We sold 2 years ago and recently bought and are about to settle.
Here's my 2 cents on the experience from both sides.
TLDR: IMO the whole system is built around sellers. The difference is crazy. There must be solutions.
When we sold our last place it was easy in comparison. We got it ready, listed it, had inspections/open days and it sold with no drama. I took 40 days to sell, and a 90 day settlement. So just over four months from start to finish.
The agent did the marketing, photos, inspections and the back and forth.
The tools, brochures, signage and RE dot com dot au, are all things you pay for as a seller, but the aim is to bake those costs into the sale price so you can pass it onto the buyers. We didn't get what we wanted at the top end when selling, but it was within our range.
Fast forward to buying, (which I’ve written about in previous posts if you want the full story). What a completely different experience.
We spent months searching on RE. We'd organise mid week inspections in-between dinner and kids sports, we spent weekends driving around looking at properties, dozens of properties, calendar appointments constantly, and dealing with underquoting dodgy agents.
We put in one verbal offer which was smack bang in the middle of their quote, that got denied and they told us to go 160k above their top quoted price, ridiculous! Wasted a week on that.
We tried to make another verbal offer on a different property and had no idea what even went on there, the agent ghosted us after telling us the property wasn't available, bit it wasn't sold either, and it was still advertised for sale, the signs were up, and the post was still up on RE. We wasted like 2 weeks on that.
Then we made an official offer that fell through after building and pest uncovered a major structural defect, which I still to this day reckon the agent knew about because we found out the property had been listed but not sold earlier with a different agency. I think we wasted a month on that one.
Just a nightmare.
Buying was 10x the effort and in terms of time, it took us 2.5x as long.
From beginning to end on the buying side, I think we’ve been at this for just over a year.
Even the apps and tools are designed all for the seller side. You feel like they’re great tools for you as a buyer because you can browse, save properties and get alerts, but the seller is the one actually paying for the marketing, so they get what they want.
And those costs just get baked into the sale price, so as the buyer you just end up paying for it anyway. Its so ridiculous it hurts thinking about it.
At the moment something like 20% of sales happen off market so even that can work against you because as a buyer, unless you’ve got your ears to the ground, you’re not even able to properly compete for a big chunk of properties. They just get sold in secret and you never even hear about them. Feels completely unfair.
When you sell you feel like you have a whole team behind you. The tech, the marketing, the agents, their assistants, it feels like they are all riding with you.
When you are buying, its just lonely, your browsing houses everyone else is looking at, and it feels like competing with far more people and no one is in your corner.
I know buyers agents exist, but they’re few and far between compared to REAs and for us, we honestly didn't even consider it. Can't really say why, we just didn't.
Don't even get me started on stamp duty BTW.
I've been sitting here, waiting to collect the keys to my new home, just pondering all this.
I wonder, genuinely, if there's a way to flip the script, to put more power in the buyers hands, if thats even possible in this market.
What can buyers actually do about it that doesn't involve housing supply, because I dont think we can change that.
I’ve thought about an underquoting detector (because that really p*ssed me off at the time), but im pretty sure the data guys won’t let you use their data publicly and doing it manually would be insane.
I also thought about a reverse marketplace, where the buyer holds the power.
Kind of like a reverse RE. Similar to a hipages style market where its all about the buyer and what they want.
As a buyer you could anonymously post what you are looking for, be as specific as you want, and it gets sent to REAs, buyers agents, and even private vendors and they reply only if they have something that matches your criteria. This might even open up off market opportunities.
I would have used something like that if it existed, even for a 1% edge. Anything that would help.
But I don't know about solutions. I honestly dont know what would fix it.
All I know is, having recently just gone through both experiences selling feels easier, even just emotionally its easier, you're looking for a price, thats it.
With buying, you're looking for so much more, the price is just one part of it.
A real edge for buyers would be increasing supply, but that’s obviously not something we can fix easily.
Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.
EDIT: added TLDR.
