T.E.T.

“Where the top end leads, the rest follows.” It’s been the way for 30 years. And with a vengeance since Christmas. But how high can it go? There are endless theories, but we’re running out of precedents. We’re now flying well above the fundamentals and up here there are no track records. On one hand it’s very […]

We’d love to say that the market has changed a gear and has entered a predictable new normal, but… We’ve seen bubbles before and the operative word is Pop (or, a few years ago when the banks got real: pffffft). What we’re seeing now is not agent hype or media gullibility. Prices really have jumped

When the talk among the agents moves from the iniquities of school fees and the scarcity of innocent parties ready to put their hands in their pockets to sunny thoughts around which side of the Equator beckons this winter, whether it should be a Merc or a Beemer and is Saville Row still the go,

It wasn’t how it’s meant to be. Everything’s supposed to go quiet in the week before the fellow in the red suit crashes down the chimney. Not last Christmas. Phones ran hot, sellers faced the reality that if they didn’t deal pre-Christmas it was all over, and suddenly the SOLD signs were going up. Never seen anything like it.

So what was that all about? The tide came in, the tide went out, the tide came in… It was that kind of year. For buyers, the best time this year was November last year; but that’s stretching it. This year this year went off like a cracker. Buyers everywhere and wallets agape. And then

Is the election to blame? No. The wheels have been falling off  a lot of the action since Cup week. EOI Ouch The great big pile of Expressions Of Interest which closed last week. Not a SOLD sign among them. (It’s the price, people, it’s the price.) Inspections Ouch Saturday’s opens may as well have

The bloke in the red suit has his dates mixed up. It’s still November and, right there under the tree, there are more presents than you can count. Children, you must have been very, very good. Some due to be opened just this week are: 38A Lansell Road, Toorak 46 Canberra Road, Toorak (again) 11

Cup week can do strange things – and not only to the citizens at Flemington. At the top end it often brings with it a change in the real estate weather; and it’s starting to look like a cool breeze is coming. Much has to do with a surge of off-market offerings onto what for a moment

A Cup For Every Starter There are cups and there are cups. Some filled with champagne, others with flat beer. And it’s been some horse race out there. The Sprinters $2-4m. Huge field and queues of jockeys, yet results still vary between tears of joy and disappointment. Some vendors coming home to cheering crowds, others doomed to

Are we seeing – at least at the top end – the end of the auction era? And are advertised ‘private’ sales approaching the end of their road? More and more the real action is off-market (much of it not even involving agents). But … why? The answer to the auction question is easy: At the top