Posted by admin on 25 September 2011
It’s not surprising to see a couple of new apartment projects popping up in Woolloongabba, given the growing buyer interest in the area and the strength of the local market. The graphs show prices holding firm for apartments but our experience is that many are taking small drops to achieve a sale. The local market hasn’t been immune from the broader discounting of the inner city. Houses in Woolloongabba continue to attract good enquiry. Sales volumes are still very low as many owners hold off from selling, although the second quarter has been a lot busier than the first.
If you’d like a sales market update for your property please call our Woolloongabba specialist, Rob Honeycombe on 0423 332 022 or 07 3214 6800
Tags: apartment sales woolloongabba, Brisbane home prices, Brisbane house prices, Brisbane property sales, Brisbane real estate agents, Brisbane sales market, gabba apartments, gabba property, gabba property sales, home buyers Brisbane, house sales woolloongabba, property sales woolloongabba, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane, woolloongabba real estate agent
Posted in Woolloongabba | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 25 September 2011
While real estate market-watching’s become a national sport, it’s hard to call any strong price trend in Spring Hill’s market so far this year. Our median sales prices are down on last year, but have retained much of the growth of the last decade. The number of transactions continues to below – the 2nd quarter of 2011 has been busier than the first but we’ve still had less than 100 apartment sales in the first half of this year. Overall buyer enquiry is sound and while prices aren’t setting records there are still sales to be had for those who want them. House sales volumes are so low as to make the median price data fairly meaningless. We do know that many house owners are holding off selling until prices improve.
If you’d like a sales market update for your property please call our Spring Hill specialist, Rob Honeycombe on 0423 332 022 or 07 3214 6800
Tags: apartment sales spring hill, Brisbane home prices, Brisbane house prices, Brisbane property sales, Brisbane real estate agents, Brisbane sales market, home buyers Brisbane, house sales spring hill, property sales spring hill, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane, Spring Hill Real Estate Agent
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Posted by admin on 25 September 2011
While real estate market-watching’s become a national sport, it’s hard to call any strong price trend in Highgate Hill’s market so far this year. Our median sales prices are down on last year, but have retained much of the growth of the last decade. One clear change is the number of transactions – the 2nd quarter of 2011 has been busier than the first but we’re still on track for just half as many house sales as we saw in 2010. Why? Many local home-owners have withdrawn their properties from sale (or not listed at all) awaiting stronger prices. Overall buyer interest remains fairly solid, albeit at softer prices than last year.
If you’d like a sales market update for your property please call our Highgate Hill specialist, Rob Honeycombe on 0423 332 022 or 07 3214 6800
Tags: Brisbane home prices, Brisbane house prices, Brisbane property sales, Brisbane real estate agents, Brisbane sales market, Highgate Hill real estate agent, home buyers Brisbane, house sales highgate hill, property sales highgate hill, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane
Posted in Highgate Hill | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 20 September 2011
Last time you signed a real estate contract did the agent ask for your driver’s license? Probably not, but from now on that’s likely to be a more regular request. Those wacky guys who brought you the emails from Isabella Caromel (lone survivor of a tsunami with US$10.6m she wants to share), the tales of surviving insurgent rebellion with millions that need urgent transfer, and other innovative scams, are up to new tricks.
Last year a Perth property owner contacted an agent, listed a house for sale, signed an offer and received the proceeds on the subsequent $485,000 sale. Only one small hitch – it wasn’t their house. And this month a $1million Sydney apartment was listed for auction in the same style of scam, this time identified before its sale. Needless to say the legal gurus around Australia have been grappling with how this can happen. Could someone pretend to be you? While you’re on holidays or for your investment property? How much info would they need to give an agent to convince them they were the owner? The scary truth is it’s dead easy.
Many of our seller clients are interstate (Brisbane’s inner city has lot of NSW investors for example) and we never meet them. They give us their name and if it matches the title search we proceed. Their contact details are no guarantee as an email address can be set up in anyone’s name, no check needed. We don’t have anything to verify their signature against on a listing authority or contract of sale. So you’ll understand why identity confirmation is becoming more important in our process.
The lawyers who handle conveyancing have a few more challenges as that’s where the money changes hands and they’re the last gatekeepers. Especially if there’s no mortgage and no bank checking the transaction. It’ll be interesting to see what changes we see as a result of the scam.
In the meantime maybe Isabella will share some of her inheritance with that unlucky Perth property owner.
Tags: Brisbane real estate agents, conveyancing Brisbane, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, real estate marketing | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 6 September 2011
It’s hard to imagine a time when we didn’t have full-streaming real estate data bombarding us. Now there’s a number of national and local commentators producing emails, blogs, newsletters, reports and updates. So to help you digest it all here’s a Cook’s tour of the latest:
RP Data say Brisbane’s dwelling prices went down 0.4% in July (or $1,700) for a total 6.6% dip over the past 12 months. Brisbane unit owners can punch the air – your median price apparently rose 0.4% in July, while house-owners lost 0.6%. Their Tim Lawless says the upper end of the capital city markets is being hardest hit and times on market have increased across the board. “If these soft trends persist, the Spring Selling Season is likely to open up some attractive investment opportunities for prospective buyers. In contrast, the selling environment is likely to be challenging for vendors, particularly if they have unrealistic price expectations,” Mr Lawless said.
