Concerned about auctioning your property on Election Day? Don’t be. We held two auctions this past Saturday, and both were resounding successes. Debunking the Off-the-Plan Myth Think off-the-plan apartments always sell for less than their purchase price? Think again. We sold a modern two-bedroom apartment on High Street, Armadale, for approximately $600,000—32% more than its […]
Read more "Election Day auction success"
April hit the snooze button. Just 20 homes sold across Armadale, Toorak, Malvern, and Prahran—half the volume of April last year. If you spent Easter scrolling through real estate apps, you probably found more hot cross buns than hot listings. Stonnington’s market was sluggish —but Team Fetter/Sciola still sold seven homes, three of them off-market. […]
Read more "Snooze Button"
Carla and I have sold more properties off market in the last six weeks than we sold in all of 2024. Six to be exact. Back in the bull markets of 2017 and 2021 we would sell approximately one in six homes off market. In 2023 and 2024 it was more like one in fifteen. […]
Read more "Off markets are back on"
We might have been getting ahead of ourselves. Surely the rate cut dopamine hit hasn’t worn off already? Has the market already reverted to where it finished off last year? Hesitant. Well not for us at least. We’ve had a remarkable start this year. 20 sales for Team Fetter/Sciola in the last 30 days. We […]
Read more "Tug of war"
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, […]
Read more "Outliers"
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 […]
Read more "It’s been a while "
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 […]
Read more "What Next? "
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 […]
Read more "Before the dawn"
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 […]
Read more "2024 Job Description"
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 […]
Read more "2024 recap "
David Sciola 