HOW CAN YOU TRULY COMPARE?

HOW CAN YOU TRULY COMPARE?

When you are just about to sell your property you must get valid comparisons.

To do this it is not enough just to compare what is happening to property in the Rockingham District.

You need to know about your suburb.

For example, according to REIWA the number of sales in the Rockingham District were down 16% between the December and March quarters.

But within that average the number of sales in Safety Bay increased by 37% while those in Shoalwater went down by 40%.

There still remains only three factors which affect your chances of selling.

1.      Presentation

2.      Promotion (Advetising)

3.      Price

If the first two are right and the property isn’t selling, the answer lies with the price.

Ross Cutten

Owner / Director

Noble Real Estate

IS THIS A GOOD TIME TO BUY ?

IS THIS A GOOD TIME TO BUY ?

People constantly ask “Is this a good time to buy?”

My answer will also cover the question “Is this a good time to sell?”

This is one of the easiest questions I ever have to answer in real estate.

The simple answer is “Look at what everybody else is doing and do the reverse”.

Is everybody selling like today?

Then it is a brilliant time to buy.

For the sellers the question is “Is everybody buying?”

Today the answer is no. Everybody is selling.

So the answer is, If you can stay out of the current market, then do so.

“How long will we have to wait?’’

I am too old and smart to get involved in predicting the future even though it is currently fashionable to do so.

All I can say is that in 27 years I have never seen a market stay down as long as the current one, so the pressure must be building.

Ross Cutten

Owner / Director

Noble Real Estate

SELLER BEWARE!

SELLER BEWARE!

Following our commitment to NO BULL real estate here is some practices you need to be aware of in the local real estate industry.

1.      Beware of agents asking for you to pay advertising. Why? Consider the fact that one of my sellers (80 years of age) was asked to pay $1,000 up front followed by a further $500. She was refunded $125 when the property failed to sell. The same agency will list properties for sale without charging for advertising. It depends on the willingness or innocence of the seller.

2.      One of our local agencies uses the for sale sign on your property to sell their services. Shouldn’t the for sale sign be about selling your property?

(Please insert a photo of ours here).

3.      You need to know which websites your property will be listed on. The fact that you are as one of the cheapest agents in town promotes “on the worldwide web” is not enough. You must be on the two sites with the most visitors. They are....

realestate.com.au       and        reiwa.com.au

4.      You must have a member of the Real Estate Institute of W.A. Why? Because it is a precondition of membership of the institute that members have Professional Indemnity Insurance. This is there for your protection.

5.      You need to have advertising in BOTH the local paper and both the West Australian and the Sunday Times. It is true that the newspapers are losing ground but they are still a good source of buyer enquiry because not everyone is on the web and only 60% of buyers live locally.

Make sure your agent ticks all these boxes as we have too many sellers and too few buyers in the current market for you to risk not covering all bases.

Ross Cutten

Owner / Director

Noble Real Estate

THE CRAZY MARKETPLACE OF MARCH / APRIL 2011

THE CRAZY MARKETPLACE OF MARCH / APRIL 2011

Wherever people realise I am in real estate these days, they immediately want to know “How’s the Real Estate market”.

This is usually asked in the hushed tones normally heard before the start of The Death March.

I am currently telling them;

We had a good month in March and an exceptional start to April, in fact we sold 15% more in the first 14 days of April than in the whole of March, which as i said was a good month.

People are looking for signs of a turnaround, as confidence is low everywhere according to the popular press.

After 27 years in the business I need to see 3 months of consistent change before I will say it is a trend.

We have already had November, December and the first week of January look like a long term change only to go quiet.

The only thing I can predict with certainty is that sellers will pick up the trend before buyers and they then become less negotiable.

That is why it is important that buyers buy prior to the trend change, to buy at the best possible price.

Ross Cutten

Owner / Director

Noble Real Estate