Secret Agent
Most property advice follows the market. Secret Agent interrogates it.
We advise individuals, families and businesses on property in Melbourne and inner Sydney — typically people who think independently and ask hard questions. We act exclusively for buyers. Our work begins not with what is available, but with the market cycle and the people we act for.
THE FIRM
Secret Agent was founded in 2008, as the Great Financial Crisis took root. That origin shaped the firm. We have worked from the premise that markets turn, that value is not always available, and that a decision not to buy can be as valid as a decision to buy.
Between 2016 and 2025 Secret Agent withdrew from the market more than once, declining to buy when value was absent.
What the firm believes about cities and buildings shapes every brief before a property is inspected.
THE SERVICES
Secret Agent acts across residential and commercial property: homes, investments, commercial premises, and leases. Every engagement begins with a judgement about whether to buy.
For clients based overseas, Secret Agent has acted at distance since its founding.
THE RESEARCH
We have had a central thesis about the market since our founding. The research exists to test it. Two long-form essays on Australia’s financial cycle have been published, following the long cycles that sit beneath property markets: invisible in any given year, decisive across a generation.
Behind them is The Secret Agent Report, ninety-one issues published between October 2012 and June 2020 on pricing, credit, the built environment and human health. The archive is public and held on this site.
ABOUT
Our office is at 60 Leicester Street, Carlton — one of Australia’s most sustainable buildings, in the Melbourne Biomedical Precinct. The location is not incidental. What a building will demand of its occupants, and of its surroundings, is a question we ask at the point of acquisition.
Secret Agent is led by Paul Osborne.