The Top 5 Issues in Melbourne Property | Real Estate Blog — Property Advocates | Melbourne

We recently ran a session with a bunch of savvy business owners and professionals about all things property. We only had half an hour so wanted to note down a few of the takeaways from our presentation for those of you looking to enter the property market;

1. Private sale negotiations

If you are negotiating on a private sale, there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. Every agency and even agents within those agencies are able to do it differently. First thing first is to make sure you understand the rules and how they’re going to manage the process. A few common scenarios are as follows:

a) First right of refusal. This means if you are the first buyer to put forward your offer, and it’s verbally accepted by the vendor, they will go back to all the other buyers and give them one shot to put in their best offer, then come back to you one more time. In this scenario, you have two chances to change your offer. All other buyers only have 1.

b) The closed envelope scenario. Also known as ‘best and final’, where agents will tell all buyers to put their best foot forward and then you hope for the best. In this scenario, they won’t disclose anything to buyers and simply present the offers to the vendor to decide.

c) The auction that’s not an auction. This is where they disclose your offer to the other buyers, and you go backwards and forwards until someone bows out.

d) All of the above or any number of other scenarios!! Chat to the agent about how they are going to run offers

2. Stay. Away. From. Car. Stackers.

If the apartment block is existing or if it’s an off the plan purchase, please stay away if it has a car stacker. Whilst the agent/developer/builder may claim it as the ‘Rolls Royce’ of car stackers.... we tell buyers to stay away from them due to their ongoing maintenance costs. Think a lift on steroids. They are expensive to run and maintain, and when they break, good luck going on that road trip you planned with your car stuck up in the air and your camping gear locked inside. You have been warned.

3. Don’t try and pick the ‘bottom’ of the market.

We constantly get asked, “Is it a good time to buy?”. The fact of the matter is, no one truly knows. If you believed the economists 12 months ago, the market was going to drop 20% and we all know that you’d still be sitting on the sidelines waiting for that to happen! What we say is control what you can control and that is; what you are buying and how much you are paying. Look for quality real estate and don’t get too caught up in the hype and end up overpaying.

4. Check what you can before leaving the house

So many buyers we speak to are burnt-out because their Saturdays are busier than real estate agents, racing from one inspection to the next only to find, neighbouring buildings towering over their back yard, bus stops in front of the house, wrong orientation advertised on the floor plan… the list goes on. We wrote a blog a while ago about how to pre-vet the property before leaving yours… read it.

5. Additional clauses can save you money

Are you an investor? Asking for a simple additional clause to give you access to the property a couple of times prior to settlement (for the purposes of getting prospective tenants through) will mean that at settlement you are more likely to have a tenant lined up ready to go and your property won’t sit there vacant for up to a month before you lock in a tenant. Simple but cost-saving! Yes, the vendor can say no to this, but in our experience, we have had a 100% success rate in getting it approved.

And if you’re reading this and are a tenant at The Commons (and if you’re not, you should be !), we’re doing another presentation in a few months. Keep an eye on the newsletter for further details.

Thanks for reading.

Tabitha

5 takeaways from our recent workshop