It usually takes a while longer for the media and others to see what is happening in the market place. But realistically it only took a month this time around. Owner occupiers, upgraders, second home buyers, call them what you will, are flooding back to the market place. And there is not enough stock.

The talk from some data collection agencies about an abundance of stock is not incorrect just disingenuous. There are plenty of properties on the market. These are made up mainly of lower value stocks. Not lower priced, just the lower value of many suburbs. So when you look at raw numbers, most properties that are selling are selling below median prices for the suburb; this is because the market stock is currently skewed. And those that are getting “surprising” results are actually not. The fact that several people are bidding on a few properties and those properties that are not well located or poorly presented, or that are just not that valuable, fail to motivate the larger pool of “upgraders” is not at all surprising. In fact I would be surprised if these properties were to sell at a very good price.

To think this month’s RBA rate movement or the budget announcements have anything to do with the current market demographics is also a furphy. It was widely forecast by financial gurus that there would be a rate cut and this has been followed up by one that it may have even been leaked. It was also obvious to all and sundry that the banks were not going to pass on the full rate cut. This would have had little effect on the last four weeks sales results in Melbourne.

I don’t think Wayne Swan’s budget surplus is the key fundamental for owner occupiers coming out to the market place either. If anything, middle to upper class buyers would have retreated into their paid off houses, rather than coming out and looking to upgrade. But I do not think anyone is thinking Wayne Swan is here in any long term capacity.

Any would be upgraders, owner occupiers or downsizers need to understand that buying a new home will not be a short overnight enterprise. It will take many weekends of understanding what is currently out in the market place. You will need to also look at all the stock on the market and track all the sales in the area you wish to purchase in. This is paramount in the current market. If you make an error of judgement now, the very professional selling agents will sell you a property for well above its value.

There are many would be purchasers that are getting exasperated in the current market. And there are many agents trying to capitalise on exactly this. I have seen many properties in the last six weeks sell very well. Multiple bidders have been pushing above reserves by 10 – 20%. If the house is good, well marketed and well-presented and has all the fundamentals of a good long term investment property, the vendors are selling extremely well. Prices are often well above reserve. There are also some of the “not so well located” properties doing better than they have a right to do. Some unsuspecting buyers, who aren’t doing their homework, see these high prices and immediately equate this to prices across the board rising and agree to pay some very silly prices for property that is “not so good”

Do your homework. If you do not you may find that your property has shown little or no capital growth. And for those very unlucky few that are forced to re-sell their properties in a short term will potentially find themselves in a negative equity situation, especially if they leveraged quite high in the first place.

Over the next 12 months we will see the market begin to strengthen. This will be followed by more owner occupiers putting better homes on the market, and this will snowball into an upturned market where fundamentals of good stock, lower interest rates and a growing economy will bring stability to the faltering property market. This in turn will increase rental returns and bring investors to the forefront as well.

If you are considering purchasing property in the next 12 months, please feel free to call for a free no obligation chat.

Ian James
Director
JPP Buyer Advocates

I have! There is now no doubt in my mind that property prices in Melbourne have reached their lowest point. And the drive by owner occupiers will lead to higher prices for the better properties over the next 12 – 18 months. We have already shown why median house price movements are basically a useless statistic at the moment (turnover volumes are so low the statistic can be skewed too easily.)

The clearance rate does not give a reliable picture of market sentiment either. Owner occupiers will pay over the odds to secure the property they want and will not go after a property they don’t like. This is different to investors. Investors will take the second best or third best house – but at a reduced price! What we are currently seeing in the market is five, six and sometimes seven people bidding on the best presented house at the time and no interest just down the road on the second best house in the neighbourhood.

This does two things in the market place. The first, it pushes the better prices up substantially. The second; there are a lot more pass-ins and negotiations after auctions. It can also mean a lot of properties are negotiated prior to auction. A selling agent, and indeed a vendor do not want their property to be one of those poorly attended at auction. There is no worse feeling than a dead cold pass in where there are no bidders. Avoiding this at all costs is at the forefront of a selling agents mind.

So why have I rung the bell. Owner occupiers now make up 75% of our clients. This time last year over 70% were investors. I have asked many agents who are their main purchasers and all are saying this year it is the owner occupier. Add to that the lack of people willing to by any old property, even at a fair price. It is showing us a distinct lack of investors and this proves who is dominant in the market place.

