Our legal minds rate the current market.
Buying or selling a property is impossible without the assistance of a conveyancer, and we’re fortunate to be able to call on Jamie Brauer of Conveyancing Connection.
I managed to snag five minutes in Jamie’s busy calendar to dig a little deeper into the current property market from his perspective, and it’s eye-opening content.?
Jamie and his Brisbane-based Conveyancing Connection team manage more than 3,500 matters a year, with over 99 per cent of them settling via PEXA under the electronic mandate.
Around 665,000 matters setted nationally last year, which is approximately 18 per cent below the previous financial year (817,000) but 11 per cent higher than the last pre-Covid financial year of 2020 (595,000).?
The June 2022 and 2023 figures are almost identical, indicating a confidence in the market.?
Jamie’s greatest roadblocks currently are the finance applications and approvals, and building and pest inspection negotiations.?
Buyers are asking for longer finance conditions and are being more aggressive in negotiating the building and pest price reductions. Effectively, what conveyancers are seeing is buyers doing their utmost to minimise ultimate purchase prices.
The focus for both buyers and sellers is risk, and how to best reduce it. Buyers are wanting to know all they can about a property, while sellers want as few conditions as possible.?
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The risk assessments for each party are similar, but WHERE the risk lies varies;
This risk assessment reflects in the negotiations Jamie and his team are seeing.?
In recent years, buyers were prepared to take risks as they saw values climbing and could absorb some loss for works.?
Now prices are generally stable, broadly speaking, buyers are negotiating harder to ensure they can afford those rectification works.?
Jamie’s experiencing great success in pre-sale building and pest reports, which sellers can acquire, as it allows a more comprehensive initial negotiation. It also removes the building and pest clause, which is one less stress point in the contract.
I hope you enjoy the read.
Matt Lancashire
The Real Estate Lawyer
1 年Interesting read. I think different issues arise in different markets. During Covid, due to demand and the fear of missing out, we largely saw unconditional contracts where the obvious rights of termination to the average mum and dad buyer, such as finance and building and pest, were not open to them. This has now changed where we are now seeing subject to prior contract clauses, sunset clauses and due diligence clauses in addition to the aforementioned ones rearing their heads. It’s a different market. Our experience is that buyers don’t generally like to rely on a vendor purchased building and pest reports for a few reasons, firstly they have no right of recourse against a building and pest inspector they did not retain and secondly, but most importantly, the legal principal in Qld remains “caveat emptor” or otherwise known as Buyer Beware. This means that it is up to the buyer to make their own enquiries and satisfy themselves and if they don’t take the opportunity it may end up in bad luck to the buyer. Of course, if a solicitor is involved early on then this may be avoided by some crafty drafting however there are many areas of risk which sellers and buyers should consider before signing on the dotted line.