Real Estate Marketing Specialist
Prices in Wellington city are up an average of 1.3% on what they were last June, southern suburbs, 1.4%, eastern suburbs 1.3%, northern suburbs 1.8%, western suburbs are down 0.3%. But they are certainly lower than what they were at the end of last year, and most properties are now selling below the Rateable Valuation (what we used to call the GV). Buyers are slower to make decisions because there isn’t the competition there was last year, so everything is taking longer to sell.
The number of sales is dropping – a lot of homes just aren’t selling.
There are definitely some great buys out there right now – if you can get a better house for a steal then it won’t matter if you have to drop the price on your existing house a bit. And if you’re a first home buyer, it’s a great opportunity which I don’t believe will last past the end of this year, so don’t miss it!
Sometimes financial distress, retirement villages, divorces & job transfers don’t wait for the market to pick up – if you have to sell, I can still find you the right buyers.
But buyers are very fussy right now – they are only buying homes which are completely ideal for them or are extremely cheap. So you need to be very fussy about tidying up your home to look as lovely as possible – call me for advice on this. Marketing quality has become even more important – you need ads that are big enough and well written enough and with great photos so that every buyer who has within $100,000 of your target price knows that your home is available and is motivated to come and see it.
A lot of agents haven’t been in real estate long enough to have experienced a market like this before, and have sold almost nothing this year. Only 40% of listed homes are selling each month, and even less than that in the smaller companies. An inexperienced agent is a gamble that can almost ensure that your home is one of that unsold 60%. Remax agents are still selling more homes per agents than other companies, and I am still in the top 5% of Remax agents – listing your home for sale with me is one of your best chances of selling in this market.
Having a mortgage up for renewal myself in the next few weeks, I was interested to see what economists are saying. Westpac’s economists suggest that there are unlikely to be further interest rate drops until after the Reserve Bank’s September Monetary Policy statement. They are suggesting that it is better to put any new mortgage on floating rates and wait and see, or fix for 6 months, which is cheaper, but carries some risk of missing the window of opportunity if increasing inflation means that rates are lower for only a short time.
Parliament is updating the 1972 Unit Titles Act. It is intended to streamline development processes and allow flexibility for builders of big developments, reducing up-front costs and making it easier for developers to change their plans. It will also make some things clearer, such as who does the roofing repairs in an apartment block. It will enable work to be done on a building if 75% rather than all building owners agree.
It has been made slightly easier for company share & cross-leased complexes to convert to unit titles on a vote of only 75% of their owners. It also enables a unit-titled property to be subdivided by forming a subsidiary unit title. For example, a unit-titled townhouse could be split into two flats and each one unit-titled to allow separate ownership, without re-titling the entire original complex, as would be necessary at present.
I noticed one thing that’s scary: if you sell your unit, you remain liable for the Body Corporate fees until the Body Corporate is notified in writing of the sale – so it’s very important that your real estate agent or your lawyer is experienced with unit titles and knows to get this done for you. Want to know more? Just call me!