The Question Every Inverloch Home Owner Should Ask Before Signing an Agency Agreement

If you own a home in Inverloch and you are thinking about selling, you are about to make a decision worth tens of thousands of dollars. Not the decision about price. The decision about who sells it, because that choice determines the price, the time on market, and how much of your life the campaign consumes.

And the timing of that decision just got more important. The 2026 federal budget changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax have shifted investor behaviour across regional Victoria, and the early signs point one way: days on market across the Bass Coast are likely to push out further from here. I unpacked what the budget means for local owners in my earlier analysis of the CGT and negative gearing changes, and the short version is this.

In a market where buyers are more cautious and fewer investors are circling, the agents who simply upload a listing to a portal and wait will leave their vendors sitting on the market for a very long time.

This article sets out, with the words of real Bass Coast sellers, why Inverloch3996 | @realty is the agency more local home owners are choosing over the franchise offices in town. Every review quoted below is published and verifiable. Nothing here is hypothetical.

The problem with waiting for buyers to find you

Most agencies in this region run the same playbook. Photograph the house, upload it to realestate.com.au and Domain, hold a Saturday open, and wait. That model works adequately when the market is running hot and buyers are queuing regardless. It fails badly in a softening market, because portals only reach people who are already actively searching.

Think about who that excludes. The Melbourne family who has idly dreamed about a seachange for three years but never opened a portal app. The local upsizer who is not looking until the right property looks at them. The retiree two suburbs over who would move tomorrow for the right home but has no alert set. In a post-budget market with fewer active searchers, these passive buyers are not the bonus audience. They are the audience.

My ten-year market analysis of Inverloch, Cape Paterson and Wonthaggi made the same point with a decade of data behind it: the properties that transact well in slower conditions are the ones whose campaigns reach beyond the portal pool. If you have not read that piece, it is the macro backdrop to everything in this article.

Robyn Morse is what reaching the passive buyer looks like in real life. She bought a Tarwin Lower property through me without ever having searched for one:

"I never thought that I would see this property pop up on fb and end up buying it. Absolutely love it. Wasn't even looking in the area, great marketing."

That buyer does not exist on realestate.com.au. She was never searching. Portal-dependent agents structurally cannot reach her, and she is exactly the kind of emotional, unconditioned buyer who pays a premium.

An audience built over a decade, switched on for your home

Inverloch 3996 @realty has no physical office, and that is deliberate. A shopfront on the main street is a cost centre dressed up as credibility. Buyers have not walked into agency windows to find a home in fifteen years.

They are on their phones at 9pm, scrolling Facebook and Instagram, and that is exactly where my listings find them.

The engine behind this is the Inverloch3996 community platform, an audience I have built since making my own seachange to the Bass Coast in 2014. It now reaches more than 30,000 followers: locals, weekenders, and Melbourne buyers quietly planning the same move I made.

This is organic reach, owned outright. It is not rented from a portal by the listing, and it does not disappear when a campaign ends. When your home launches with me, it is pushed directly into the feeds of an audience that already trusts the source, on day one, before a single portal algorithm has decided whether your listing deserves visibility.

Nicole Jeremie experienced the difference after nine months listed elsewhere with no result:

"I was extremely anxious and had been on the market for 9 months with no results. A friend recommended Leo Edwards, and was the best decision I ever made... All of the buyers that came to my home for inspections were all from his own personal advertising. This is why my house sold so quickly."

Read that middle sentence again, because it explains the whole model. The buyers did not come from a portal. They came from an audience built long before her house was ever listed.

Every campaign is then produced to a standard that audience expects. 3996Studio, my in-house production arm, handles cinematic photography, video walkthroughs, 3D virtual tours and copy written to sell rather than to fill space. Doug and Sharon, who sold an unusual property in Meeniyan, saw the effect:

"His presentation of our property was outstanding, the photography, walk-throughs and words really captured the property's uniqueness and appeal and made potential purchasers feel welcome before they even inspected."

Bums through the door: what reach looks like at an open home

Marketing reach is an abstraction until Saturday morning. Then it is a number you can count standing in your own driveway.

Graham Tew counted it at his Wonthaggi sale this year:

"Leo is clearly passionate regarding the online presence and puts together a very detailed marketing plan. The fact that over 42 people attended the first OFI is testament to this fact."

Forty-two groups at a first open for inspection is not luck, and it is not the market. It is what launch weekend looks like when the audience exists before the listing does. Every one of those people in the hallway is pressure on every other one of them. Buyers who arrive at a crowded open behave differently to buyers who arrive at an empty one. They decide faster, they fear missing out, and they offer accordingly.

