Sorry. We’ve heard it all before.
The sky never falls on the top end — at least not the way it does on the lower rungs.
Royal Commission? Good to see but it doesn’t create more top end homes or persuade people not to buy them.
Banks tightening credit? The top end has lenders, rarely borrowers.
ASX in freefall? It happened during the GFC. It caused a massive flight to property.
Real estate market implodes? In 3142 or 2027? We wish.
(If we could talk the market down, in the interests of our clients, we would.)
The key to the difference between the top end and the rest is, as a rule those at the top end don’t borrow money. It’s about supply, opportunity, privacy, convenience and, yes, significant amounts of money.
There’s a lot of it still floating around, more than there are houses. Last year, AAA houses were hard to find and hard to buy but in our view it’s only going to get harder while people sit on their hands.
We have a ton of experience tempting top end owners out of their homes and offering them all sorts of money to come and play — but until they have somewhere to move to, they stay put. The open market that does exist is most commonly event-driven: a death, a divorce or a tax bill. Money is not the trigger.
Are there any signs in the sand? Most years you could look at the salubrious end of the Peninsula and get an idea. This year there’s been too little to buy. The cliff-dwellers aren’t coming down.
And yet… and yet…
There’s still a bunch of homes in Salubria that haven’t sold since last year. How can that be?
Go through the remainder bins and you’ll find a bunch of lemons, the over-priced and botched campaigns (hello, You-Know-Who).
So where is all that money going?
Into one of the last remaining tax havens: The Principal Place Of Residence.
Home sweet home.