Author; David

When I bought my first family home my buying journey was stereotypical. We started looking at properties that were well within our means. Unfortunately, we didn’t like them. They weren’t big enough or good enough. They had too many compromises. We would have outgrown them too quickly. So what did we do? Like any self-respecting […]

Like humans, all properties have their faults. There is no ‘perfect’ home. Even at $7,000,000 in Stonnington you won’t necessarily get a garage or North orientation. When a house is struggling to sell with limited interest, it can be tempting to focus on its shortcomings to justify or explain the lack of buyer engagement. But […]

The news editor from realestate.com.au approached me this week for comment on Prahran and its appeal. The context being that Prahran has bucked the trend of stagnating prices by posting a quarterly median house price gain of 10.6%, and they would like to know why I thought this might be the case. At the risk […]

The real estate market is seasonal. Particularly in Stonnington. Our year goes like this: January – Closed (everyone is in Noosa and/or Portsea) February – Opening Market (a good month to sell with a full buyer pool and limited stock) March – Busy (a good month to buy and sell… Make sure your A/C works) […]

There is a reason why we encourage all our vendors to invest thousands of dollars in professional styling. Because presentation is everything. If you want a premium result you must look like and feel like a premium offering. Painting, new carpets, styling. This is the low hanging fruit. This is the $20,000 investment that can […]

Being a real estate agent is a competitive pursuit. We don’t get a salary. We don’t get paid while we sleep. We pay our own super and payroll tax. 100% commission means no sales for the month equals no income for the month. Feast or famine. And I don’t expect one iota of sympathy from […]

First and foremost, a huge congratulations to our very own superstar, Carla Fetter, for absolutely crushing her AREC speech to over four thousand real estate agents on the Gold Coast on Sunday. She did our team, our office, our network and our industry proud as she inspires a new generation of agents with her candid […]

Another perennial question we get from buyers: “Is there more stock coming after… the election / winter / summer / Easter / (insert calendar event here).” The answer is usually, ‘no’. We live in a market of scarcity at the best of times. If you remove the new apartment market, Stonnington consists of a finite […]

Unpredictable, volatile, driven by emotion. You may recall learning in economics that markets are efficient and governed solely by the effects of supply and demand. This is nonsense. Especially for the real estate market. You just need to sit in on one of our post-auction negotiations to see that at the pointy end of a […]

There has been a lot of negativity in the media recently surrounding the property market. ‘Doom and gloom’ sells a lot more ad space than ‘reason and balance.’ I’d even call it fear mongering, the current conversation around interest rate hikes. I attended an excellent presentation on Tuesday by Domain’s Chief of Research & Economics, […]