Author; David

2023 was meant to be a grim year for the property market. Many pundits predicted prices to come off by 10, 15 or even 20 percent.  Some analysts and journalists are still hammering on about the impending mortgage rate cliff, which is yet to materialise in any substantial way, at least in our market. Although […]

Team Fetter/Sciola had possibly our busiest day of the year on Saturday.  Buyers were out in force. We had 62 groups inspect 32a Cromwell Road, South Yarra; 42 groups at 21 Stuart Street, Armadale; 37 groups at 10 Westbourne Street, Prahran; 25 groups at 40 Chomley Street, Prahran; and a total of over 200 groups across our eight open […]

There’s a reason why we run our auction campaigns for four weeks. Or more accurately, 25 days.  We launch our properties online on Tuesday, hold our first open for inspection that Saturday, and conclude with an auction three weeks later, on the fourth Saturday. There are a total of seven open for inspections including the […]

Today we had a guest presentation from PropTrack’s Senior Economist, Paul Ryan.  Being a bit of a stats nerd, I love these presentations. Unlike the forecasts and predictions from banking analysts, which are generally not worth the pixels they are written on, the data and statistics from PropTrackare reliable.  These are hard data – sold prices, sales volume, […]

House prices in Stonnington have gone up recently.  By my reckoning, house prices in our market peaked in October 2021, eased for about 16 months, and then started rising again in Q1 2023.  Buyer demand started abating as soon as our final COVID lockdown ended, and really plummeted when the RBA commenced the aggressive rate […]

There was a time, not long ago, when DIY was in vogue.  When The Block dominated the TV ratings and lay people considered themselves renovators and flippers. The good old days when you could landscape your entire garden for $10,000 and do a second storey extension for $300,000. When you could call a tradie for […]

There was minimal auction activity over the long weekend as we head into the final two weeks of auctions before the winter hiatus.  Buyers are hopeful of a busier spring.  We are also hoping for a busier spring, but not necessarily expecting one.  To paint a picture of just how quiet this year has been […]

Last week saw the final auction campaigns launch before the winter school holidays. The next six weeks will be quiet on the new listing front as Stonnington largely shuts down for winter, particularly for family homes.  The second half of July is where listings will recommence for August auctions. Volume tends to build deeper into […]

We have a fresh new look this week for our new listings email. We hope you like it! As our Managing Director, Andrew McCann, said in our sales meeting on Tuesday, “We are marketers, not valuers.” Our job is to engage buyers, generate activity and interest, and ideally create competition.  We connect the dots. We […]

I called three auctions on Saturday. All sold. One had two bidders, one had four bidders and one had five bidders.  And yet they all started exactly the same way, after a very energetic yet concise pre-amble… “Who’d like to kick things off with an opening bid?” Crickets.  Why does no one ever want to […]