OOOPS. Sorry about that.

I forgot to keep my weekly update, updated over the Christmas period. Let’s be honest, we can’t all talk real estate every week! I do apologise if you got excited by my email appearing in your inbox only to be let down by reading the same letter 3 weeks in a row.

I took some time off and headed to Adelaide and down towards Mount Gambier for 9 days – not real long, but got to catch up with a lot of family members, felt 41 degrees one day, followed by 21 degrees the next. Watched some test match cricket, enjoyed a bit too much food. Overall, it was great. I hop you had some time to relax and enjoy life for a second.

Well, who knows what 2023 has in store for us. One thing I do know is now is still probably the best time to buy. It wont be long before rates come down and buyers start coming out of the woodwork trying to get a property before the market goes too high.

I have noticed buyers reappear from 2020 – buyers who did or didn’t buy in 2020 are looking again. The issue is, they’re doing similar to what they were doing in 2020, offering less than asking and hoping for a bargain. In some cases, yes it’ll work, but there are not many cases at the moment. Again, I’ve been there. I’ve low-balled before when I was buying, I missed out on the property by $15,000-20,000 and regretted it when the market moved and I couldn’t keep up in the current suburb. I didn’t make the same mistake recently.

We are expecting a lot of fixed interest rates to come out of their 2% fixed and instantly triple to nearing 6% interest rates, many of these buyers may be refinancing to interest-only loans, however, some may face negative equity and may not be able to refinance. This is where we will see the “stress sales” coming in. However, if you look over the history of real estate in Australia, there’s really not a lot of stressed bargains to be had in the long run, so if you find the property you like in the position/suburb you want, make the offer and buy the property as you may never find the same place again.

The thing with real estate, people are always buying and selling. Lifestyles change, jobs change, and locations change. Will we see as many properties as we did transact in 2021/2022? Probably not, however, we will still see Australians look to get into the property market as the current rental shortage and rental prices increasing to a level close to interest repayments, the only thing stopping purchasing will generally be saving for the deposit – as a deposit is currently quite significant in dollar terms. The rental market is what really scares me. However, as you can see below, some rental prices do go up and down, I can’t see them coming down anytime soon.