From Housing Commission
to Home Owner

I know what it feels like to not have a safe place to come home to.

Growing up, home was not a constant. It was a women's shelter, a housing commission property, a series of places we moved through rather than lived in. My family was shaped by addiction, instability, and the kind of uncertainty no child should have to carry. From about the age of twelve, I understood something most kids my age never had to think about, that having a roof over your head is not something you can take for granted.

I was the eldest of three. My two younger sisters were watching, and I was watching them. Scared, resilient, and quietly determined this would not be the whole of our story.

Because that is the thing about the life you are born into. It can define you, or you can decide to rewrite it.

At fourteen I left home. I found a job in retail, kept going to school, finished a Certificate II, and worked every spare hour I had. Not for luxuries. For rent. For a little security. For the feeling I was building something, even if I could not yet see what it was going to be.

At seventeen I walked into a bank as a teller. A shy young woman with more life experience than most adults twice her age, and very little idea how to talk to people in a professional setting. I learned. Slowly, then quickly. My confidence grew the way confidence does when you stop waiting for permission and just keep showing up.

At eighteen, I bought my first home.

I still remember walking through the front door that first day. The quiet of it. The stillness. I made myself a promise standing in that empty house, that I would never be without a home again. And that if I could learn to save, navigate the system, rewrite my own story, I would spend my life helping other people do the same.

That same year I taught myself everything I could about mortgages. I asked my area manager for a role as a lender. He said yes.

That was 2007.

Nearly twenty years later, I am still turning up every single day to help people into homes. First home buyers who do not know where to start. Families who need more space. People who have been told no by a bank and need someone to find another way. Investors building something for their future. People rewriting their own narratives, one settlement at a time.

I went on to complete a university degree in Mortgage Broking and Finance, one of very few brokers in the country to hold one. I built The Broker Society from the ground up, brought together a team of brokers I am genuinely proud of, and created the kind of brokerage I wish had existed when I was starting out.

The Broker Society exists because of a twelve year old girl who needed a home and never forgot what that felt like.

If you are trying to find your way into a home, whatever your starting point, whatever your circumstances, I want you to know that is exactly why we are here.

Let's find a way.

Kate Sadler
Principal Broker and Owner, The Broker Society