SOLD! What Real Estate Slowdown?

[solmanic]

Listed our house for sale on Wednesday, sold it on Saturday after the first (and only) open house. 26 groups through - the most the agents said they'd seen in 18 months. Got three verbal offers and one on paper - but the one on paper was the one we wanted so the agents didn't follow up the others to put them in writing. Total gridlock in the street for 45 minutes.

I get the feeling that a lot of people have just been waiting after all the doom & gloom last year for who knows what to improve. Then all of a sudden they just thought "bugger it" and decided to go house shopping. The agents were ecstatic and now have a very healthy list of interested buyers they can promote other properties to.

Here's some snaps of the house...

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh191/solmanic42/-2182.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh191/solmanic42/-2178.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh191/solmanic42/-2155.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh191/solmanic42/-2220.jpg

I'm looking forward to getting back to living normally and not worrying all the time whether I can use the toilet, sink, chair etc and picking up every crumb as it hits the floor.

Now on to the next project...

[Larry]

I know what you mean.

We sold ours just before Christmas. It went on the market on the Friday afternoon, sold to the first people through on Sunday for the asking price!!:banana:

48 hours - not bad going, but our last place went in 24 hours.:eek2:

[Tombie]

That makes me think you under sold / valued your houses :)

But congrats everyone!

And nice house!!!

Nothing like our 1946 bungalow with no gardens and original kitchen!!!

[mcrover]

So what your saying is if your thinking about selling, tack on a few extra $ to the asking price :D

[scarry]

That is a nice looking place,where are you off to......
They recon the nice,well presented places go quick,the duds seem to hang around,as do the overpriced ones.

Good luck with the move.....i hate moving:(

[Larry]

..............They recon the nice,well presented places go quick,the duds seem to hang around,as do the overpriced ones. ..........

Exactly!!!!!!!!!! :thumbsup:

[weeds]

if your house is priced for the market they seem to sell quick enough

ours sold at the end of last year quicker than i thught........had to include my flash fridge as part of the sale:twisted:

[solmanic]

That makes me think you under sold / valued your houses :)

The valuation was done last November - right before things really ground to a halt. The agents put our estimated price well below that but we got that figure straight up. They reckoned there was more money in it based on the interest, but like they say, a quick sale is a good sale.


So what your saying is if your thinking about selling, tack on a few extra $ to the asking price :D

Not really. This was a case of putting it out there at a fair price which was enough for us and letting that draw in the buyers. We have been shopping for another place for the past two months and the sensibly priced stuff has been selling whilst the "optimisticly" priced stuff has just sat there.


That is a nice looking place,where are you off to......
They recon the nice,well presented places go quick,the duds seem to hang around,as do the overpriced ones.

Thanks. Yes, we have seen some rubbish on the market while we were looking. Many houses being dumped by investors looking to cash out. Of course any smart investor will dump the worst stuff first for as much as possible, and that's what seems to be happening. The financial crisis doesn't seem to have hit hard enough for mass panic selling - just some trimming of people's portfolios.

BTW, we are staying in Brisbane - just moving out to the semi-rural western suburbs where everyone's daughter has a pony (god forbid). I got a nice workshop though, and a car port which fits the Defender with ONE INCH to spare.

[Scallops]

Well - I hope we have the same success :) - I put in an offer on a house Saturday, will find out today if we got it. Then we'll have to get rid of our present place pronto as we have bought for cash - not subject to sale.

You must be both happy and relieved - enjoy Samford. :)

[dullbird]

hey solmanic thats my sort of house mate very nice you have good taste!

[solmanic]

hey solmanic thats my sort of house mate very nice you have good taste!

