Agent provocateur
Macquarie’s lending pullback shows how property influencers and buyers’ agents are driving risky, leveraged investment strategies in Australia’s hot market.
Australian property prices are heating up again, but the real action is not among newly incentivised first-home buyers. Instead, it’s among investors — or more accurately, the ecosystem of buyers’ agents and other spruikers that has sprung up around them.
That’s one of the conclusions to draw from Jack Derwin’s recent reporting for Capital Brief on Macquarie’s decision to scale back lending to property investors using trusts and company structures to amplify their leverage.
As Jack reported, the move came after the investment titan identified a flood of influencers on TikTok and other social media platforms promoting these structures as a way for borrowers to access “unlimited” leverage and purchase multiple properties.
Property influencers are often buyers’ agents looking to clip the ticket on dwelling purchases — and potentially other aspects of the process. It’s difficult to imagine salespeople in other asset classes pushing high-risk strategies and making such claims about returns and performance without facing regulatory blowback.
