Whilst the papers are full of which selling system is better, Auction or Private Sale, I think Enzo Raimondo’s comment in The Age “The market is a buyers’ market and having a skilled buyer’s agent working for you will help to get you the best deal" is far more relevant.
To buy good property in today’s market, you need to find and identify the better properties and not waste time on those that do not meet your needs or fall well short of the parameters of what a good property is.
Secondly, once a suitable property is found, due diligence must be carried out very quickly. You must ascertain what the property is worth to you, what it is worth to the general public and also what the vendors’ expectations are. The reason you have to move quickly is that good property does not and will not last
long on the market.
Once you have decided this property suits your needs, is good value for money and offers good long term growth prospects, you need to secure it before somebody else either buys it or starts to get interested and pushes the price up. This can mean making an offer very quickly that may have conditions, such as three day cooling off or subject to a building inspection. Or to increase your chances of closing the deal making an unconditional offer after doing all necessary due diligence.
The value of having a professional Buyers Advocate on your side at times like this will be obvious. Assessment of a property and what is likely to happen during a sales process goes well beyond information you would receive if you had the property valued. Even assuming the Valuation gave you an indication of the worth of the property it does not even begin to give any indication as to the wants of the vendor. In today’s market there are many non realistic vendors. If a selling agent initially asks for 20% above the value of the property, do you know what to do? A good Buyer Advocate will!
It does not matter whether an agent takes a property to auction, asks for expressions of interest or uses phrases like ‘Sale by Set Date.’ A good Buyers Advocate can handle all of these situations. Even in the height of the ‘sellers market’ of 2007 our company bought less property actually under the hammer than by private negotiation. Even if agents persist with auction campaigns, it will only be a very small percentage that will sell under the hammer.
The most important figure this year to watch will be total sales for the week. I have been saying this since June lat year and I believe most people are just starting to understand why. Property prices are always set by supply and demand. It does not matter whether the sale was generated by private negotiation or auction or a tender process.
If you are interested in buying property this year, please feel free to contact us for a no obligation meeting.
Ian James