Without wanting to self-promote too much, I can direct people to a good Architect (http://www.solidarchitecture.com.au/)if they need one... ;)

[Rosscoe68]

very nice house, though i simply dont understand why anyone would sell porperty with the ability to pull equity from an existing house to purchase another house and the government tax incentives to keep investment properties.
on my 1st house i had a mortgage offset savings account with interest only payments on the house(purchased way back for $80k, now worht over $300k. i know most ppl would see that only used for investment houses but bare with me for a tic. i paid heaps of cash into the offset savings account which meant i had a small amount left on the mortgae to pay interest only on. then when i bought the next house and moved out of first house, i left the interest only on 1st house and transferred all the cash out of offset into the same setup on the next house and so on. now up to no 4 and looking for no 5 and all on a fairly low retail sales income. saved heaps of cash in selling fees (approx $15-20k nowadays per house) and the bank gives me a better rate now cos i have several loans :)

now working only occasionally living off rental income and travelling aus with td5 and caravan :)

[Rosscoe68]

fair comment, lucky for me i rent to local govt departments and they cover all and any damage if any occurs(not that i have ever had any), so i dont even need landlords insurance :)

[solmanic]

That's a good rental deal if you can get it. We looked at getting one of our other places rented out to a disability services mob who needed live-in accommodation. Didn't come off but it sure would have made for good, guaranteed income.

You're right about the offset stuff. Of course you need to pay as little interest as possible on your non-deductable property but my wife and I both work from home so there are still partial benefits there. Just becomes a pain when we do sell this next one so I may convert it to a rental when we move on. That way we are always getting the stamp duty concessions etc for owner occuppier.

But don't get me started on the first home owner's grant! None of that kind of love from the government when we first bought :mad:.

[Rosscoe68]

heh, no first home owners grant in my day of first purchase, i did however get a low deposit homeload from the qld housing dept or whatever it was called back then, 10 year fixed rate of only 14.8% what a deal :(

makes current 6% look very sexxy indeed. :)

[DeeJay]

Maybe its because not everyone wants to own investment houses
I know it can work well but I have no interest in doing so whatsoever....I have heard to many horror stories about bad tenants :( Personally I don't think I would want the grief.........

You get grief with below average properties. The better quality properties like Solmaniacs tend to attract better quality tenants. A good agent is the tricky bit.

[scarry]

Maybe its because not everyone wants to own investment houses
I know it can work well but I have no interest in doing so whatsoever....I have heard to many horror stories about bad tenants :( Personally I don't think I would want the grief.........


True,been there,done that......never again.
I now have commercial properties,only freestanding(no body corporates)all returns are way up on domestic returns,and make good clauses in the lease.

They are probably higher risk,but returns are way up on domestic stuff.

[wardy1]

WELL!
There had to be a real state agent following this one didn't there? :p
I guess you are all right, it just depends where you are in life, and what you want.
A great house was sold in short order for a great price...... it was well presented and well positioned. You also had an agent who promoted it well to attract the right buyers.
Could have kept it and rented it?.... Probably. But that didn't fit with your plans or wishes. Now you have what you want and you don't have the worry of being a landlord....it's not for everyone.
Undersold? I doubt it. With so many through if there was a chance of more your agent would have 'sniffed it' and got it.
A written offer in this market is 'Golden'.
Well done and good luck for the future.

[solmanic]

More than getting the right price, we got the right buyers. The young family who bought have lived in this area all their lives and always dreamed of owning this house but never expected it to go on the market. They are over the moon and we had the wife pop in today to thank us for letting them have it over all the other interested parties. I thought she was going to start crying she was so happy. Sure, the amount of interest suggests we could have gotten more but the list price was what we wanted and they came straight out and offered it up front with no back-and-forth. I think the agent was just worried we might think he hadn't worked hard enough for us.

Basically if you want a Aston Martin DB9 and someone gives you a DB7, you're not going to hand the keys back are you.

[dullbird]

well depends if you paid the price of a DB9 coz I would :D

[solmanic]

Well the purchasers of our place last week-end listed their house down the street for sale on Thursday...

....it sold on Saturday!!!

So the craziness continues...

Good luck Scallops, you should be out of your place this week-end if things keep going this way :BigThumb:

[Piddler]

Maybe the price of these houses sold quickly could have been higher.
I have herd here of a real estate agency that lists regularly at low prices to get a quick sale and commission.

Good luck with your new moves its always an exciting time
Cheers

[solmanic]

Not likely, at least not in our case. Had one real estate agency value the property last November when things were still moving then sold it through another. We also got about $50K over the price that we asked for offers from in the advertising. We could have got maybe another $20-$30K, but why wait?

The purchasers of our place were asking what we thought was a very optimistic figure, but they sold quickly too. Happy days all round!