The case study I am asked about most often shows the same mechanics at the scale of a full campaign. 26 Beacon Court in Inverloch sat for 172 days with zero offers under the previous agent. Relaunched through my audience, it drew 121 enquiries and 7 competing offers in 27 days. The house did not change. The number of buyers who knew it existed changed.

The full breakdown is in the 26 Beacon Court case study on this site, and the case studies hub holds a dozen more like it.

Shane Harvey lived the same story in Wonthaggi:

"Leo at Inverloch realty gave us a positive experience after having our house on the market previously for over 4 months with another real estate, he had our property sold within 2 weeks on the market."

Steve Fuery switched after four stagnant months:

"Leo's beautiful photography and website featuring a 3D virtual walk through of our home was outstanding and he generated fresh interest with the launch campaign."

Same houses. Same streets. Same market. Different audience, different result.

Turning a crowded open home into a stronger price

Reach gets buyers to the door. The negotiation framework converts them, and mine is built for transparency. Every property I sell goes through the Openn platform, where qualified buyers see competing offers in real time and sellers watch the negotiation unfold from their own dashboard instead of relying on an agent's verbal summary of what some unnamed buyer supposedly said.

When buyers can see the competition they felt at the open home confirmed on a screen, they bid against each other instead of against your patience.

Irene Rose, who purchased in Wonthaggi, saw it from the buyer's side:

"I really like the open bidding system where I can see other offers rather than working blind."

Carrie Bruce, who sold her Inverloch family home, saw it from yours:

"The Openn Offers process he used was transparent for both buyer and seller, and his marketing strategy was spot-on... Our client portal gave us real-time updates and feedback on inspections and enquiries, so we always knew exactly what was happening."

Underneath the process sits honest pricing. My list-to-sale accuracy is 91.9%, which is what Certified Price Expert status means in practice: the number we agree on at the kitchen table is the number the market confirms.

Jan Bardwell saw what the alternative looks like all around her:

"Leo's marketing strategies and honest valuation made our house stand out from others that have been lost in this market for months on end."

I documented that pattern formally across 204 Inverloch transactions in my pricing practices analysis. Flattering appraisals win signatures and then cost vendors months.

The record, independently judged

I am the two time recipient of RateMyAgent Agent of the Year for Inverloch, an award decided by verified vendor reviews tied to actual transactions, not self-nomination, and a national @realty Ambassador and All Star Agent for seven consecutive years.

But the reviews say it better than the trophies do.

Nigel and Carmen Lees, Inverloch sellers:

"Leo is a fantastic real estate agent who has a wealth of knowledge of data and statistics which helped us understand the current property market and realistic expectations of what we could achieve for our property in Inverloch."

Kaye McLean, Inverloch:

"His marketing skills are outstanding and way beyond other agencies."

And the one that matters most to me, from repeat clients Joanne Håkansson:

"Having used Inverloch @realty previously we knew how fantastic Leo and his Team are. We wouldn't sell with anyone else."

Repeat business is the only review an agent cannot manufacture. Troy Harris of Harris Build has now sold three properties with me. Builders sell often, compare hard, and do not come back out of sentiment.

Before you list, find out how many buyers I already have for your home

Here is something no portal-dependent agent can offer you, because they do not own an audience.

Request a free Buyer Match Report for your property. I will run your home against my active buyer database and the 30,000-plus member Inverloch3996 audience and tell you, before you sign anything, with anyone, three things: how many buyers I currently have matching a home like yours, what similar homes have drawn at their first open, and the realistic price evidence for your street right now.

It takes me a day to prepare. It costs you nothing, and it obligates you to nothing. Worst case, you walk into your next agent interview knowing exactly what questions to ask. Best case, you find out the buyer for your home has been sitting in my audience for months, waiting for it to exist.



In a market where days on market are stretching, the seller who knows where the buyers are has the only advantage that matters.

Leo Edwards is the principal of Inverloch3996 | @realty, a digital-first agency serving Inverloch and the Bass Coast. A two-time RateMyAgent Agent of the Year and Certified Price Expert, Leo combines data-driven pricing with the region's largest community marketing platform to put more buyers in front of every home he sells. Request a free property appraisal HERE or call 0472 523 445.

Market commentary in this article is general information only and does not constitute financial, investment or legal advice. Consider your own circumstances and seek independent advice before making property decisions.