Author; David

It was a quiet Saturday for Team Fetter/Sciola. Just the one auction, having sold two other houses before auction.  Our sole auction, a single front in Armadale, sold after passing in with three bidders.  Our perfect success rate of 100% clearance out of the Stonnington office for the last two weeks came to an end, […]

It’s been a while since bids have flowed so freely.  It’s been a while since we’ve had 100% clearance on two consecutive Saturdays from our Stonnington office.  It’s been a while since we’ve seen such big crowds at our auctions.  There’s a bit of a buzz about the market right now.  It feels markedly different […]

The cash rate hit an historic low in Australia in November 2020 of 0.1%.  In addition, piles of stimulus money were thrown onto an already heated asset market, and we’re still paying for the inflationary hangover and debt burden today.  Doesn’t 0.1% just seem ridiculous now? For those on sub 2% mortgages, owning a house […]

We always see a peak in inspection numbers the first few weekends of the opening market in Stonnington. It’s predictable.  The buyer pool is replete after the summer holidays, with not only the hangover of buyers from last year, but an entirely new crop of bushy-tailed buyers dipping their toes in the market for the […]

Welcome back to our first new listings email of 2025! For those loyal readers, I really appreciate you taking the time to consume my weekly musings, and thanks for all the positive feedback. (I’m almost as passionate about writing as selling houses). 2024 was a challenging time for vendors and real estate agents alike. It […]

Melbourne has seriously underperformed most other capital cities since COVID.  Perth and Brisbane seem to have been completely immune to interest rate rises, achieving double digit growth year on year in spite of mortgage rates tripling since 2022.  So we can’t blame interest rates for Melbourne’s lackluster growth, even negative growth in some instances.  My […]

The property market is inextricably complex – millions of permutations relating to supply and demand that don’t always have the expected outcome.  For example, the supply of new apartment completions in Melbourne in 2024 is roughly one tenth of what it was back in 2014, yet sales are stagnant, even though our population has boomed […]

Last Saturday was ‘Super Saturday’, traditionally the busiest auction day of the year with campaigns bookended between the Grand Final and Melbourne Cup long weekends.  There were over 1900 auctions scheduled across Victoria, although many of them didn’t make it to auction.  The reported clearance rate ranged between 59 percent (REA) and 76% (REIV).  What’s […]

Markets are fickle because they are driven by humans, who are fickle. Market sentiment is a very subjective and nebulous thing – attempting to collate a bunch of people’s feelings and emotions towards the market. It is purely subjective. It depends on who you ask and when. It can also turn on a dime.  Anyone […]