The inner suburbs of Bayside, such as Elwood, Albert Park and Port Melbourne, are great places to live when you are footloose and child-free. But what if you’ve got plans to have kids down the track? Being able to walk to the local Turtle cafe in Elwood and take a short tram ride on No 79 through [...]

Valuing land is difficult enough, but there are even more variables when it comes to getting a consistent opinion of the market value of an actual building. We always counsel long term passive investors to buy purely on land value, or to buy proven populist homes like Victorians and Edwardians as opposed to new homes.  Why? Buildings [...]

Market value is useful when considering capital growth, however unlike with the share market, the market value of a property is often more a concept than an exact figure – and everybody has their own ‘recipe’ for how to go about it. But there are three consistent ‘ingredients’, that agents use to get a sense [...]

While the value you place on a property is ultimately the most important factor in influencing what you are prepared to pay, you also want to know its market value. But how do you know what that is? Is there some secret market value formula? No there is no single definitive “sticker price” market value figure [...]

Last week we pointed out that valuing a home is a bit like different vegetable soup recipes. Everybody has a different way of doing it. However, in the end the most important opinion of value is yours. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore what the rest of the market (the majority of other informed buyers [...]

With Super Saturday done and dusted, and the primary focus of the real estate industry now on which of Bart’s ponies has the best chance in the Cup, we can return to our series on worth, price and values. A fortnight ago we talked about how a home’s worth can mean different things to different people. [...]

The elephant in the room for agents is always: “How much is it worth?”. You might be having a nice conversation about the weather or the footy, and the amazing fact that you both know Peter who went to the same school as so and so. But anyone, whether buyer or seller

Backward bidding is about throwing stones, it’s about fighting back, it’s about saying enough is enough.

Different cultures have different values and different interpretations of what appear to be the same thing. Just as business people need to find the most appropriate way to interact with, and do business with, people of other cultures, so too do home buyers have to find the right way to deal with selling agents.

If you feel that a win-win style will work for you; then you need to give a little to get a little before you can finalise a strategy. Prior to starting one on one negotiations, you need a forum for pre-negotiation discussions and I much prefer a coffee to a phone line. Naivety, experience and lack of preparation are not good prerequisites for the sorts of meetings I outline below, so if you don't feel it's you or if you have loose lips then engage a professional.

In much of our homebuying discussion, we often mention the supposed opposing forces of Risk v Reward. We mention them because a lot of homebuyers don’t act with any level of risk v reward consciousness in the homebuying process – in other words, they often make decisions without considering that, for every [...]

As we are now firmly into a new market, we thought it time to have a stab at one of the most perplexing concepts confronting inexperienced buyers in high-end real estate  – the “Learning Fee”. The “Learning” Fee is the amount you as a Do-It-Yourself buyer can end up paying extra for the home you buy, [...]

In smart real estate investing, we look at three major components – position, property (land and building) and price. However there is another factor that is not as black and white and that we call the “Wow” factor. The “Wow” factor is what attracts people to a certain property. It assesses the [...]

Our Fundamentals Buying the right property is a science. And an art. There are a lot of factors which affect whether or not you get a good deal when buying property. For those who love the Art vs Science arguments, let’s say there is an art to finding, matching and negotiating a property. That is [...]

Some of our tips to reduce stress and emotion when buying property: Counteract inexperience and buy in some expertise. It’s not that you shouldn’t use Dad or Uncle Ben – they just don’t probably understand in the same way what your needs are. Hire a buyer advocate or an experienced valuer. Spend some money to [...]