in the building sector due to the need for trades to implement the property repairs/reinstatement.
2 THE INDUSTRY / FRANCHISING
As an Industry Thought Leader, what motivates me empowering agents who want to affordably own their own business and embark on a new career path.
Disruption in the real estate industry is rife. The arrival of industry disruptors selling cheap services isn’t helping and now more than ever before, standing out from the crowd is a challenge.
Disruption is not just in the use of technology, and the cheap volume-based players entering the market, but the manner in which customers are poorly serviced. When we talk about innovation, we’re typically talking about product innovation. Services hasn’t changed a lot over the last 50 years. If you took someone from the year 1950 and put them into an emergency room in 2010, it would look very much the same. The pace of customer expectations however is evolving and faster than the service-delivery capability.
Over many years I increasingly noticed how the industry was failing to ‘put people before property’, so I decided to do something about it. The nature of the current relationship with buyers and vendors needs to completely shift. It’s not about the property – it’s about the people. Today’s customers have new expectations for tailored and personalised service. Buyers and vendor’s are unhappy with how the industry currently operates and how their expectations aren’t being met because the ‘business pitch’ and the service delivery are often in-congruent. *
Over the last 3 years I also recognised that the current dated real estate business model is dying, and NOW is the time to be part of a transformation in this industry. I observed many ambitious selling agents are contemplating leaving the industry, as competition gets tougher and commissions get smaller. No longer can franchisees afford to start a business with expensive shopfronts and $250k set up and running costs. With the market slowing down, many agents are also earning a lot less money than in previous years.
Like the mortgage broking sector who aim to work with their clients for life, there is a need for the rise of the professional Property Advocate to come to the fore. This will not just benefit consumers and meet their needs, but it will bring creditability to the industry that struggles to be recognised as a profession and provide a fresh lease of life to estate agents.
I saw a need to create an affordable business opportunity for agents to create financial security, while at the same time addressing the trend towards better servicing of customer needs. My research supported my idea and with a strong desire to lead the next wave of change, while contributing to the industry’s transformation, I successfully created Australia’s first franchised Property Advocacy Agency (buyer and vendor advocacy) in 2018 .
Competition in the industry is tough and the marketplace is saturated with selling agents. My ‘business in a box’ model was specifically designed to see agents succeed in the industry as independent advocates. Property Mavens is an innovative and unique business set to transform real estate! Now agents can choose. Be an employee of a traditional agency with ever diminishing fees and conditions or work for themselves under the Property Mavens advocacy proven business model, where they can hit the ground running, for less than the cost of a cleaning franchise and create a saleable business while doing it.
The franchise feasibility was based on my own personal success measured from the commencement of my business in 2012. It enables franchisees to earn 2-3 times the commission rate that they earn as an employee in a traditional agency, while being part of an established and highly regarded brand.
With low entry and running costs, this home-based business model was created to give agents all the benefits of owning a business without the pitfalls or need to fund the huge capital outlay of starting an advocacy business and a new brand from the ground up. It is structed to allow for scale if an Advocate wants to grow their business under the Property Mavens brand.
The other standout feature is that its designed to have high appeal for female estate agents, so they can affordably buy into their own business. It’s all about providing agents with flexibility, freedom, higher incomes and a supportive community. Mavens have access to support, systems, processes and a strong values-based community, to enable them to create the life they love while generating financial security in the process. Together we thrive!
* Core Logic Reports 2015.
3 BEST SELLING BOOK
I wrote a bestselling book called Property Prosperity in 2013, which continues to sell and be promoted across the media when I am interviewed. I wrote it to protect buyers and education them about the smoke and mirror tricks that agents use to sell property.
I wrote it to empower them to not buy blindly and to ask questions and understand the difference between biased free advice and unbiased professional fee for service advice.
This generates client enquiry when readers discover that buying property is in fact a very complex process, so it acts as a great ‘business card’ and lead generation tool.