Secondly, the amount of agents doing deals within the auction campaign. With the new three day cooling off laws, I assumed there would be a dearth of deals done prior to auction. I could not have been more wrong. If agents get a price they, and their clients, see as fair and reasonable, then they want to do deals. Last week alone, we closed 5 deals prior to Saturday, 4 of which were auction campaigns.

The Victorian economy, like most other non-mining states is, at the moment, not performing at its peak. This will also change dramatically through the next two to three years as the funds from the mining states begin to flow through the mining company’s offices, quite a few notable ones located in Melbourne.

In my opinion, the statistical data will show a very flat market and it will begin to move upward around this time next year. But the prices will actually start to move up later this year or early next year. At first you will see some big prices sporadically, then regularly, whilst still seeing a lot of pass-ins. As the prices of the best properties rise, prospective purchasers will begin to re-calibrate their own needs and wants and begin to look at slightly “lesser” properties than their wish lists. This will in turn generate high clearance rates and eventually higher prices.

This will in turn bring more vendors to the market and before long the market will pick up pace to be similar to 2006 & 2007. If you are a keen observer of the market you will see this building very easily, however the statistics will take 3 to 6 months to catch up. Even the media will catch up to the market movement by mid-way through next year.

If you are considering purchasing a property to live in or as an investment, please feel free to call for a chat or organise a no-obligation first meeting.

Ian James
Director
JPP Buyer Advocates

Clearance rates are stagnating at 60% on very low turnover. The State Government budget this year has Kim Wells pulling his hair out trying to manage the State’s finances. We have data analysts contradicting each other and we have real estate agents telling us how well they are doing. Throw in the uncertainty of variable interest rates (whether the RBA does anything or not is no longer the issue – the issue is whether the four banks will pass on anything to the public.) and you have the average punter wondering why the Australian economy is labelled as one of the best in the world. BY WHO?

As Chris Vedelago correctly pointed out in his column in The Age yesterday, all four major property data companies are at odds with each other. REIV are saying median went up, RP Data are saying it went down last month. APM have said property prices rose over the last three months and Residex have said it has fallen over the same time. Unfortunately they are all talking about the median house price and none of these “analysts” will admit that the median is not a useful statistic when there is major change to the volume. And worse still, when there is a large shift in the make-up of the purchasers this will impact even greater on the median price as you remove one large segment.

Owner occupiers are coming back into the market place. You do not find this out by sitting behind a desk and analysing auction results. You need to be talking to the people that are walking through the open for inspections. You need to talk to people who are bidding at auctions. Even loan data doesn’t let you analyse what people are doing until after the deal is done.

We are seeing properties that shouldn’t sell well, getting extraordinary numbers. Take the 5 bedroom, 1 bathroom period home in a Camberwell that is in a street with light industrial properties at one end. In today’s Age the property is said to have been sold for $1.965M above a reserve of $1.83M with three bidders in the action. To purchase a beautiful period home that you are going to live in for many years is the dream of many owner occupiers. They do not mind getting into a battle to win the house they want to live in. Investors do not do this.

Owner occupiers however will all congregate to a few properties that they deem are the best and leave the rest untouched. Investors will take the second best property if they can’t get the best – BUT AT A PRICE. This year you can expect to see some very high prices paid for what owner occupiers deem are good family homes and you can expect to see some lean prices paid for homes that cannot create competition.

Again this will throw the median price statistic out the window. Change in median price data should be looked at over a minimum term of 5 years and it is much more accurate over 10 years. The data should not be from a shorter period than a full years sales. Looking at monthly median changes to property prices is not going to give anyone an accurate picture of what is happening in the market place today.

The market will remain very erratic over the next 7 months at least. But there will be some very big ticket prices paid for homes that agents can create competition with and there will be some bargains to be had from those agents that cannot. I get asked is now a good time to buy and I also get asked is now a good time to sell. There is never a perfect time to do either. The right time to buy is when the house you want is on the market at a price you can afford. And the best time to sell is when someone offers you a price that you are comfortable to move on from your current property.

