And firstly I hope everyone’s getting through it okay, I hope you’re looking out for each other and of course reaching out to help if you need it, and if we all stick together we will get through this over the next few weeks.
The first two weeks have seen a lot of activity, which is what we expected.
First of all, buyers and sellers looking to get deals done before lockdown happened, agents still streaming auctions from their offices and then of course the very strange sight over the last couple of Saturdays of agents doing auctions live from the lounge room –
We’ve also been able to facilitate settlements of properties that were previously sold, and in addition to those settlements we’ve also spoken to a number of potential clients.
So whilst it’s not quite business as usual we are able to get on with the business and helping people keep a roof over their heads during this current lockdown and we’re certainly not taking a holiday.
The other pleasing thing is that there is still high demand out there, which has seen some good prices achieved.
Well, first of all, we need to understand the facts and then we can talk about what we expect to see, based on what we know.
Firstly, we know that buyer enquiry and interest is very strong with realestate.com.au reporting a year on year 90% increase for digital inspection video views on their website and a 29% increase for searches in the Buy site section.
We also know that in July and the first two weeks of August properties were sold and many of those sellers now need to buy, which is also underpinning the strong demand.
We know that the number of listings available on the market has decreased by approximately 10% over the past four weeks leading to further competition for the available properties and finally if we look ahead to what is likely to happen once we come out of lockdown, New Zealand’s experience is the best guide, where there was a huge rush of activity in the first few weeks when there were very few properties on the market.
So based on that information we think that there’ll be a big rush of activity when we come out of lockdown in the Melbourne market. I think there’ll be a large pool of buyers who will be looking to act quickly and there’ll be strong competition for the small number of homes that will initially be on the market.
So given everything we know now, I would urge prospective sellers, Vendors to act now for two reasons. The first one is that we know it takes about four weeks to get a property ready to go onto the market, and the second one is that many sellers will be waiting to see what happens when we come out of lockdown and that means there’ll be less homes on the market, which means that your home will stand out even more.
So we think that between the middle of September and the middle of October your home will have less competition from other homes on the market, which means a higher price, but then after mid-October we think the number of homes on the market will increase significantly, which means more choice for buyers and less competition for your home.
Across the state we are helping various clients, with a clear explanation of the process as their Conveyancer. Feel free to call our office to see how we can help you during stage 4 lockdown.
