As 2025 roars to a close and my team move in on what we thought was an unassailable target of 130 sales I’ve been struggling with what to say on this soap box.
It’s said that self-consciousness is the enemy of art and whilst I acknowledge it’s rich to label this newsletter as art something has been troubling me more than usual lately…and that is how much the real estate industry misleads the public.
Here comes the truth bomb, you are being lied to about what the current property market is really like. Clearance rates are always above 70%, Domain and REA are publishing articles daily about how strong the demand is but it’s fake news.
Since the RBA announced a much hoped-for rate cut wasn’t coming, closely followed by worrying inflation data the market in most categories nearly ground to a halt. Buyer enquiry dropped sharply and the only sticker that has been going up on many signs has been the good old overlay. Another indication of a change in conditions has been the re-emergence of the 5 day cooling-off period…a year ago agents chortled at the mere suggestion of conditional sale, now it’s a different story.
The irony of this sentiment shift is that it’s actually great news for genuine buyers who now have choice and time to make sound decisions, whilst it’s hard to describe real estate in Sydney as ‘good value’ there are now some great opportunities out in the market.
If you have capacity and have been wanting to buy for a while it doesn’t make sense to wait for more competition to return…because it will.
The real problem with false reporting from the media (and agents) is that it has created significant risk for people who have bought before they have sold. I’m over-sensitive to this because I’m a child of the recession that we had to have and saw my parents get financially wiped out, it wasn’t pretty.
As a selling agent my job is to sell property for the highest price possible but I believe we have a duty of care to prevent people from taking unacceptable risks. I don’t think the industry puts much thought to this, actually I’m being polite…can you name one prominent real estate professional who calls it as it is? I can’t.
It’s not all doom and gloom and the sky certainly isn’t falling in but until something changes in the market I suspect it’s going to be like this for a while. Some things will go well, some won’t…maybe this market is closer to normal than what we have been used to.
A special shout out this week for Max Wagschall on our team who has secured some great results recently in choppy conditions, well played sir.
Until next week,
David Murphy