Current Market Insights
The Current Market Insights Podcast is brought to you by Harris Partners Real Estate.
Understanding the property market can be a challenging thing, with highs and lows, twists and turns. The media and agents tend to spread the news they want you to hear, with the advice they want you to follow.
Current Market Insights is an unbiased look into what is happening, what tips you can use to buy, sell, or rent, and that you wont find anywhere else.
Current Market Insights
2GB Property with John Stanley (November 2024)
Peter O'Malley joins 2GB Nights host John Stanley for a property market update. They discuss the low auction clearance rates, flailing (and sailing) sales campaigns, and the outlook as we steam towards Christmas in 2024.
As always if there is a specific topic you would like for us to cover, please reach out and let us know!
Our week to look at the real estate market and we this week talk to Peter O'Malley he joins us now from Harris Partners. Pete, good evening to you. Good evening to you, john. Let's kick off with the auction activity. That gives us an idea of where we are. How did it look over the weekend?
Speaker 2:Look pretty soft again. I saw one of Sydney's most prolific auctioneers say that he'd only achieved three out of 12 on Saturday. The majority of properties that did sell on Saturday actually sold prior to auction, John. So vendors are clearly grabbing the money and running pre-auction rather than facing the open market on the whole, and that comes about by the fact that there's a lot of stock auction volumes in Sydney particularly running around 1500 a weekend at the moment, and the auction clearance rate has not cracked 50% since early August.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that, because we're looking at Sydney in particular, I guess this might be a similar picture across the country. Are we talking here about people thinking that prices are flattening? There's plenty of evidence of that, and therefore they think we should jump in and get the best we can now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, Sydney and Melbourne are very similar in terms of how they're performing. As far as the auction clearance rate goes, Melbourne's probably a bit softer because the state government have introduced some laws there towards investors that are causing investors to sell out and new investors not to want to buy into the Melbourne market. At the moment, Brisbane would still be doing pretty well. It's in an upward swing and has now moved into second place in terms of most expensive property markets. With Sydney. You really need to be following the segment of the market that you're transacting in, so one person's experience in, say, maybe Western Sydney will be completely different to someone's experience in the eastern suburbs at the moment. Conversely, someone buying an apartment or selling an apartment might be having a completely different experience in the property market to someone selling quite a large family home. So very choppy conditions. It would be wrong to describe the market in any one particular way other than segments of the market are doing well and there are segments increasingly struggling.
Speaker 1:It's the business that you're in, peter, so you're talking about volume and the market and what's happening here and there, and there are plenty of people listening who are investors. But I'm right, aren't I, that for most people, it's just the biggest transaction of their life and they might only do it a couple of times, a few times in their life. So these become really critical decisions that they're trying to work out in terms of timing.
Speaker 2:Oh, they certainly do. And when will the RBA cut interest rates? What will property prices do next year? Are we at the start of a downturn or are we at the bottom of the market? These are all the decisions that both buyers and sellers are asking themselves at the moment, because the outlook is so unclear at the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we feel like we've started Christmas very early. Summer started early. It feels like we're really getting toward the end of the year. Does that start to slow things as well? Because everything does seem to come to a halt during that period.
Speaker 2:What's really difficult as a real estate agent in Sydney at this time of year, john, is to get people to list and come to market now. There's still actually enough time to run a full campaign between now and Christmas, but there's a lot of vendors that are probably open to selling off-market leading into Christmas, but don't want to launch a full campaign until the early new year. What I would say, though, is stock levels will begin to tighten noticeably for buyers and sellers as we head toward Christmas, and that's actually a good time for vendors to secure themselves a sale, because if there's one thing that vendors have been battling with for the last three months, it's excess stock levels. So if you have been on the market for a while and you haven't achieved a sale, whilst you might be so inclined to give up, do note that the excess stock will begin to turn in your favour as a vendor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do you leave a for sale sign up? Do you tell your agent, look, we'll keep it for sale right through Christmas and, who knows, someone might try and contact someone on Boxing Day after our number. You never know, do you?
Speaker 2:Oh, you never do know, and I think that's where the agent needs to guide you. As an agent, you know whether a campaign has run out of puff or not. When inquiries stop, when inspection numbers stop, when there's no pulse for the property, it either needs to be withdrawn or completely repriced. But if your agent feels that your campaign still has life in it and people are still inquiring and turning up each week to tell them the pros and cons about the property, the reason you may not have achieved a sale is just simply excess stock levels which, as I say, will tighten as we get closer to Christmas, offering a chance to secure a sale which has probably been hard fought for quite a few vendors around town.
Speaker 1:Yeah and I know this might sound silly Say you're looking at either an open house or an auction, whatever it might be, on a particular Saturday and you look and you say, oh, it's going to be overcast and rainy. Does that actually dampen people's interest? The place doesn't look quite as good.
Speaker 2:Maybe the house doesn't look its best or the apartment, john, but no, can I say that days like last Saturday the buyers run off and do something else other than look at houses. I can tell you.
Speaker 1:So most real estate agents will tell you You're talking about on a nice day where it's really lovely weather.
Speaker 2:On a nice day. Yeah, that's right. Most agents will tell you that inspection numbers tend to go up on the days that are not so good, because people are less inclined to get out and about to the beach, et cetera. So a rainy Saturday is never a bad thing for a real estate agent.
Speaker 1:funny enough, Okay just a final one there, just on that. Say, for instance, you're in your area, you've lived in your house for a long time, it's a rainy day. You can't really go and do what you wanted to do. You think, oh, there's an open house down the road. How often do you have people walk in, look at a place and think, oh, and actually buy on impulse. So how does that happen? Impulse purchase, yeah.
Speaker 2:Look more often than you would realise when it comes to real estate. You think that real estate is a very considered purchase, and it is most of the time, but there are definitely impulse buyers who don't realise they have a need or desire to make a move until they're standing in the property that says, hey, I wouldn't have thought so, but I could live here.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, all right, very interesting. If anyone's had an experience like that, they might like to let us know. Peter, as always, great to talk to you and we'll talk again very soon.
Speaker 2:Look.
