Navigating the Melbourne Market – Challenges and Opportunities in the Latest Financial Quarter

It looks like a tough market… it feels like a tough market… but is it a tough market??
I’m not sure that it is!

This last quarter of the financial year has not been kind to the market, particularly for the investors who appear to be enemy No.1 in the State Government’s eyes. With land taxes coming into force and talk of further enforced enhancements required to be installed into investment properties, a lot of investors have decided that “enough is enough” and are jumping ship, despite receiving continuously healthy yields.

At the coal face of auction land, there are still signs of hope! Yes, it has become trickier to get buyers involved in the purchasing process, with plenty still sitting on the fence. But it’s being seen time and time again that when they do engage, they are spending good sums of money that wouldn’t be spent in a typical “buyer’s market”.

This shows a couple of things: Firstly, it highlights that the demand for owner-occupied properties is still there, but it also shows that we professionals need to make some fundamental changes to the way we engage with our buyers because the evidence is there to show that it can still be done.

The trend of using auctions as a stepping stone to success, as opposed to the final play, is also on the rise in a big way.

It is helping both sides see sense with price and level of activity, in that vendors, of course, see a reality, but also buyers see that they are not the only ones interested, so, even if they don’t bid they still have an increase in motivation to get involved afterwards.

It has been helping a lot of our clients bring their “days on market” down, so, I’d strongly advise that you get in touch and find out why.

In Melbourne, the highest auction sale achieved was $8.6 million and the lowest was $561,000.

Andy Reid is Head of Auctions in Victoria.

Read the auction of the quarter in our latest quarterly report. Subscribe to get the latest news from Apollo Auctions as it happens.