Author; David

As agents and ‘trusted advisors’, people seek our advice to help them make better decisions around buying and selling real estate. Some topics are easy to give advice on – presentation, advertising, sales method, strategy, etc. Other topics are not so easy – like timing – because this is largely outside of our control. People […]

We had 37 groups inspect 2 Oak Grove, Malvern East on Saturday – a fully renovated family home on 740sqm with a pool. Around the corner, 47 groups inspected a contemporary three-bedroom townhouse on Darling Road. Big numbers! We always see a spike in inspection numbers in the first few weeks following Australia Day. The […]

Welcome back to our first New Listings email of 2023! For those loyal readers who tune in every week, we really appreciate your support. For those new subscribers, hopefully you find some value in my weekly ruminations, insights, and observations on the Stonnington property market. Given my media and communications background, the corporate office has […]

$3,000,000 – $3,300,000 Bespoke family luxury in exclusive Malvern East pocket In a coveted Malvern East address, this architectural masterpiece blends timeless c1931 Art Deco grandeur with a sweeping contemporary transformation, delivering a bespoke designer oasis zoned for modern family living across two levels. Grandiose proportions from its period origins are doubled throughout this premium […]

Last year was a seller’s market. A strong seller’s market. Arguably the strongest seller’s market in decades. We watched in disbelief as prices for houses in Stonnington jumped 30 percent within 18 months – from Q2 2020 to Q3 2021. I’m not saying all houses went up by 30 percent, but many did. Some went […]

As Victorians hit the polls this week the property market presses on in the final run in to Christmas. Like politics, real estate is a bit of a popularity contest. Each sales campaign is, in effect, its own poll, with buyers either voting yea or nay. Buyers first vote with their eyeballs. Attractive, well-priced properties […]

The Age (Domain) published an article on Saturday, ‘The Melbourne suburbs where property values are back to pre-pandemic levels’, which cited median house price data for various suburbs whose prices are lower today than they were in March 2020… Or so they say. Leading the fall, apparently, was Windsor, where prices are down 14.1% from March 2020 to today. […]

Providing advice on value is one of our primary roles as sales agents, but it’s also one of the most difficult. Why? Because it’s an art, not a science, and we sometimes get it wrong. Even with supreme market knowledge, the best data, and the accrued experience of walking through thousands of homes, all we […]

There was a Thursday in October 2021 when I called six Zoom auctions in a row, on the hour. All six of them sold with multiple bidders. Team Fetter/Sciola sold 32 properties in October 2021, our busiest month ever. By far. It was an extraordinary market. A once in a lifetime market fuelled by cheap […]

The rental market took a big hit during COVID. Vacancy soared, particularly in the CBD and Docklands, where international students disappeared almost overnight. Young people moved home with their parents. City folk fled to the countryside and seaside. There were no overseas visitors, ex-pat professionals relocating, or gap-year Brits coming to backpack the east coast, […]