Analyst Michael Matusik says the data suggests the worst may be behind us, with the monthly and quarterly results starting to trend upwards. “Even Brisbane, with the impact of the recent flood weighing down its property market, has fallen just 2.6% or by $11,600 since January. The Australian sharemarket can fall more than this in a single day.” Matusik says most property owners are still ahead. “Just one in 14 resales across Australia over the last decade made a loss. Importantly, close to half of the sellers since early 2000 made an annual gain of over 10% per annum. Keep in mind that capital growth can be deceptive as most measures exclude inflation, costs, taxes and charges. But still, such a positive result is encouraging.”
And first home buyer may be back in the market and taking advantage of good buying. Home loan approvals from first-home buyers jumped to 35% in June, compared with an average of 27%, according to mortgage broker Mortgage Choice. Mortgage Choice says a drop in first-home buyers during the last financial year made it hard for existing home owners to sell before moving onto their next property. Mortgage Choice CEO Michael Russell attributed the fall in numbers to the ending of the boosted first-home owners’ grant, which he says brought forward purchases in 2009 and 2010.
Tags: Brisbane median home prices, first home buyers, Michael Matusik, RP Data, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane, Tim Lawless
Posted in Brisbane's sales market | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 16 August 2011
Real estate agents generally pay a flat rate subscription to the property web sites and can list as many homes as they like within that fee. And the more listings they have up, the more enquiry they get. But unfortunately none of the real estate portals yet have a system in place to “expire” the listings at any point.
When a new listing comes onto the market there’s a buzz around the place. Buyers eagerly await their e-alerts from the web portals and the enquiry often comes thick and fast in those first few days. (It’s one of the reasons setting your asking price is so important, capitalising on that early response. But we digress…) After a couple of weeks it can take tailored promotion, price reductions and a good dose of tenacity to capture buyer interest. And after 6 or 8 weeks many sellers, and their agents, lose interest in the process and give it up as too hard.
So buyers often get frustrated that the online info is out of date. Open houses details from weeks ago. Tenancy info on leases that have long expired. There’s two ads live right now on one of the portals that recommend you buy before August 1st to avoid stamp duty changes. Another says the property must be sold before Christmas…but they’re not talking about 2011. Many times the property has been sold or withdrawn from the market months ago, but there’s no requirement on the agent to remove the listing.
Buyers are tired of dredging through this rubbish. They deserve better too – considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars we’re asking them to spend. In Brisbane CBD this week there were 531 properties for sale on realestate.com.au. Have a look at your suburb. Toowong (114) and New Farm (176) have a heap of listings on the web too. But how many are current and relevant?
If you’re selling make sure your agents keeps your ad fresh. You need to stand out of the crowd. Change the hero shot and headline around so the home has a better chance of standing out in those tiny search result lists. (Professional pics and an ad that’s relevant and targeted are always essential). Use a “last updated” date at the bottom of each ad to let buyers know it’s current. If your property’s not attracting any enquiry a “spruce up” of the web ad is a quick and free option.
Tags: Brisbane real estate agents, real estate advertising, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane, www.realestate.com.au
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, real estate marketing | No Comments »
Posted by Rob Honeycombe on 15 August 2011
Last night I met with a buyer to take an offer on an apartment. I sat at his kitchen table and dug out the contract – all 51 pages of it. And I fondly remembered the contract I signed on my first home unit, with its 4 double-spaced pages. We’ve written before about the insanity of this current sales process and many of you have shared your concerns and frustrations. So why is it still getting more complex?
This week we learned the federal government is going to implement new disclosure requirements around energy efficiency for homes. It may be very worthwhile but if it’s another 2 pages in a pile it won’t be achieve a cracker. In recent months the laws changed to require new body corp disclosure and this has taken our 20-something page contract to the new 40+ special editions we’re now producing. But how can any buyer be expected to digest even a tiny part of 51 pages of information, warnings, disclosures, data and by-laws in a short meeting with a real estate agent?
Buyers’ eyes glaze over. Once they know they have protections through finance and other contract conditions they don’t care too much about the rest. “The solicitors will tell me if it’s all okay.” This mountain of paperwork plays no role in consumer protection if buyers are not informed before they make the purchasing decision.
If you don’t fix things until they’re broke – then can we humbly suggest that at 50+ pages for a contract our sales contract system in Queensland is well and truly stuffed. One idea is a mandatory Seller Disclosure, all the property’s details available when a property first goes on the market, and checked (and hopefully read) before a buyer makes an offer. This approach has now been seriously discussed for more than 18 months, but it’s just one solution.
