It’s problematic to generalise about where markets are heading. In real estate, especially at the top end when rarity becomes a factor, there are markets within markets.
Over recent weeks — coinciding with Melbourne’s record-breaking Indian Summer — a Summer-like market has continued well into Autumn. Volumes usually unheard of at this time of year, prices that have largely remained strong.
Yet, now, there’s the zephyr of a cooling breeze. With only a couple of weeks to go before the winter chill sees those who drive the top end taking off for sun or snow, there has been a faltering.
Meaning? It may help you to know that before our winter of inactivity descends, agents and vendors can be unusually anxious to get your signature on a contract of sale. Buyers who pause may profit.
The two top ends
The trophy homes which tick every box are strong, will be strong and ever more shall be so. Their true limit (as seen recently in St Vincent Place) is a buyer’s ability to pay.
Pull back a notch in the perfection (not price) stakes and the rules change. Regardless of the price point, there is much greater choice among the less-than-perfect and needs-work and it is there that a careful buyer has much to save.
Here there’s always another choice, always the option to walk away, and that’s where true bargaining power lives.
When confronted with a lemon some welcome the opportunity to make lemonade, but to succeed means really understanding the work and investment which will be needed; to see not only the imagined perfection to come but the often difficult road to get there.
And not to be seduced by that imagined perfection and then paying too much.
Victorian Follies?
Love is irrational. The love of a Victorian home can be profoundly so.
Even when dark, even with floorplans that don’t work, even when needed renovations will overwhelm the original price, even when the original price defies belief.
Consider …
- 15 Avondale Road, Armadale. Six hands waving in the air, on the market at $4.2 million and sold for $4.9 million. “Not expensive,” was overheard, but it still needs a couple of million spent on it.
- 12 Russell Street, Camberwell. On the market at $6 million and sold for a belief-defying, record-breaking $6.9 million. Not the greatest street in the area and there’s no renovating that.
Weep Of The Week
Poor old Marshall White. Two top-end plays — 25 Henderson Avenue, Malvern and 17 Power Avenue, Toorak — and not a bid between them.
Why? Asking too much, delivering too little.
Buyers’ Worst Enemies
… can be themselves. Two properties over the weekend:
- No bid. Passed in at $4,050,000, sold later for $4,350,000
- One bid. Passed in at $2,850,000, sold later for $3,190,000
People, you knew what the market was prepared to pay, so why give Ferrari money to agents in sharp suits?
Signs of Softening?
Agents becoming more more receptive to offers prior to auction or EOI expiry date.
David Morrell