You can navigate the current Melbourne property market. The best thing to do is discover all the current properties, and all the recent sales (you will need some professional help with this from a buyer’s advocate). Once you have done this, think about how long you will be living in the home, or as an investor, how long you think you will hang on to the property and what rental return you think it is capable of attaining. Look at the property and see if you can add value, is the property likely to have competition on the day of sale. Is the property in a good location that is likely to have inherent capital growth. These are the questions that you should be asking yourself and your advisors.

If you want assistance purchasing a home think about using a buyer’s advocate. A buyer’s advocate is a licensed real estate agent that does not sell property or share commissions with selling agents. According to the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales under there “best practice guidelines” a Buyer’s Agent (advocate) must be completely independent from vendors and selling agents and only accept fees or commissions from buyers. In other words they do not sell or conduct the practice of vendor advocacy.

JPP Buyer Advocates are one of the only buyer advocates in Melbourne that do not share commissions with selling agents or take referral fees from selling agents. The only money JPP has ever taken from a selling agent was when we assisted them to purchase a property for themselves.

Ian James
Director
JPP Buyer Advocates

Ian James

After another weekend of hearing clearance rates are good, not so good and woeful by different media outlets, it is time to have a think about what is really happening. The REIV has said the clearance rate is 61% from 532 Auctions. 327 of these sold at or directly after auction or before the auction was held.

We now know the median price statistic is fatally flawed due to the dramatic drop in actual sales numbers. We also know that numbers of homes “on the market” is also not a reliable statistic, because there is absolutely no way of knowing what the change in numbers of people who are looking is. If you can only see one side of the “supply v demand” ratio then you do not have a viable statistic.

So what can we look at to give us a sense of what is happening? Simplistically, we can talk to agents and people who are looking at the negotiations in the market place on a daily basis. When I hear about all the gloom and doom, and hear that all the properties are sitting on the market forever or failing to sell at auction, and then I bid at an auction for a 3 bed 2 bath townhouse in Abbotsford against 6 bidders, I have to start thinking this must be an anomaly. My other auction is a double fronted residence in Kensington. 7 people bidding taking the property some $110,000 above the very top of the quoted range! 12 out of the last 14 auctions I have attended over the past three weeks have had multiple bidding well above the range that has been quoted. These auctions have been the best houses in their respective areas at the time.

It seems relatively obvious to me that if you have a very good property that is well presented by a professional selling agent it will sell and sell quite well if there is not direct competition at the time you are selling. From our enquiry statistics the market demographic is changing. The investors are still there, but they are being vastly outnumbered by owner occupiers. The owner occupiers that have had some discretionary time frames have been sitting on their hands for nearly 2 years. At some point in time everyone says “enough is enough” The owner occupiers are back in the market.

Owner occupiers are far more emotional than investors. It takes them longer to choose a property, but when they do, they will want to secure the property with more vigour than an investor. The owner occupier will tend to have a higher budget for any given property. This means that when a good property comes up more buyers will gravitate to it and potentially push the price up.

Because the market commentators use median price these spiked sales figures will not significantly impact the overall reports. This means the media will continue to tell us the market is falling in a hole. They will continue to quote professors who say the market is going to drop 40%. And to be fair they have no choice because that’s what the data says and that’s what some university professor has said. But in reality, the overall market is relatively flat and full of anomalies. There will be some bargain buys and there will be some great sales and this will continue for a little while to come.

The Australian property market is worth well in excess of $4 Trillion. It does not jump around by nearly half its value. Even the total capitalisation of the share market in Australian is only worth a little over $1 Trillion. The Australian property market and in particular the Melbourne market is a fairly safe place to have the majority of your money invested.

Ian James
Director JPP Buyer Advocates

Super Saturday rolls through and the REIV clearance rate is 61%. Out of a reported 929 auctions, 566 sold at or before auction and a further 597 homes were reported to have been sold privately last week for a total of 1163 sales for the week. This time last year total sales reached 1190. The auction sales were 497 with private sales at 693. The clearance rate in the first week of April was 61%. All these results come to us via the Real Estate Institute of Victoria.

When is the best time to buy a property?
When you see the property you want and you can purchase it for a fair and reasonable price! What is a fair and reasonable Price? What someone else is likely to pay!

