Regional Selling & Buying James Buyer Advocates

Buying and Selling Well: Example: The Lifestyle Property Equation

Coming into Easter, one part of the market tells the whole story.

Lifestyle property.

I’ve been at Hepburn Springs in January, Metung at Labour Day, Port Fairy this Easter, Mansfield planned for Kings Birthday. And what I’m seeing across all of it is the same thing.

Volumes at a fraction of COVID peaks. Buyer pools almost empty. Properties in certain circumstances worth half of what was paid in 2021. Sorrento and Portsea running at 25% of COVID-peak sales volumes over the same Christmas period. Properties asking $3 million where the reality is closer to $1.8 million and even then, sometimes nobody is coming at any price.

This is where the market has shifted the most. And the most brutally.

The Timeframe Problem

The biggest mistake right now is thinking in weeks. This is a five-year market. Accept that and your behaviour changes completely.

Most people don’t accept it. They list. They wait. They adjust the price. Change agents. Rinse and repeat, until frustration becomes fatigue becomes a poor decision made under real pressure.

A far better way starts with one honest question: what are you actually trying to achieve?

If you’re buying will your family actually use it? Two teenagers just starting sport and socialising are not driving two hours to a weekend property. Be honest about that before you commit.

If you’re selling the emotional impulse buyer from 2021 is largely gone. Today’s buyer is seeing exactly what you’re seeing. Land tax. Interest rates. Holding costs. They are cautious and they are slow.

What James Buy Sell Is Actually Doing

In this market we are running structured off-market, multi-agent campaigns for lifestyle properties. We are working multiple agents across different regions simultaneously, because the buyer for a Mornington Peninsula property might be sitting with an agent in Hawthorn, not Sorrento.

We are also doing the vendor research on the buy side understanding the seller’s holding pressure, debt levels, time on market, and which agents have actually transacted recently versus simply listed and therefore their urgent desire to sell.

That research is where the deals are made.

Eaglemont: one buyer, six months of consistent evidence-based engagement. Not aggressive. Not impatient. Just steady, factual, and present. Six months. That negotiation is now done.

Malvern East:  we made our move early, lost it first up, moved straight on. That’s the discipline this market requires. Next.

A property asking $3 million trading at $2.2 million is not theoretical. We are seeing it. But only for buyers who stay engaged over long periods, understand the seller’s actual position, and are genuinely prepared to wait and prepared to lose and go again.

Buying and Selling at the Same Time – Inner Melbourne or Country

You cannot treat these as separate decisions. They are one equation.

Sell poorly and you lose your position before you buy. Buy poorly and you undo everything you gained on the sell.

Keep the property available while you hold: Don’t lease and tie up! Do Airbnb, agist, short-term let.

When a buyer appears you must be ready immediately.

Lock the property away in a long tenancy and you’ve removed yourself from the market entirely.

Work both sides simultaneously. Evidence on the sell. Research on the buy. Patience on both.

This market will not reward speed – nor will reward poor actions and lack of strategy.

But it will reward clarity, patience, and discipline.

Happy Easter

Mal, Sim, Kathy and Randall