Kalenge

Are Sydney properties currently selling at their advertised price?
Or are they typically going for a bit less seeing as it’s supposed to be a buyers market with prices coming down ?

Keen to hear from recent buyers in Sydney (especially Upper North Shore), but also interested in getting feedback on the situation from other cities.

Thanks

Tom Sawyer

Basically no they are not. Last figures I saw, a house sells for an average of 7% less than it's advertised price. The main problem is still that vendors / agents are still being unrealistic in the current market, despite some of the spin you may read in the property pages most houses are overpriced and vendors are still expecting boom prices. We recently negotiated on a house advertised at $750K, as we really liked the house we eventually went upto the asking price from the low $700s only for the vendor to say no, he wanted $770K. Went back and enquired whether he had got a grip on reality last week only to find he now wants $780K???? WTF!! There are lots of properties that have been for sale for months, I know of one that has dropped by $60K, but is still not selling so it was massively overpriced to start with. I've got a mate who does maintenance contracts for rental property agents (ie estate agents) and he reckons nothing is selling, the agents must be getting worried (hopefully). Something has got to give soon, we have been looking for 9 months now down in the "Shire" and have seen some real rubbish advertised at huge prices, at the momment I would say the whole thing is heading for a crash.

Kalenge

Yes I can fully imagine vendors and agents stubbornly believing that they can still fetch inflated prices even though the market has turned. Last year supposedly saw a drop of 4% in Sydney prices, yet advertised prices almost reflect the opposite. I expect that it takes the market a fair amount of time before reality sets in. Agents can’t like the idea of having properties on their books for months and months.

Your experience with the vendor pushing up the price sounds unbelievable!

ABCDiamond

I think the Agents are keen to have loads of overpriced property on their books.

It makes the normal priced ones look like bargains !!!!

I was caught by agents in Sydney in that way. They advised us to market the house at $485k. We were astonished at the value, and put the property on the market immediately. It hasn't sold, as it is way overvalue,and when the agent came back and said he had a good offer of about $430k, we took it off the market when reality set in.

We only put it on the market because of the overvalue they gave us. many properties may be the same , and the owner doesn't really want to sell, unless they get the big $ that the agent has conned them with ??

It happened up here in Brisbane too. We were told a property would fetch $300k+, and I think it was first advertised for $309,995, which again we thought was a fantastic price. (bank valued at $265k).

On this one we did sell, at $270k, which the agent said was an VERY GOOD offer but only because the tenant wasn't paying, and we got fed up with it.

So Yes, in my opinion, the agents are conning both the buyer and the seller, and prices can be much less than the "initially" advertised prices, in many cases. However, some properties are then reduced in price to a realistic figure, once the seller realises. We ended up dropping our advertised price from $310k to $280k.

steve99

The Perth situation is still booming....
I looked at a property at the weekend as an investment, 1st home open it had had, 15 mins in the agent had run out of brochures (he said he'd printed 15 - 20)...
I spoke to him the next day, he got 3 offers the best being $5K over the asking price... If I was going to consider it I was looking at around $5 - $10K under asking.

I looked at another the weekend before for my parents, it was a private viewing with 2 other interested parties, people must of seen the cars out the front and decide to make it into a home open, there must of been 20 people in there by the end (I wasnt overly impressed with the agent for letting that happen, glad it wasnt my house...) my parents spoke to him the next day and the owners were making a decision between an asking price offer with no conditions or another one above the asking but with a subject to sale condition.

Steve

Wol

Just for information, we have had an offer accepted 35% below the original asking price.

We decided not to go ahead since it was still a high price to pay for a knockdown, and are buying a vacant lot instead.

spottydog

We looked at Balmain prices on our validation visit in May then again when we got here in January. I would say there has been a large drop (10%ish) in prices here over that time. Looking in the windows of the estate agents that put prices on some of the adverts have a number of sticky labels over the price.

Were going to spend some time documenting asking and actual sale prices to give us an idea but the few I've found listed on the sold pages have often been a couple of hundred thousand below advertised price.

I am noticing also that sold adverts in the estate agents windows usually show the auction date as October or November if not much earlier and there are still some places on the market that were on in May (and now looking very overpriced).

Amazulu

I think it's a mixed bag at the moment Steve. I looked at a house in Halls Head, Mandurah (not Perth I know, but it is the fastest growing town in Australia) late last year. it was on the market for $825k. It was nice, near the beach & Halls Head is an okay area. Agent said there was a lot of interest in it & he expected it to go quickly. I had a call from him about 2 weeks later saying that the owner was looking at offers around $750 as he was keen to sell quickly. Agents talk a lot of shit I know, but that is quite a drop.

I think some areas are still rising, some areas are sticking. Cheaper areas & inner city/close to the city developments have still got a way to go yet. Overall I think Perth's property market is going to still keep on rising in the short term but at a slower rate.

Wol

There was something in yesterday's SMH to the effect that there is a substantial rise in repossessions of homes because of the number of people overextending themselves on their mortgages and becoming unable to make their payments.

ABCDiamond

4000 repossession orders in 2005, in NSW, compared with 3061 in 2004.

Figures show court home repossession orders jumped a third last year and some analysts believe more borrowers face trouble if interest rates rise again.
"More people have borrowed money than in the past so you would expect the level of repossessions to be higher," he said. "As a percentage of borrowers, it hasn't changed."

The repossession data represents the number of lenders going to the Supreme Court to seek an order so they can, if they wish, take possession of a home when someone fails to meet mortgage payments.