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There’s never enough choice…
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 […]
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Markets are like people…
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 […]
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In Better News…
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, […]
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What do these rate rises mean for our market?
Until yesterday, the last time the RBA lifted the cash rate was November 2010. You may recall seeing the news on your brand new iPhone 4, just a month after the Pies won the Grand Final rematch against the Saints. Time flies. The cash rate back then was 4.75%. Today it is a measly 0.35%. […]
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Days on Market
When selling a home, time is not your friend. More time does not equate to more interest. Usually the inverse is true. The longer the days on market, the harder it is to get a great price. You don’t often hear someone saying, ‘we were on the market for 107 days and then someone came […]
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Why Would You Sell Off Market?
I often get asked from buyers why would an owner sell off market? It’s very good question. And like most good questions, the answer is not a simple one. Carla and I sell more properties off market than most teams in Stonnington. Last year we sold 24, which works out to be roughly one in […]
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The Election Effect
Election day 2019 was the inflection point of our last market cycle. It was the bottom, the nadir, of a very challenging market correction that saw prices in Stonnington fall by as much as 10 to 20 percent from the November 2017 peak, with clearance rates wallowing in the 40’s and 50’s for many months. […]
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Timing the Market
I bite my tongue when buyers tell me they are “waiting for prices to come off” or “holding out for a better deal”. Trying to time the market is a fool’s game. It is impossible to do (intentionally). You might pick it purely by dumb luck. If so, well done! You are in the overwhelming […]
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Motivation
Buying or selling a home is a big deal, literally. Usually it’s the biggest financial transaction of one’s lifetime. There’s a lot of stress involved, a lot of money at stake. There is lot of friction to the transaction. Stamp duty for the average house in Armadale is around $150,000 and selling costs around $50,000… […]
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Great Expectations
In an often repeated survey around the world, over 90 percent of people believe they are “above average” drivers. Clearly there’s a disconnect from reality here as, by definition, 50 percent of people are below average drivers. Call it delusion, call it bias, call it cognitive dissonance. Call it what you will, we are fickle […]
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Melbourne’s Architectural Styles – Part I
You may have noticed increasing commentary (noise) in the media lately about house prices falling and the market softening. The media loves extremes. Sensationalism sells clicks, not moderation. Prices are either ‘skyrocketing’ 30 percent or ‘plummeting’ 30 percent. A more reasonable, but less click bait-y headline would be something like this: ‘Property market still strong, […]
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A Solid B+
Looking back on our February report card I would say the Stonnington market received a solid B+ for the first selling month of the year. Clearance rates held up nicely (79% for the month according to the REIV) as did prices, with some highly competitive Auctions and knock out results, particularly in Armadale, where we […]
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10 out of 10
I’ve written before about how clearance rates can be misleading, but ostensibly Team Fetter/Sciola are at 100% clearance from our first 10 auctions of 2022. A clean sweep! That is to say, we have sold 10 out of 10 properties at or before Auction. The market must be flying, right? Well, yes, 10 out of […]
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“Prices never really go down in this area…”
If I had a bitcoin for every time I’ve heard this from a local home owner I’d be flying private and definitely not working Saturdays. “But, David, prices never really go down in Armadale”, they say. Wrong. Unless you take a 10 year time period, then maybe, yes, in 10 year blocks prices have never […]
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Perceived Value
Saturday was abuzz with buyers. Two new listings from our office saw over 40 groups inspect the first open. That’s a lot. Like the weekend before, the median number at opens was 15-20 groups, which is higher than our long term average of around 10. Our first auction for the year was highly competitive, with […]
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And Pause
This weekend sees the last of Team Fetter/Sciola’s Auctions for 2021, leaving us with two weeks until Christmas to tie up loose ends… sell our remaining stock and continue listing for next year. The Stonnington market will pause, as usual, from Christmas until Australia Day, aside from a very small number of transactions. February should […]
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A Hard Act To Follow
You often hear famous comedians lamenting over their early days of stand up when they had to follow one of the all time greats on stage – Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock or Robin Williams – and absolutely bombed. I’m sure they still did a great set but it’s near on impossible as a mere […]
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Holding Up
When lockdown finally ended and our first round of open inspections were eerily quiet I was a bit concerned. Could the market have turned that quickly? Where did all the buyers go? Turns out they were all hungover and/or shopping. Phew! There’s no doubt the dynamic has changed since our freedoms returned. During lockdown 6.0 […]
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David Sciola 