The ideal property in the ideal area for the ideal price. It’s what every home buyer wants.
Yet in Melbourne’s increasingly competitive property market, a great selling price this week looks like a bargain next week. And the competition just seems to get more intense with every property you visit.
Are you following the pack?
Week after week groups of buyers are trawling the internet for new listings and following each other around to similar properties in similar areas in a similar price range. They all attend the same auctions hoping buyers from the neighbouring more expensive areas or China don’t turn up and blow them all out of the water with prices no one could have predicted even jokingly.
The Armadale buyers are now looking in Malvern; the Malvern buyers are in Glen Iris and the Glen Iris buyers are in Ashburton or on the other side of the tracks. It’s a smart buyer who realises this and acts before it’s too late.
Break the herd mentality with a buyers advocate
Finding properties ‘off market’ is our secret to success when purchasing for home buyers in competitive blue chip areas of Melbourne such as Glen iris and Malvern.
As a buyers advocate we have a lot more time to dedicate to the property search for our clients and are more creative with our resources. Our philosophy is very simple. It’s called ‘getting away from the herd’.
Are you seeing ‘the real off market’
Take care when choosing your buyers advocate. If they tell you that they can get you access to a property before it’s advertised, that’s only half the story.
Genuine off market buying is when your buyers advocate gets you the right property at the right price before other buyers even see it. A true off market opportunity never makes it to market.
Winning the day in Glen Iris
We recently purchased a property for an Australian family returning to Melbourne after a stint in Texas. Their request was for a family home in the Glen Iris area. They had a budget of $1.75 million but preferred to spend $1.5 million. $1.75 million for a family home in Glen Iris is a tight budget.
We printed off several hundred brochures and dropped them in letter boxes of properties we thought would be suitable for our clients and that resulted in calls from a couple of home owners looking to sell.
One property in Glen Iris ticked all the boxes for our clients, with four bedrooms, two bathrooms and two living areas. Unfortunately it had a pool, which was not on the wish list. The property was available to purchase at $1.7 million direct through the seller.
After a week and a half of watching the market grow at a rate beyond expectation our clients decided to bite the bullet on the pool and purchase the property.
10 days later Jellis Craig auctioned a similar Glen Iris property for $1,861,000.
Needless to say our clients are very happy: ‘We even had jealous friends who said “you have the deal of the century” after they spent a year looking for something and still had to spend $1.6m on a house in Ashburton that doesn’t suit them long term (and that was prices from a year ago).’
Benefits from off market purchases with a buyers advocate
- Shorter time frames. Expect to average 6-8 weeks for home buyers and 4-6 weeks for investors. From sign up to completion out Glen Iris sale took four weeks and three days.
- Invest less time in the search phase. Most of our clients spend one hour a week visiting properties instead of spending their weekends and more for months on end.
- Exclusive off market buying opportunities. We have access to resources and networks that most buyers never get to see.
- Better prices (because in the end, that’s pretty important). We’re buying properties for our clients at prices considerably less than they’d go for auction. Remember our Glen Iris example of a purchase for $1.7m, with a similar property going for $1,861,00 at auction.
Get a buyers advocate on your side
If you’ve been searching for property for more than three months the market has already risen by a lot more than our fees. Our fees are an investment in your purchase, not an expense.
Contact us to discuss your property requirements and how we can help you buy your next property faster, easier and for a better price.
