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External influences
- Decreasing interest rates, new state legislation that may provide market stimulating in the form of subsidies, incentives or even tax breaks can affect the market.
- Positive media and industry experts predicting an upcoming boom can create a ‘market buzz’ so buyers are tempted to make decisions faster and pay more to secure property.
- Watch for rising interest rates, state-backed incentives being withdrawn and tougher borrowing criteria from lenders.
- Negative media painting a doom-and-gloom market ahead. This could soon be the time to consider buying, but probably not selling unless you have to.
Supply and demand
- When supply is plentiful, buyers have time to choose, and that is not an environment that promotes price growth – in fact, the opposite occurs. A buyer makes a low offer, one seller rejects, that buyer just moves on to the next one.
- As seen over recent years, when supply is low, even when demand is below normal levels, this results in buyers chasing very few homes. If that buyer is not prepared to pay top dollar, they could lose out.
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Stay local
Markets can move up and down within days; the statistics we rely on are often a month or more out of date. Your local market could be performing differently to the general area.
- Lack of ‘for sale’ boards, agents not returning your calls about listings, but bombarding you with ‘sell now’ messages, listings sold within days, open homes packed to the rafters, crazy auction bidding. These are all signs the market is on the up. I say buy with caution, sell with pleasure.
Watch & learn
Predicting the next stage of the real estate market with any guarantee is impossible, but watching the signs to help decide if it is a good time to sell or buy is worthwhile.
