Ok, have looking at housing, have a few questions...

Offers over $(amount) what does this actually mean??
Price guide eg $500,000-$600,000 what is the real price?

Section 32, I understand these are rates, bills, land diagrams etc but do they hold any info you should really know, ie how much a place is really worth?

Anything to look out for apart from the massive amount VIC charges for stamp duty...

Thanks in advance

Offers over - whatever the market dictates and whatever the seller is prepared to accept. If the seller is desperate they will take whatever they can get.

Price guide - same as above except if you are in Sydney then add 20% to the high end price.

And do you have to have 20% deposit?

Nope, but you get a better deal with at least that.

Many people work hard to obscure the property value.

To their discomfort, there is a really great iphone app [onthe house) and a good matching website for the non-iphoners http://www.onthehouse.com.au] which has pretty clever software behind it and gives a reasonable estimate of the real/current house (or flat or block) value.

I checked it by standing in front of a real estate agent window and ran 10 or so houses through the app to see how it matched the asking price. 8 out of 10 were very close, and 2 were silly. It mainly falls down where a house has been substantially renovated by the current owner and this hasn't been captured in terms of numbers of bedrooms, bathrooms etc.

I am used to it by now, and can get a good estimate within a couple of minutes. If something then seems wrong (such as the property being 1 of 4 units and the unit numbering in the app is back to front) then I check the prices of the places next door too.

If you search reviews of this app, it is not too hard to work out if the reviewer wants to hide prices so as to bamboozle you. They seem to be very negative about it

The real price is typically way in excess of the top of the range. It's easy to find out.

You can get recent Vic auction results here:

http://www.realestateview.com.au/pro...ults/victoria/

You can typically still google the real estate ads and see the quoted range.

Lots of data for this suburb:

http://www.realestateview.com.au/pro...ictoria/coburg

Work through some of the sales...e.g.

34 Lascelles Street Quoted at $490k-$530k sold at $620k

16 Kerferd Steet Quoted at $620k - $680k sold at $753k

44 Clarendon Street Quoted at $680k - $740k sold at $841k

You get the idea!

yes, am thinking that, what about offers over? can you offer less?

Of course you can offer, but the quoted number is quite likely fictitious anyway!

I've seen plenty of ads where a range is quoted and then at auction the reserve price is set higher than the top of the range...I'm sure this is supposed to be against the rules but the practice continues regardless.

Offers over is possibly no different.

I went to see a house recently where all the agent would say was 600+. They might as well have said 100+ because the number was so nonsensical! Surprise, surprise it sold for 805 in not particularly frenzied bidding.

ah ok, need to switch to bread and water for a while then...!!

Just to add with an offers over or xxx+ price...try to find out if maybe the property previously went to auction and didn't sell. You see that, and in that case the + price I reckon is often pretty close to the reserve.

I don't look too much, but when I have a little poke around domain.com.au I always put in the top value a 100,000 less than I'm prepared to pay .......

I'm hearing too many stories of people paying for the survey, etc, only to be wiped off the map by "Mr and Mrs Self Managed Super Fund" or "Enter the Random Chinaman right at the Death".

This is in Sydney ..... can't speak for other places.

Are prices typically over the quoted price on www.domin.com.au or similar when it is a single price (not a range) and not an auction? That would never have occurred to me, in fact I always think could get it for slightly less.

Maybe not, but in popular areas there are very few non auctions.

Ok thank goodness, we think we might buy next year. There are plenty of non auctions on the northern beaches, I noticed there are more auctions closer to the city.

Some sellers like to go with a non auction. It's cheaper and less stressful. It's certainly far easier for a buyer to deal with.