Preparation starts with the right advice

The arrival of August each year tends to be the signal for many homeowners around Melbourne that ‘home improvement season’ is about to start, and this is particularly common among those homeowners who are planning on selling during the coming Spring.

With this in mind, I wanted to share two key pieces of advice for anyone who may be sitting at home with paint colour swatches from your favourite hardware store…Firstly, if you’re planning on selling in 2024, don’t change a thing until you get some advice from someone who knows your local real estate market intimately. Secondly, whatever changes you are advised to make to your property, do them quickly!

The first point is really important. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen home sellers spending substantial amounts of money on major transformations prior to hitting the market, only to discover that the eventual buyers didn’t like what they’d done, and therefore didn’t want to pay extra to get them. Whether it’s just a matter of taste, or the buyer had plans for the property that didn’t include value the renovations, renovations can be an unnecessary expense in some cases, and it take an objective agent with first-hand insights into what buyers want to advise you. You wouldn’t be the first vendor to undertake a full blown renovation only to discover that your buyer is going to knock down the house and rebuild!

The second point relates to timing. History has taught us that the Spring selling season in Melbourne changes over time, and that sellers who get in early in Spring tend to enjoy the best results. Why? Well it’s all about supply and demand.

In early Spring we usually experience an increase in the number of aspiring buyers entering the market, but early Spring is often a time where the Melbourne market experiences a shortage of new listings, with many sellers slow off the mark as they get their homes ‘market ready’. More buyers and less stock usually produces increased competition for the limited number of listings, and better prices.

The later in the year you leave it, the more the market tends to swing the other way. The buyer activity tends to ease over time as more find their chosen home, whilst the number of listings increases as more people finish their preparations (and all those people who have purchased then have to sell their current property).

That’s why the switched on sellers will be spending the first few weeks of August getting their property ready for market, so they can hit the ground running when Spring officially gets under way in less than four weeks from now.

As I mentioned earlier, the best preparation for selling you can undertake is to start with the right advice, so if you would like an obligation-free chat about your current home and its potential in today’s market, feel free to give me or one of my team at Brand C a call on 9807 6686.

Brandon Chuah

Director

Brand C