This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through a Victorian industry bracing for 28 November - Peter reports from the REIV Awards for Excellence at Crown, where the talk at every table was a Labor-Greens deal, Gabrielle de Vietri’s landlord licences and three-strikes ban, a two-year rent freeze, and the first full week of seven-day reserve price disclosure. Melbourne auction volumes fell to a three-year low (Cotality under 500, realestate.com.au 452, down around 60% year on year) as vendors set defensively high reserves and buyers pushed back at the kerb.

Peter picks up his Elite Agent piece “Using a brain to hold a pen” alongside a UK Alto survey of 250 agents: 67% use AI for listing descriptions, 4% for sales progression, 5% for compliance. Why MCP makes open connectivity the floor for proptech vendors in 2027, and why agents are still using a brain to hold a pen.

The agency shakeout: 15-20% of property professionals reportedly leaving as days on market blow out, Canberra Commercial and Canberra Strata in liquidation, and agents who have never had to negotiate a sale.

Kasey’s mailbag: NSW Fair Trading’s first Landlord Terminations report - 85% of tenancies ended by the tenant, 15% by landlord notice, and of those 28% owner or family moving in, 20% proposed sale, 14% sold, 11% arrears, 10% renovations. Plus two in five property managers open to alternatives to the trust account, the REINSW and Fair Trading payment-redirection scam working group, InvestorKit’s merger of Four Acre Financial and Source Financial, and the Perth listing that disclosed its AI-staged photos and sold for $1.25m.

Also: the Freshwater pink paint parking vigilante, Polly the miniature schnauzer, SMSFs pivoting to commercial, and best wishes to Ajay Malik of Artier Property Group.

This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through what's happening in real estate behind closed doors - the stories that don't make the vendor pack.

Peter shares the calls he's taken this week from principals of high-quality, award-winning agencies doing it tough, including one who has never seen the buyer tap turn off like this - 42 open homes, zero people through. The hosts pay tribute to Sunshine Coast agent Adam Dunlop and make the case for checking in on your mates, your principal, your property managers, your clients and even your competitors. The Rise Initiative's free Real Care app, with three confidential counselling sessions, gets a strong recommendation, alongside Charles Tarbey's reminder that agents are not responsible for market conditions.

The cashflow crunch: Brisbane early clearance rates at 20%, more than a quarter of stock now stale as days on market blows out from 23 to 39, Domain taking a developer to the NSW Supreme Court for a winding-up, and Kasey on agency mergers as an alternative to liquidation.

The rent roll trap: Marshall White's Anthony Wiseman on buyers and valuers stripping non-compliant properties out of rent roll valuations, Cara Bergmann's $24,000 arrears case from cut-price PM teams, why discounting management fees is the wrong play, REEF CEO Bryan Wilcox on what a federal ban on non-competes could do to agency client books, and the annual principal-to-owner call as a retention strategy.

Compliance and Victoria: the hidden risk of DIY AML compliance, scammers impersonating AUSTRAC, and Kasey's week on the ground in Victorian agencies - bond claims now requiring notice and evidence, the application fee ban, two-yearly gas and electrical checks, energy efficiency standards on the way, and investors telling PMs to put them onto a salesperson. Plus ex-rentals making up 40% of Melbourne sales listings, the Greens' landlord licence proposal, Victoria's $1 billion land tax shortfall, Cotality's Bend It Like Buyers report (4.9% is the rate buyers say would bring them back; only 27% can comfortably afford upfront costs) and a rapid-fire wrap on investors shifting to new builds and commercial.

If you or someone you work with is doing it tough: Real Care app (realcare-app.com.au), Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636, Small Business Debt Helpline 1800 413 828.

All links from this episode are at beforetheweekend.com.

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 expensive city in the country for houses at $920 a week. Peter does the minimum-wage arithmetic - $26.44 an hour, about $1,000 a week, $920 to rent - and Kasey’s message to property managers is to get to street-level data, present the facts to landlords, and think about who stays housed rather than who pays the most.

Then PropertyMe. The platform 6,500 agencies run on has released an external MCP server, AiMe Connect, so users on the Advanced tier and above can ask Claude or ChatGPT questions of their live portfolio data. Peter explains what a Model Context Protocol server actually is, why he calls it the new gold standard for proptech, why “we’ve got one but haven’t released it” doesn’t count, and what to ask any vendor who claims to have AI. Kasey walks through what it changes for a property manager’s Monday.

Then Victoria’s next tranche of rental law, starting Monday 13 October: evidence and advance notice for every bond claim, records proving minimum standards on request from Consumer Affairs, gas and electrical checks extended to tenancies that began before March 2021, and a ban on application and rent-tech fees. Kasey has the list; Peter’s ask of every state is the same - talk to the industry first. From there to New South Wales, where minimum energy-efficiency rental standards are under consideration and a Renew report puts the landlord’s cost at $15,000 to $34,000 a property.

LJ Hooker has become the exclusive distributor of OHOME, a factory-built two-bedroom backyard dwelling at around $250,000 installed, assessed online against the owner’s lot. Neither host can recall a franchise doing anything like it. Both think it’s smart.

On the Gold Coast, a six-bedroom Mermaid Waters house that is 80 per cent built has gone to market as a mortgagee-in-possession sale, with APRA data showing interest-only loans at 23.5 per cent of new lending, the highest since 2019. And a Main Beach agency principal has pleaded guilty to two domestic-violence offences and been fined $3,500 with no conviction recorded - which, as Peter points out, is the detail that keeps his Queensland licence.

Then Kasey’s favourite television program. The Victorian government has confirmed it sold the heritage-listed Sunbury asylum site to The Block for $1 million, with no public campaign, on a Valuer-General-certified valuation. Peter doesn’t accept it and says so.

Also this week: congratulations to Rob Mandanici, the new president of REIWA, and thanks to outgoing president Suzanne Brown for her service; and an Irvine, California agent arrested at LAX, alleged to have been acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.

Before the Weekend is a weekly podcast for Australian property professionals, hosted by Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade. New episodes every Friday.