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Speaking on Broker Daily’s Finance Specialist podcast, Accendo Financial founder Trent Carter said inquiries from brokers wanting to expand into commercial finance had “gone through the roof” as residential transactions become harder to secure.
While Carter added that he did not see a structural change in the housing market, he said the current cycle was prompting brokers to think more carefully about where future business would come from.
“We’ve got a steady flow of business, but in the last three months, the inquiry rate’s gone through the roof in terms of people going, ’You know what, I really need to diversify my income streams because the residential needle’s not turning,’” Carter said.
“I think it comes down to that old adage of when’s the best time to plant a tree? Well, a hundred years ago. So if you haven’t done it in your business already, now is the best time to start looking at doing that to protect your business.”
Residential market showing signs of slowing
According to Carter, Western Australia has only recently begun experiencing the softer conditions already evident on the east coast, with fewer property transactions and homes taking longer to sell.
Indeed, data from the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia (REIWA) found that three in 10 properties in Perth were now selling below their listing price and that supply of homes on the market was also bouncing back from record lows at the end of 2025.
Across the country more broadly, a slowdown in the housing market is noticeable.
According to broker group Loan Market, mortgage applications have fallen 26 per cent by volume and 23 per cent by value between early February 2026 and the end of June.
Other indicators of the market, such as house prices and auction clearance rates, have also fallen in the last few months.
Carter said that the market was entering another natural cycle rather than heading towards a dramatic correction.
“We’re seeing less property transactions flowing through week to week, month to month,” Carter said.
“We are seeing clients’ properties potentially taking longer to sell. A few of the ’For Sale’ signs that you see driving around are maybe hanging around for a little bit longer.
“So it’s going to be harder graft to make money in the residential market over the next 12 months than it has been for the previous, say, 18 months, two years. So that’s fact. What are you going to do about it?”
Opportunity already exists in broker databases
One area of finance that has not cooled is the business lending market, which according to June’s Monthly Authorised Deposit-taking Institution Statistics from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), saw its strongest month in six years.
Rather than immediately chasing new clients, Carter said many brokers were overlooking the commercial opportunities already sitting within their existing customer base.
In particular, he said self-employed borrowers often required a much broader range of finance products than PAYG customers.
“I’d be getting into my database and seeing where all these people who I’ve had the benefit of helping out over the last two, three, four years are sitting right now. Where can I help them next?” he said.
“A big chunk of them you’ll find, through no fault of your own, even if you’ve not had an intended target for self-employed, 15–30 per cent, depending on who you are, of your database is going to be self-employed.”
Carter said self-employed clients generally represented a much larger long-term opportunity because their business needs extended well beyond a home loan.
“They’re still going to want to own their home... but they’ve got a business that’s got working capital needs, they’ve got a business that they want to own their own premises in their self-managed super fund, they’ve got a business that’s going to need upgrade of equipment at some point,” Carter said.
“There’s a world of opportunity.”
Commercial starts with relationships, not products
Carter also said that many brokers underutilise their CRM systems, using them only as a loan lodgement platform rather than a relationship management tool.
“The biggest thing that brokers don’t do is every time they meet someone, get them into their database... they don’t get some basic information about where this person sits,” he said.
“Using your CRM tool as a lodgement tool for AOL is its lowest value use to you because all you’re using it as is a data transportation tool.”
Instead, Carter encouraged brokers to better categorise clients based on their goals and interests, allowing them to have more meaningful conversations over time rather than just contacting borrowers when another loan opportunity arises.
“Otherwise what we call in broking is you get to meet people for the first time, lots of times,” he said.
“If you’ve done the categorisation and notes part well... the conversation evolves into an interest of theirs, and you’ll be forming a relationship with them, and you become a trusted adviser to them.”
Building confidence
For brokers looking to diversify, Carter said confidence was often the biggest hurdle rather than technical ability.
He said learning how to read business financial statements was the most important first step before tackling more complex commercial transactions.
Then, rather than starting with complex cash flow lending, Carter suggested brokers first build experience through products such as asset finance, bank guarantees, and insurance premium funding before progressing to larger commercial transactions.
“The conversation we have with so many brokers is, ’Why haven’t I done this earlier?’ The number one thing is confidence,” Carter said.
“They don’t feel like they can go and approach a business owner and have a conversation with them because they don’t have the confidence to understand the deal once they get it.”
[Related: Business lending growth hits 6-year high]
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