How do you provide useful consumer protection in an efficient way? We’d love your ideas.
Tags: Brisbane real estate agents, contract of sale, Seller Disclosure, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane
Posted in Brisbane's sales market | 1 Comment »
Posted by admin on 10 August 2011
For this week’s newsletter we just wanted to share the graph below from www.myRP.com.au. This charts the changes in Brisbane’s median prices over the past 10 years. When the line’s above zero prices were going up. Below the line is when we’ve had drops in values.
The media love stories about booms and crashes. As home owners, or would-be home owners, we often fret and stress over the ups and downs of the market. Right now many Brisbane property owners are postponing major changes in their lives because prices are down. They won’t move home until they go back up. Or they won’t sell til they get more than the last sale in their neighbourhood.
In the context of a single year’s market the current changes in price can seem enormous. But maybe this graph will help some readers see things in a different light, a new perspective. It’s a nice reminder that things are still pretty good.
And at worst it’s a pretty graph!
graph courtesy myRP.com.au
Tags: Brisbane home prices, Brisbane median home prices, RP Data, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, trends in Brisbane property | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 25 July 2011
Are the body corp fees really the single most important feature when you’re choosing a home? The location, the size or the age of the apartment maybe? The views or even the condition of the kitchen perhaps? These are the big ‘value’ items and naturally our ads focus on them. So would it surprise you some buyers are selecting which home to inspect based on the amount of the annual body corp fees?
We wrote recently about that mythical place called Buyer’s School and the trend for many home buyers to consistently ask similar questions. Surely they’re all attending some briefing session before hitting the open homes! And the latest must-ask question is focused on body corp fees.
Now we’d be the first to acknowledge that these do vary a lot between buildings, but we’re now being asked for the fees before a buyer will even inspect an apartment. Before they want to know about any other features. And it seems to us the focus has drifted to the wrong concerns.
The first comment is this: no-one makes a profit in a body corp. The fees are set with a budget so if they’re higher it’s costing more to run the building. Lifts, onsite management and insurances are big ticket items. So if you’re happy with stairs or waiting a little longer for your lift, you will save money. One CBD tower has 5 lifts for nearly 500 apartments while a South Brisbane mid-rise has 2 lifts for just 40 lots. Of course one is cheaper. Some bodies corp do put a lot away for rainy days; others run tight. You get what you pay for.
Buyers are naturally drawn to low fees but they need to ask if it’s not just a clue that the building is being run on a shoestring. Is the sinking fund forecast being followed? Will they cop a special levy of thousands, payable immediately, for all sorts of unbudgeted expenses? We’re not defending misuse of your funds and we agree that some bodies corp don’t keep a close enough eye on things. But if you’ve ever volunteered your time for a committee you’ll know it’s a thankless job and many owners don’t even bother to vote at the AGM, let along give their input into budgeting. So cut them some slack – or better still, get involved!
Right now we’re witnessing buyers who are spending half a million dollars or more, weighing their choice heavily based on annual fees. If the fees seem $1000/year too much why not offer $5000 less when you buy it and that’ll cover the next few years. And you’ll have time to join the committee and get the place in shape!
Please give us your comments? Why are body corp fees so important to buyers?
Tags: body corp committee Queensland, body corporate issues Queensland, Brisbane home buyers, selling an apartment Brisbane
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, real estate marketing | 3 Comments »
Posted by admin on 28 June 2011
We are constantly being bombarded by stats on everything these days. Here is another that will surprise you. We are currently hearing in the media that there are more listings on the market now than last year (some commentators speculating that there are 30% more in Brisbane) but in Spring Hill this is NOT the case.
I have just done a count on realestate.com and as of today there are currently 79 listings (apartments and houses) which are not either under contract or sold. This number fluctuates from week to week but I watch it every day and over the last 12 months the numbers are virtually identical with 81 listings on the market this time last year.
More surprisingly is the fact that as of today also only 11 out of the 79 have open homes advertised for this weekend or approx 14% that’s 1 in 7, the others all have call for an appointment. We all know that a lot can’t have open homes for various reasons including being in a hotel pool, owners preferring private viewings and so on. It is clear that a lot of these properties aren’t really for sale at all, at least not at the advertised price as many have been advertised with no adjustments for 6 months + and are clearly not being actively marketed and it appears that both the agent and the owner has given up on the sale.
Owners in this position have comments such as “oh well it’s not costing me anything to have it on the market”. WRONG!!! Clearly they are not doing themselves or the complex (in the case of apartments) any service whatsoever and should either get serious about their sale and actively market and price it correctly, or simply take it off the market. Simple supply and demand economics dictates more supply the cheaper the price, less demand the cheaper the price. Owners either get serious or at least shift the supply line to the left and prices, guess what? They go up.
Tags: Brisbane house prices, Brisbane housing supply, Brisbane real estate agents, pricing strategy, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane
Posted in Spring Hill | No Comments »
