Its hard to be shy as a real estate agent (or at least a shy agent with longevity). Inevitably you are going to end up talking to a lot of people (thankfully, a part of the job I love). At the moment, what I seem to be talking about the most, is what’s happening in the market - is it still hot, is it cooling, have we peaked and is there a crash around the corner?
June 2020 through to June 2022 has been a wild ride, from the initial fears of instant crash and anarchy, to relief, to the strongest market seen in 15 years (or arguably, ever). The FOMO has been REAL, and I’ll never forget being at a first open home for a property that had sold only 12 months earlier, and having 7 different contracts signed by buyers in that 1 hour period. I ran out of tables – there was someone in the kitchen, someone at the dining table, one at the coffee table and a couple that went out to their cars just for a spare flat surface. All that resulting in a circa 30% increase in value in literally 366 days.
There is a bit of a different feeling in the air today. People are taking their time more on purchases again, and for better or worse, waiting to actually see a home before putting an offer on the table. Cooling off periods, finance and building and pest are back to being regular contract inclusions and buyers are being a bit more picky again about their choice of home (even though there still isn’t much choice in the market).
For all that difference though? If you were an agent that went to bed in February 2020 and woke up today, having missed the roller coaster, you would still be jumping for joy with a market better than anything seen in the previous DECADE here in Cairns. You might have a little bit of shock to get over though, to be fair.
As interest rates normalise (and realistically, we are just back to circa 2015/16 levels at this point), we are likely to see a consolidation of prices as things settle back down. the balance of the year is unlikely to see the kind of growth of the year before, but there are some great opportunities out there for both buyers and sellers, for those that put in the work and the homework in getting in to property.