The latest Melbourne median house price is in December 2011 was $550k whilst at the end of 2010 it was $580k. The current Reserve Bank cash rate is 4.25%, and at this time last year it was at 4.75% with no change in sight. The All Ordinaries index at its close on Friday was 4420 and as at 31st March last year was 4928.

Do we need any more statistics?

If we looked at the statistics above and not what was happening at the coal face of the real estate market in Melbourne, nobody would be putting their properties on the market. There have been fewer sales than last year, the median house price is down, the interest rate has dropped and the stock market in Australia is lower.

The median house price is calculated by putting all of the sale prices of the houses in a suburb, or the metro area, or whatever area you are calculating, in order from highest to lowest and then take the middle number. To use this method from year to year is fine if you have the same distribution of good, average and poor properties from year to year. You also need the same buying demographic. Are there the same number of investors, owner occupiers who are downsizing, upsizing, going bankrupt, getting paid better etc.

To give you an idea of this let’s look at 11 sales in an imaginary suburb. The sales prices in thousands are as follows, 400,410, 420, 430, 440, 450, 460, 470, 480, 490 & 500. The median is 450 as it is the middle of all the sales. Let us now move forward 1 year and assume that the exact same properties sold for exactly the same prices. In other words the value of the properties have not changed at all. However, there were four fewer properties (36% fewer) put on the market: the 440, 460, 470 & the 490 property. Total sales now look like this: 400, 410, 420, 430, 450, 480, & 500. The median price however is now 430 even though not one house price sale changed yet statisticians would tell you that the median house price has dropped 3.6%.

We know that the sales volume in 2010 was approx. 95,000 sales in the Melbourne metro area and last year there were only about 65,000 sales (31% fewer). We also know there were far fewer owner occupiers looking in the market than investors. So both the volumes and demographics have changed.

Unfortunately, none of these numbers will tell you what your property will sell for next week, nor will it tell you what you will need to pay for your next property. The property market is not the same as the share market. When you decide to buy BHP shares, there is a current listed price and “basically” you buy at that price or not. For the average person there is no “battering” or negotiation. Property is totally different. Every BHP share in the same class is the same as every other BHP share in that class. Every house is different.

If we look at the current demographic, we know that owner occupiers are making up the bulk of the enquiries. This is easy to understand as owner occupiers have been sitting on their hands for well over 18 months and at some stage, regardless of the economy they have to act.

This year I believe we will see the median house price in most Melbourne suburbs increase dramatically. I am also predicting there will be little or no change in the price people will have to pay for a house. The median may move, the clearance rate may fluctuate, but if your property would have sold last year for $500,000 and you present it well, have a good agent who markets and negotiates well on your behalf, I think your property will still sell for $500,000 this year.

Properties nearly always sell at a price that is similar to what many other SIMILAR properties have sold for in the area. It is what the industry calls comparable properties. These are not just any sales in the street, nor are they always the examples the selling agents give you on their handouts at an open (do not forget the selling agent is working for the vendor). A comparable sale needs to be estimated looking at land size, land orientation and aspect, street appeal and location to amenities (both too far away and too close: eg. 2km from train line is too far but backing on to boom gates is too close), The size of the house for accommodation and living space, the feel and flow of a house, the quality of the house, the outdoor living space and car accommodation.

Once you have found and analysed multiple comparables, you can guesstimate what the target property will most likely sell for. This is a far more accurate guide to property prices than any statistical analysis of annual median prices will give you.

If you are thinking of buying a property this year please feel free to give our office a call.

Ian James
Director
JPP Buyer Advocates

For the third time this year we have seen weekly sales of property in the Melbourne metropolitan area exceed 1000 as reported by the REIV. It is now very obvious to all the professional Real Estate agents that the owner occupiers are re-entering the market place. The vast majority of our enquiry now is the person who wants to sell their own home and buy another. Sometimes upsizing: sometimes downsizing.

I have many questions asked of me as a real estate agent. None more so than: “What do I do first, buy or sell?”

The question is easier to answer than you think. The first question to ask is can I afford to hold two properties at once. Ask your banker/finance broker how much it will cost for bridging finance and whether the bank will let you hold both properties for a period of time. If the answer is yes, and the cost is not overwhelming, then I would always buy first and then sell. It means that you will only need to move once and it will be at a time of your choosing.

