If there is a single indicator that sums up everything that can be known about a property it is that five-letter word: Price.
Price reflects everything: place, quality, size, amenity, the mood, Outside Forces, a buyer’s ability to pay…
Even what Mr Putin may have planned.
Yet eventually only the buyer decides. Not vendors with heads in clouds, not agents with hands in pockets. It’s buyers who decide prices.
Over the past week we have seen a number of good proerties sell well because they were priced well. We’ve also seen a number where agents and/or vendors had little idea of what lay ahead:
- 8 Lawes Street sold for $3 million after five or six people were keen enough to bid — yet three separate agencies predicted $2.5 million.
- 31 Hampden Road went for a sliver over $7 million.
- 15 Mercer Road wanted $10 million, then $9 million, then $8 million and has finally sold for $7.5 million to the underbidder on the rebound from Hampden Road.
And unreal price hope still springs eternal. Vendors repeatedly throwing one sales campaign after another when in most cases what they really need to do is adjust their price expectations.
Trends?
The number of top end units selling for close to record prices. Pitched to wealthy downsizers who want to put their gardens behind them and have the freedom to live untied to real estate (one unit sold for 0ver $20,000/sq m over the weekend).
Relatively few wish to embrace the mysteries of buying off the plan — the exception (there’s always an exception) being Marne Street; where nine apartments have been sold at amazing prices.
And then come the Outside Forces
The stock market. Commodity prices. The economy. Mr Putin.
Mr Putin?
Yes. There’s a Putin factor.
Really.
David Morrell