Tick, Tick, Tick, Boom

We love being able to provide you with positive updates on the property market, the strong buyers activity that we reported in our previous month letter have continue across April and not looking at slowing down. Traditionally, during the Easter period market activity slows down due to buyers and sellers going on short holidays but on the contrary we saw an increase in activities. For example, during Easter week a property at 141 Lyndhurst Road Boondall had 40 groups visit our Saturday open home and another 20 on the second mid-week open home which resulted in 19 offers!

We are seeing on a local level that property prices have “bottomed” in February and in March an April prices have started to increase again. We believe this is due to buyers growing confidence in the market as well as the lack of new properties on the market resulting in multiple offer situations ultimately resulting in higher sales prices.

To share some real time figures for example from the week of the 10-17 April 2023 across 4 active properties we met over 80+ groups resulting in 22 offers and our offer form viewed 101 times (assuming people were considering making offers). All 4 properties went under contract at the planned closing date which is a day after the last scheduled open home, all our sellers’ expectation.

For the following week of the 17-24 April 2023 across 3 active properties we received 36 offers which once again resulted in all 3-properties going under contract.

As we know auction clearance rate gives us a very good indication of the market as its directly related to buyers confident to bid and buy at auction. Across our entire Harcourts Queensland network for the week of 17-23 April 2023, 38 auction was conduction which resulted in an incredible 71% clearance rate with average of 4 bidders at each auction.

In fact, a success story we wanted to share, one of our teams in our office recently sold the property at 83 Glen Kedron Road, Kedron at auction where we had 10 registered bidders and resulted a sale at $75,000 above reserve! We had 6 properties up for sale at our April in room auctions which resulted in 4 sold under hammer on the night, the 5th went under contract a week after and the 6th is about to go under contract as this update is being written. (embed video for enewsletter)

The big question is this a spike of confidence and start of prices increasing, or will we see further drops in prices as more interest rate rises are predicted or as the fear of many fixed term loans locked at under 2.5% finishes and move into variable. What are your personal thoughts?

During time of writing this update, the latest inflation figured was announced at 7%. Inflation is slowing down but it’s still very high. The reserve bank will be looking at that and their decision to either hold rate or rise could go either way at the first Tuesday on May.

Regardless of the decision we will be able to provide you with a better inside during our June property update.

It looks like there is no clear prediction of where the market will be in the next 12 months due to uncertainty and variable that changes month to month and therefore my advice to each clients differs depending on their real estate goals. Over the last decade, we’ve seen great markets and also the GFC, so we’d love for you to contact us to have further chat about your personal situation to see if we can help you.

Here are some general foods for thought that we have discussed with some of our clients:

If you have a fixed term loan for an investment or primary home that is coming up, its important to find out what will be the new repayment be when it goes to variable and to consider if you will be comfortable with the new repayment.
It’s a great time to buy an investment property and to hold long term however it is important to consider and do your calculations based on current rental return, costs and take into account if the repayment were to increase would you still be able to live the life you are accustomed to?
If you are looking to upgrade or downsize, it’s best not to gamble on making or saving $10,000, so we recommend buying and selling in the same market.
If you are looking to upgrade or downsize but unable to get bridging finance to buy before selling what are my options?

What’s your property worth?