If the bank says that you can only own one property at a time, then you now have a decision to make. If you sell first, then you will not be in a financial jam, however if you cannot find the house you wish to purchase during settlement, you may have to rent or live with a friend or relative for a short time. In other words you may have to move twice and or store your furniture.

If you are going down this track, you should be looking for a long settlement on your home. 90 to 120 days is not unusually long and sometimes you may get a better price if you offer this length of settlement. The trick question to answer is: What do you do if you get a good offer with a short settlement. You need to work through the numbers.

Before you do anything when trading homes, it is a good idea to get an estimate on your property. This usually consists of three local agents giving an appraisal, or clients of JPP can always ask us for an opinion. You need to have a very good idea of what the market will most likely pay for your current property.

If you would like some advice before starting the process of buying and selling, please do hesitate to contact me for a chat.

Ian James
Director
JPP Buyer Advocates

After another big weekend of auctions the REIV clearance rate has dipped just under 60%. But this doesn’t really tell the tale of what is happening in the market place. Four out of five of the auctions we attended on Saturday passed in with only one NOT being purchased after negotiation.

The very high enquiry levels are switching from investors to owner occupiers. In the past four weeks there have been two owner occupier enquiries to every one investor enquiry. There are many people who already own a home and would have been selling and moving up the property ladder to a more expensive home over the past two years that did not. They have been procrastinating. But a time must come where those who need to upsize, or downsize cannot wait any longer. I believe we are reaching that point now. Most procrastinators have been sitting on their hands for nearly two years.

If this trend continues, it will mean an increase of the family homes in the $400 – $700 and potentially the $1M – $1.5M ranges being put on the market. They will be good homes in good locations, and will mean that there will be better choice of family homes which we have certainly had a lack of for the past eighteen months. However, it will also mean there will be an increase in buyers for the next level up as well.

Whilst it will be good to see the increase in choice of property, it will also be good to see more top end properties of each of the suburbs now being put on the market. However, it will become much more difficult to purchase due to the increased competition of cashed up buyers.

I believe this year we will see the return of the traders. Those who have a home and have paid off a good percentage of the mortgage, who are now in a position to sell and repurchase. The market indicators will be very slow to encapsulate this trend as the median price will not change very much. Many of these vendors will be realistic with their values on their own homes but will probably be very aggressive on buying well.

I believe this year we may see a rise in turnover back to averages around 75,000 homes in the metro area being sold but we will not see a huge increase in price that normally accompanies this sort of spike.

2012 will be the year when owner occupiers will lead the charge for purchasing property. If you are one such person, then think setting very specific limits when you buy and sell. If you would like some assistance before taking the plunge, please feel free to call and have a chat with one of our advocates.

Ian James
Director JPP Buyer Advocates

Three day cooling off laws change significantly from 1st March.

With summer over, both by date and weather, the Melbourne property market has shown some signs that the autumn season may have some strength to it. The REIV clearance rate again exceeded 60% with just short of 800 auctions. There were also nearly 650 private sales reported throughout the week. These numbers will vary slightly throughout the week as more results come through.

It seems much of the strength is in the sub $1.5M market. Many of the 2nd home buyers seem to be slowly coming back to life after a two year hiatus. This is beginning to increase stock levels in the sub $700k bracket and with investors also breathing life in the lower end; it seems turnover numbers will most likely increase this year.

Next week numbers are well down due to the long weekend, and then we should see a brief frenzy of activity until the Easter slow down. It is what happens after Easter that will really shape this year’s property market.

There was a significant change to the law that came into force on March 1st. In Victoria, buyers of property who sign a contract of sale have three clear business days with which to withdraw from the contract for any reason they so choose. There were a few exceptions to this rule, the main two as far as the average buyer was concerned were: If you signed the contract of sale within three business days either before or after a publically advertised auction or if you had received advice from a legal practitioner before signing the contract. The latter no longer is in force.

You can now receive legal advice prior to signing the contract and you still have your cooling off period. Even though I only work for buyers, this change to the law doesn’t necessarily help us. It removes the possibility of finality. It makes it impossible to offer a good deal that gives the vendor surety. We have made many deals happen specifically because of this. The three day cooling off period was designed to allow those purchasers who signed a contract without legal advice time to get someone to look over the deal they had made. It is now designed to allow people to change their minds.

