If you’ve paid the real estate market any attention across the country recently, you’d know it has been flat and trending downwards.
Listings have increased as buyers have been content to sit on their hands; while in Tasmania some areas have listings at, or near, their highest point in years.
And no, I haven’t been driving around counting ‘for sale’ signs because the internet has made doing the background work on any real estate purchase a lot easier.
If you’re looking at buying, here are some handy tools to arm yourself with:
SQM Research (www.sqmresearch.com.au) is one of the more reliable data providers and charts levels of stock on the market, across regions and postcodes for free.
For a fee, SQM also produces post code reports and home discount reports, these show how long listings have been on the market and any discounting on properties.
These reports can give a good indication of whether real estate is heading up or down in a specific area.
However, if you’re not prepared to shell out for these reports there are cheaper ways of picking up useful and free information.
REFind (www.refindhouseprices.com) aggregates real estate listings to show discounting and the time a property has been on the market.
All Homes (www.allhomes.com.au) shows past sales data to give you an indication of when a property last sold and the price it sold for.
Old Listings (www.oldlistings.com.au) shows when a property has been listed over the past few years, which can reveal if a new listing isn’t actually new at all and has been on the market for some time.
Used together, these three sites could provide a useful arsenal if you want to drive a hard bargain when making a forthcoming property purchase.
Peter Mancell is a director of Mancell Financial Group and FYG Planners AFSL / ACL 224543. This information is general in nature and readers should seek professional advice specific to their circumstances.
