Strong results require clear vision
It’s interesting when you look around at the property market in the City of Moonee Valley and its surrounding suburbs at the moment. What is becoming increasingly clear as each week passes is that those vendors who are achieving the strongest results in the current market all tend to have one key advantage over those vendors who are struggling to achieve a sale…that’s a clear understanding of what the market will pay, and what it won’t!
Make no mistake, a chill in the air and a few grey skies won’t stop buyers from actively pursuing their next home. But what WILL stop them is a perception that a vendor is not being realistic about their price expectations. Those vendors who take the approach that they won’t sell unless they can get the same prices that people were achieving when the market peaked twelve months ago are destined for a tough ride.
What some people are overlooking is that if you are buying and selling in the same market, (which is what more than 95% of people do), then market movements are basically irrelevant. As the old saying goes, “what you gain on the swings, you spend on the roundabout.”
One simple statement that we overheard at one of this week’s auctions says it all, “Vendors need to stop looking in the rear-view mirror, because the buyers are looking to the future, not the past.”
We saw a couple of examples this week of what can happen when a vendor is realistic about the current market (and prepared to let genuine competition between motivated buyers do its job). Fort example…
Avondale Heights – 30 Brown Street
Potential seemed to be the word on most buyers’ lips as they viewed this older-style 3-bedroom home (pictured) on a very usable 610sqm block. Being close to Avondale Heights Primary School, cafes, the supermarket and the Maribyrnong River Trail, it attracted strong interest which resulted in a very pleasing sale at $790,000.
Essendon – 3/140 Hoffmans Road
With the Keilor Road cafés, restaurants, shopping strip and city trams just moments from its door, this generous 2- bedroom top floor apartment had plenty of appeal. In the end four bidders competed for the keys, pushing the price well above our ecstatic vendor’s reserve price before settling at a very satisfying $454,500.
If you’d like to sell in 2018, and time your sale so that you can make the most of the current imbalance, (and be perfectly placed to be a ‘cash buyer’ when the annual rush of new property starts to hit the market at the beginning of Spring), then give us a call this week to talk about getting your timing right.