There is one benefit that I can see for the prospective purchaser. Many times we have decided to buy with a condition subject to Pest and Building and to soften the condition we agree to get the inspections within the three day cooling off period. To do this means we couldn’t, in the past get legal advice prior to signing the contract: now we can.

This has significantly changed the negotiation landscape for buying property. If a selling agent wanted to do a deal prior to an auction, he or she would normally only take an offer if the purchaser had received legal advice. In other words the offer was unconditional. That means they could call around to other interested parties and say, “We have received an offer that will buy the property prior to auction. If you wish to purchase the property please have your offer in by 5.00pm today.” They would normally give a fairly close indication as to the offer, in order to push up anyone else. They knew if they didn’t get any better offers they had the property sold regardless. This scenario is similar to a “Boardroom Auction”

With the change to the law on the 1st March this year, this is no longer an option for selling agents. Boardroom auctions are no longer viable as they are not final (the offer would have a three day cooling off period). Sale by set date, tender and expressions of interest campaigns will no longer work as they were intended. These offers usually state that the purchaser must have attained legal advice prior to submitting their offer, thereby making all offers received unconditional. This is now no longer the case.

NOBODY CAN WAIVE THE THREE DAY COOLING OFF PERIOD. YOU CANNOT CONTRACT OUT OF A LAW.

Even offers within the auction campaign will prove difficult. For example, an agent is given a very good offer on The Tuesday before a Saturday auction. If he takes it and lets all other interested parties know he has an offer that dramatically exceeds the range and will be accepted by the vendor if no better offer is received, he runs the risk of scaring off all the other contenders, albeit at a lower number, whilst he has to wait until Friday night to see if the purchaser cools off. If he doesn’t take the offer and this purchaser does not attend the auction, he may have made a substantial error for his client.

I can’t wait for someone to challenge the definition of a publically advertised auction. Can a publically advertised auction be “advertised” on the internet for today at 4.00pm? I am genuinely unsure of what the length of time needs to be before an auction is deemed “Publically Advertised” If there is no time frame, can an agent who knows he is going to get an offer at 2.30pm advertise the property on the internet at 1.00pm, that the property will be for public auction at 5.00pm on the same day and therefore alleviate the cooling off period?

It will be interesting to see how the next few months negotiations play out in the public arena. If you are interested in purchasing property please do not hesitate to give me call and we will see if we can assist you

Ian James
Director
JPP Buyer Advocates

With a clearance rate above 60% and a total number of sales for the past week over 1000 according to the REIV, most media outlets will be talking about the turning of the market. However one week’s results don’t set a trend. Last week with the clearance rate under 60%, some Estate Agents wanted to tell you there wasn’t enough data to set a trend and therefore the result under 60% doesn’t mean anything. And I am sure this week we will be told that there is plenty of evidence to point to the market beginning to rise again.

Of the four auctions I attended on Saturday all sold. The prices ranged from $408k to $1.8M+. Each of the properties had bidding onto the market and sold under the hammer except one. This property passed in and was sold through negotiation. The auction in Bayside started with a vendor bid and finally, after some 3 or 4 minutes in 38 degree heat the auctioneer was relieved to take a genuine bid from the crowd. There were 2 other bidders who reluctantly took the bidding to $1.26M which was $10k over the top of the advertised range. The property was announced on the market and one further bid from the original bidder secured the property under the hammer. This seemed to be a case of one very strong bidder and two who were stretched to breaking point even though we were just above the top of the range.

The market will sort itself out over time. Over the next decade property prices within about 30km’s of the CBD of Melbourne will more than double in value. Will this occur uniformly over time – NO! A very smart man once said, “It is not a matter of timing the market, it is a matter of time in the market” Nothing could be truer. This year we will see more vendors put their homes onto the market and they will be a lot more realistic with their asking prices. Most owner occupiers who have wanted to sell over the past two years but have been able to postpone, probably have. They are waiting for a better market. But time waits for nobody. At some stage people need to sell to move on with their lives. I believe this year will see a lot more turnover in the market.

I also believe most vendors who are trading homes, either upsizing or downsizing, have established that even if they do not get top dollar for their family home, the same is true for when they purchase. Exchanging homes in the same market is not as fraught with danger as most people think. Vendors selling homes need to present their home well, they need to know what their home is worth in this market (realistically worth, not wishful pricing) and they need to hire a professional, experienced agent. This will maximise their sale price.

