Author; David

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, […]

If you are not an active participant in the market today you would be forgiven for thinking that market conditions are poor, that it is not a great time to sell, and still not the best time to buy. And while this would put you in line with most media commentary, you’d be wrong. Sure, […]

We have daily interactions with buyer’s advocates. We get along very well. It’s a reciprocal relationship between sales agents and advocates – they rely on us for the scoop on upcoming listings and off market opportunities (a big selling point for them). And we go to them to find qualified buyers for our stock. We […]

We saw a decent number of new listings launch last week but talk to any active buyer and they’ll tell you that choice is still very limited, particularly for anything better than decent.  And time is running out to secure a property in 2022.  Cup Weekend is four weeks away, so there won’t be many […]

This is a perennial buyer question and one that is quite difficult to answer. It depends on the expectations of the buyers, which is affected by the location, price, availability of on street parking and proximity to amenity including public transport. Few people are expecting off street parking for a tiny period house next to […]

There is an old rule of thumb that house prices double every seven to 10 years. Over generations, this rule of roughly seven percent annual growth holds up fairly well. But as with all markets, timing is everything. It depends on which seven to 10 year period you are looking at. And while some houses […]