The windows of opportunity are closing and both buyers and sellers are aware that, comes Christmas, they all slam shut.
Sure sign? In the last week a number of expressions-of-interest closed early – vendors taking the sure thing rather than the bet.
It’s now or next year.
Buyers, too, are eager for decisions and that’s an urge which led to the extraordinary goings-on at 64 Armstrong Street, Middle Park. It had been on the market for an eon until the vendor embraced a buyer at a less-than-hoped-for $4.25 million. All wan smiles. Then the buyer’s feet chilled and it was all off again. On Saturday, a let’s-get-this-over-with hurried auction saw it bring … $4.4 million!
$150,000 says it’s not only sellers who fear closing windows.
And so there’s desire on both sides and a fair few are resulting in marriages – but they’re mostly quiet registry-office unions well out of the public eye.
Anomaly Of The Week
“We’ll sell, but can we rent the place back for six months?”
This. Is. Not. A. Brilliant. Negotiating. Strategy.
“Of course you can. Now let’s talk again about price.”
Holiday bookings
We’ve taken instructions from several clients interested in buying down the coast. Signs of a happier summer? (Winter was nothing down there.)
That squeaking sound?
That’s another window closing. Soon there will be nothing left.
David Morrell
Bayside: Nothing much heard.
Where have all the people gone? We know they’re not shopping, there’s no grand final or car race or horse festa or tiddlywinks international to drag them away; so where have they all gone?
Not even the innocent bystanders are being dragged along to the theatre of the street.
Have our auctioneers lost it?
Is the prospect of a bloke in a suit (he’s almost always a bloke in a suit) saying what a bloke in a suit always says before asking for bids, then making his own, then listening to the silence, then rolling up his flag and heading off to his next game of charades, not enough to draw the crowds any more?
Desperate times call for desperate spruiking, but when everything is being spruiked as beyond compare nothing seems that special.
All of which was on display in Brighton’s belly over the weekend. The sold score was one out of five.
- 7 Armfield Street. 645 sq m, OK house, in a court, overlooking a park, probably land value, last sold three years ago for a nose-bleed $2,010,000. One bid from You-Know-Who: $1.78 million. Silence. Flag rolled. Reserve getting on for $1.9 million. We don’t think so.
- 8 Lynch Street. Big house on postage-stamp 500 sq m. YKW bids $1.7 million. Silence. Rolls flag. Reserve smidge under $2 million. Yes. Right. Is there anyone here in a red suit?
- 67 Cochrane Street. Big new family house. YKW bids $2.5 million. Rolls flag. Reserve a secret (so high that it would scare the reindeer?) but another agent had it at $3.5 million not long ago so hopeless may spring eternal.
The one that did:
- 1/57 Carpenter Street. Quoted at $1.3 million plus, on the market at $1.35 million and a nice little bidders war took it to $1.504 million. People clapped. Really.
Brighton East? Different story, but nothing over a million. Sold six out of eight.
The rest? Doldrums – with the exception of The Bentleighs where different rules rule (are they really part of Bayside?).
So is the change really in the air? You wouldn’t think so from what we saw. But there’s more than one market and each can be dancing to a different tune.
Even if we heard few of those over the weekend.
Damian Taylor
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