How to assess price in a rising market

One of the biggest hurdles for buyers at present is assessing price in rising market conditions.

This is common when properties are being sold for ever-increasing prices almost week after week, depending on the location.

Generally, buyer and seller price expectations start to expand to such a degree that the chances of a deal being done are slim, unless both parties have experienced negotiators on their side of the fence.

The last thing that buyers want to do, though, is throw a silly number at a property out of frustration because they have missed out one too many times.

Of course, this begs the question: How do you assess a property’s price in a rising market?

Truly recent sales

The average buyer is probably quite familiar with the sold sections of major online listing websites.

No doubt they spent many hours pouring over the results to try to help them work out what sort of property they can afford to buy in a particular location.

There are a few problems with this, though, as often those properties were sold too long ago to be reflective of the current market reality.

If a property sold more than even a few weeks ago at present, then the sales price may not be comparable at all anymore.

Another issue with easily obtained sales data online is that it doesn’t include off-market sales, which are happening all of the time regardless of the market conditions, plus many agents simply don’t disclose their sale prices to online listing sites.

This means that buyers probably won’t have a thorough understanding of the sales prices that are being achieved in their chosen location.

There may only be a handful of properties, which may not even be that similar, that they use to try to help them determine what price to offer. 

In a similar vein, we also have connections with local selling agents, which means we can find out about sales that have just recently occurred.

Sometimes, these sales have taken place a week or two ago and are unconditional, but the official sales record has not been produced yet.

These types of relationships allow us to have our finger on the pulse on sales activity and helps us to assess what is a realistic price to offer for a property.

Like with like

Speaking of comparable property, many buyers find it difficult to compare like with like when it comes to assessing recent property sales.

Buyers may not know the extra value that a certain percentage of additional land may bring to the potential market price of a property.

Likewise, when we are assessing price, we also take into consideration the property’s position in a street, its orientation, as well as whether it has potential for value uplift via subdivision or small property development more generally.

Ditto, when it comes to a property’s interior condition, such as more expensive flooring or perhaps renovations that have been completed to a superior level.

All of these factors are considered before we assess what is the best price to offer for a property for our clients – including terms and conditions that may be favourable to the vendor.

This gives us the very best chance of being the successful offer when vendors are considering which buyer ticks the most boxes for them.