The only moveyou make is INin.
ThePROCESS Process
- 01
The Brief.
Before we look at a single home, we work out exactly who we’re buying for. What you want, what you can spend, and where those two meet in the real market rather than the one in your head. Some of it you’ll know on day one. Some of it we’ll find together, once you’ve seen what your budget actually buys where. By the end you’ve got a brief that’s honest, and we’ve got a target worth hunting.
- 02
The Search.
Then we go looking, everywhere you can’t. Every home listed across Melbourne, plus the ones placed with agents before they reach the market, the sort you only hear about from inside those conversations. We’re in them every week. You see the handful worth your Saturday, while we sift the hundreds that aren’t.
- 03
The Homework.
A price tag tells you almost nothing about living somewhere. So we dig. The good end of the street and the end that floods, the neighbour’s approved second storey, the listing that’s been sitting for a reason nobody’s put in writing. We pull the comparable sales, read the growth the suburb is posting, and tell you what a place is worth against what they’re asking.
- 04
The Inspections.
We walk through them with you. That’s where most of the value gets made, standing in a hallway working out loud what’s worth having and what you’d be talking yourself into. Priorities shift once you’ve seen a few, and the brief shifts with them. Better to work that out in someone’s front room than three years after you’ve moved in.
- 05
The Shortlist.
What reaches you is a considered list of homes worth your time, each one inspected, checked, and priced against its true value. You pick the one. Nothing gets offered on without your say-so.
- 06
The Buy.
Then we go and get it. Private sale or auction, we build the approach around the vendor and agent in front of us rather than a script, and we set the ceiling with you before we walk in. Then we stop dead on it. The number isn’t the whole job either. Deposit, settlement length, the conditions we leave in or strip out, all of it decides whether yours is the offer an agent recommends.
- 07
The Keys.
We see it through to unconditional, stay across the small things that surface between exchange and settlement, run the final walk-through, and put the keys in your hand. Then you get the fun part, which is working out where the couch goes.
Already found the place? Our Acquisition service wins it for you, from first offer to final signature.
Success stories
Nadia Found the Suburb Before She Found the House
Most buyers turn up with a postcode already decided, usually the one they’ve been renting in or the one a friend won’t stop talking about. Nadia turned up willing to be talked out of hers.
So we took her across the Northside rather than into one corner of it. Different pockets, different property types, a few things that were never on her list. Plenty of it was ruling things out, which feels like nothing is happening right until the moment it does.
By the time we landed on where she wanted to be, she knew exactly why it was that one. It’s a better way to buy than falling for a suburb and working backwards from there. The homes we showed her along the way did the arguing for us.
She told us afterwards it was fun. She also told us she’d do it again. Since the entire point is that she won’t need to, we’re choosing to hear that as a compliment.
See the home they boughtAbout us
Street Smart,BY TRADE.By Trade.
JASONJIMSome agents sell homes. We spend our days undoing everything that makes that easy for them. A small team, one suburb, and more local knowledge than any report will ever hold. The people behind That Street are worth knowing before you buy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most of our clients buy within about eight weeks. Suitable properties usually surface early in a search, and from there the timing comes down to the right one becoming available and you being ready to move on it.
Through longstanding relationships with local selling agents, who place a share of their stock privately with buyers they already trust before it’s advertised. Being in the market every day means we often hear about a home before it reaches realestate.com, or instead of it ever getting there.
It varies by suburb and price point, but a significant share of what we assess is never publicly advertised. Off-market activity is rising because private sales save vendors real money relative to the price, which means the portals show you less of the market every year.
There’s no set number, and volume isn’t the goal. What matters is that every inspection tells you something useful about what you want and what your budget reaches. A structured search usually needs fewer inspections than an unstructured one.
Yes, in most cases we walk through properties together. Discussing the strengths, the compromises and the value while you’re standing in the place is where buyers build the confidence to make a decision under pressure.
The ones that cost you are structural or legal rather than cosmetic: building condition, flood overlays, planning approvals on neighbouring properties, owners corporation liabilities, and anything on the title that limits what you can do. Cosmetic problems are cheap to fix and often scare buyers off good homes.
Yes, and most buyers do. Seeing homes in person has a way of sorting what actually matters from what sounded good on paper, and the brief gets refined as it does.
That depends on what the compromise costs you long term. We won’t push a buyer to settle just to finish sooner, and if waiting puts you in front of a better opportunity, we’ll say so. Buying well matters more than buying quickly.
Yes, and a good one will. Our role is independent advice, which sometimes means recommending you walk away from the home you’ve already fallen for. Sometimes the best decision on a property is the one you don’t make.
Both. We search the market on your behalf and assess anything you’ve found yourself, with everything running through the same framework to work out whether it fits your brief.
Word on the STREET.street.
Let’s find that street.
Tell us what you’re after, what you’re working with, and the streets you’ve got your eye on — we’ll tell you where that budget really stretches, what’s about to come up, and how we’d go about landing it.