June 10th, 2025Kyle’s Rant
In the winter of 2021, I remember doing a call around the real estate agents for our now non-existent Country Life podcast. The market was absolutely red hot and a lot of building had started – if you could secure a builder, and properties’ days on market were off the charts.
I replayed a couple of interviews from that time to refresh my memory and put a smile on my face after a long day this week talking to buyer’s advocates about the current state of the market, which you will find in our House.Land.Home real estate feature in this edition.
The worrying topics then were around infrastructure in our shire and how we would cope with all the new residents.
According to one agent, a particular house was listed for just shy of a million and after several (sight unseen) buyers had a bit of a bidding war over Facetime, it was sold for $1.3 million in just a few hours. Ah, the good old days.
So during Covid, there were three buyers competing for each property, often bidding above the asking price to secure a house.
Post Covid, we had two buyers negotiating close to the asking price. Then interest rates started to climb, creating one buyer for every five houses.
Now with the cost of living and higher taxes, there is one buyer for every 10 houses. I am no expert, unlike the Reserve Bank, so please do your own research and do not base decisions on what I have to say.
But it isn’t that hard to figure out what to do if you are ready to move on, upgrade, downsize or sea change.
The state of the market is the same everywhere in regional Victoria, whether you are talking about the not-so-regional Mornington Peninsula, the Bass Coast or our own little bit of paradise here in Central Highlands.
Therefore, it seems if you buy and sell in the same market you are not going to lose your shirt. If your real estate agent tells you your expectations are too high, you should probably believe them or get a second or third opinion.
If you can’t sell for what you need, don’t sell, if you don’t have to.
There has been a market correction for a bunch of reasons. The first is a natural correction off the back of the pandemic panic buying.
The second is the money grabbing state government who have pushed a raft of taxes through on investors, second home owners and accommodation operators.
They have absolutely hobbled our real estate market with overlaying taxes and fees that have made investors go to other states. Whether it be commercial or residential investors the story according to the three buyers’ advocates is the same.
There must come a point when we, the people, have no more to give. It simply doesn’t seem to pay to try to get ahead of the game through blood, sweat and tears only to be smashed over with taxes from both federal and state governments, and then we have Hepburn Shire Council going for a 10 per cent rate rise.
It only took a couple of years to find ourselves in this situation and perhaps it’s only going to be a couple of years and a change of state government to get us out.
But you can’t live on hope or a crystal ball. So if you are in the enviable position of owning your home and wanting to sell it, my advice to you, for what it’s worth, is to buy and sell in the same market. No expert rant over…