Do not think that you will save money selling the property yourself. I had a chat with a gentleman that asked me if I were interested in his property. He was selling it himself and he asked me if I had a client interested. It was not in an area that we were searching in and I asked him why he was trying to sell it himself. He said he wanted to save money!! I offered him some free advice, which he was happy to accept. I explained that if I were interested in the property, I can assess its worth far more accurately than he can. I also have access to all the sales data in the area, I know how the market is trending and I have a very good understanding of the law surrounding the sale of property. I then explained to him that I negotiate property transactions approximately 300 times per year. I asked him how many property negotiations he had done in the past five years, to which he replied “None” I asked him who he thought would have the upper hand and he immediately agreed I would.

In short, I would probably out negotiate him every day of the week. I actually out negotiate quite a few experienced real estate agents. I explained that if he comes up against a highly experienced advocate, he will most likely lose a lot more than the $10,000 it may cost to hire a selling agent.

This is exactly the same when buying a property. Anytime a person with extremely limited experience (less than 50 negotiations per year) comes up against a highly trained, highly experienced Real Estate agent, they are most likely going to pay a lot more than if they had hired an advocate to act on their behalf.

If you are considering purchasing a property please feel free to call us for a no obligation meeting and we will explain how we can save you money.

Ian James
Director
JPP BUYER ADVOCATES

Saturday marked the first real auction weekend of 2012 and whilst overall numbers of bidders were low there were plenty of onlookers at all the auctions we attended. REIV results have set the clearance rate for the 579 auctions at 59%. There are still about 63 results unknown. I don’t think this result will set precedence for the auction season. It is far too early to make that call. The REIV reports there are 880 auctions gazetted for next week and 870 the following. By around Labour Day weekend we will have a much clearer picture on what is happening in the market place.

More surprising, however, was the fact there were only 488 private sales called in to the REIV. This is very much lower than the same weekend last year. I thought it was also notable that of the four properties we purchased over the weekend, two were purchased prior to the weekend and the other two were negotiated after passing in.

Most open for inspections for properties under $700k were very well patronised. I think there are a lot more people out looking this year. After last year’s drop in turnover, in some market segments the numbers of sales were down as much as 30%, I believe a balance is likely to occur this year. No matter what the market is like, no matter what economic or political issues are prevalent in the papers, people still have to buy and sell a certain number of houses. There will always be births, deaths, marriages, divorces, people moving for jobs, or lack of a job. These people must change their accommodation needs and this means that sales of properties will occur regardless of external forces. This year we should see those people who had put off changing residence last year, making their return to the market this year and this will increase turnover above and beyond what market trends will allow.

Anecdotally there are more people in the market place than last year. If the supply does not grow to well above last years totals, we will see prices rise. This will have nothing to do with economic outlooks, both good and bad, it will be all about supply and demand. If price goes up, more vendors will enter the market and this will cool things off a little. If supply is flooded then prices will ease, however vendors will again withdraw from the market place and we could see prices move accordingly.

This year the market will be overall flat when looking at a macro level. Melbourne statistics and even suburb statistics will not give a full picture of the market. At a micro level I believe prices will be all over the place. The volatility will be at an area level. For example, when talking about Glen Iris and the 4 distinctly differing areas within, price will come down to choice within these quadrants. A lot more so than in the past. I believe there will be a higher level of scrutiny of the properties on the market than ever before. And it will not just be looking at comparable sales; it will be looking at the volume of sales of this type in this quadrant. In other words, if I miss this one, how long will it be before I get another chance at something like this?

Conversely, if there are multiple properties on the market at the same time that are similar, and in the same distinct area, and understanding there is a limited demand, the smart agents will be doing deals before auction. The statistical analysis we are used to seeing in the papers and online will not differentiate this. In fact the clearance rate includes all those properties that are sold before auction.

Overall there may be bargains out there this year, but more than likely if you pay a reasonable price for a good property you will do quite well over the coming years. If you are considering purchasing this year, please feel free to book an appointment. There is no cost, nor obligation at our first meeting.

Ian James
Director
JPP Buyer Advocates