Before the Weekend ☀️

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through a week where the rental market finally said what Tim Lawless told them in March: tenants have no elasticity left.

First, the Domain September quarter rent report. Capital-city house rents were flat at $700 a week despite a 1 per cent vacancy rate, Sydney and Canberra recorded their first quarterly falls in two years, and the Gold Coast is the most exp...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through the call from eXp Australia's Country Leader confirming the end of the Class 2 pathway - and what it means for the model eXp was sold on. NSW has passed laws banning photos, social media and kids' details from rental applications, with AI-altered listing images now requiring disclosure, while REINSW's own master table counts 33 pieces of legislation ...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through a week where the claims did not survive contact with the people who actually do the job.

First, eXp Australia. Three social media posts, no press release and no mainstream coverage, but agents inside the business confirm it: the Class 2 and sales representative pathway is being terminated. Independent contractors with their own licence and entity are ...

The ACCC has made realestate.com.au rewrite its agency contracts. For three years REA cannot require or incentivise agencies to list all or most of their properties with it, or push them into premium listings. No finding of wrongdoing, no penalty - but agents now have a choice to explain to vendors.

South Australia has opened a select committee into the conduct of real estate professionals - underquoting, appraisals, undisclosed...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through a week where the rules got stricter, and the people living under them got very little say in how.

First, Victoria. Auctioneer and coach Andy Reid called Peter after last week's episode to say we had it slightly wrong, so he came on to fix it. After a briefing from Consumer Affairs Victoria's Nicole Rich, the draft clause that appeared to stop buye...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through a week where every regulator wanted more from the industry and none of them wanted to talk to it.

First, audits. NSW Fair Trading's strata and property taskforce finished a statewide sweep of agents holding consumer money: 34 businesses facing potential licence suspension, 41 overdue audits lodged, 32 warnings, three industry bans, six mandatory t...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through a numbers week in which almost none of the numbers agreed with each other.

First, Universal Property Group. Administrators were appointed Tuesday to a business carrying roughly $3.2 billion in liabilities, $2.85 billion of it borrowing, spread across hundreds of numbered subsidiaries running as high as UPG 460. They want $20 million just to keep i...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through the week the buyer's agent industry stopped being a story about one bad operator.

First, AUSTRAC. Operation Claw pooled data from ten major Australian banks and found potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in suspected fraudulent home loans - inflated incomes, misrepresented employment, offshore and third-party funds at settlement, most of it...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through a week where the running theme was what people chose not to say.

Two agents started from the identical insight - the public doesn't much like real estate agents. One put a self-deprecating joke about himself on a billboard in Wynnum and said up front he wrote the review himself. The other invented a theft, accused a woman who doesn't exist, and di...

A special edition of Before the Weekend, recorded in Brisbane.

Peter Schravemade sits down with Peter Hutton, who built Hutton & Hutton from his dining table into a three-office, thirty-person Brisbane agency turning over $200 million a year - and then watched around 70 per cent of its revenue walk out the door in eight weeks.

The first resignation arrived in the first week of December, a month after the opening party for...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade dig into the Victorian petition to ban "continuous video sweeps" during rental inspections - and why the technology being described isn't what's actually happening - plus the data privacy questions nobody in the coverage thought to ask.

Kasey sits down with Kasey Lawrence of The Rental Network - consultant, trainer, and the industry's unofficial agony aunt - on th...

A special edition of Before the Weekend, recorded in Sydney.

Peter Schravemade is joined by Jacqui Barnes, Head of People and Growth at Laing+Simmons and author of the Women in Real Estate Insights Report, and Ellis Taylor, Director of Real Time Australia - the recruiter that Blackbird and AirTree name as their number one preferred talent supplier.

Two months on from the report's launch, Jacqui returns with the person who is ...

Victoria changed premiers this week after months of questions over debt, infrastructure, crime and integrity — and on the very same day, the REIV took what it called an unprecedented step and stood alongside the Opposition to demand the Consumer Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 be substantially redrafted.

Consumer Affairs Victoria forced changes to one of the country's biggest rental application platforms, and a Melbourne band ...

Episode 11 asks whether governments are addressing Australia's housing failures or redirecting public anger towards real estate agents.

Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade begin with Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan's open letter to REIV CEO Toby Balazs and the dispute over compulsory reserve-price disclosure. They examine the REIV's alternative transparency model, Consumer Affairs Victoria's existing enforcement powers...

Episode 10 marks a milestone for Before the Weekend, recorded fresh from one of the biggest weeks of the year for Queensland real estate and proptech.

Peter Schravemade and Kasey McDonald give their honest assessment of REIQ LIFT 2026, including the strongest sessions, the energy in the room and the recurring message that technology only creates value when people can adopt, connect and trust it. Kasey also speaks with R...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade are joined by REIQ CEO Antonia Mercorella for a timely conversation about the Realworks forms transition, what Queensland agencies should be checking inside their businesses, and why compliant forms still sit at the centre of agency risk.

The episode also previews REIQ LIFT, Top of the Props and the upcoming PropTech Pulse report, with a focus on practical technol...

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade unpack one of the biggest operational stories to hit Queensland real estate this year: the Realworks transition, the end of REIQ’s relationship with Dynamic Methods, and what it means for forms, templates, historical documents and compliance workflows.

The conversation looks beyond the software problem and asks whether real estate forms have become critical ...

In this Quick Bite episode of Before the Weekend, Peter Schravemade is joined by Toby Balazs, CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, to unpack the growing wave of regulatory pressure facing Victorian real estate professionals.


Toby discusses the proposed disclosure of auction reserve prices, changes to rental legislation, the impact of more than 150 Residential Tenancies Act changes, pressure on property managers, investo...

In Episode 7 of Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade unpack a week where confidence became the central theme across Australian real estate.

They discuss falling auction clearance rates, Domain's forecasts for Sydney and Melbourne price falls, investor uncertainty following federal budget changes, Victoria's latest rental reforms, REIQ's Realworks transition, and the growing conversation around price transparency ...