The Australian market is high functioning with high turnover, with not too much of a gap between buyers and sellers. We know we’re in a new cycle but there are a number of reasons why prices aren’t likely to drop dramatically. Since the RBA flagged the start of their monetary policy tightening cycle, borrowers were told to expect four to five interest rate rises. Some pundits are now predicting up to 20% price falls in some markets off the back of the supersized, inflation-busting rate rise. These were also the same pundits who were predicting 30% falls at the start of the pandemic. We’ve always said that we don’t have a crystal ball to predict the future. We work in the ‘now’. More worrying is a prolonged period of high inflation - which will no doubt lead to lower rates of household saving and may potentially weaken a prospective borrower’s ability to meet serviceability assessments from lenders. What we know right now is that our all critical appraisal numbers are up 62% on two years ago and 22% higher than last year. This gives us confidence that the spring pipeline is looking strong. Our volume of sales are also up on two years ago too. Scheduled auctions across our group remain higher over the last two years. The average days on market right now is 37, which is still a week shorter than it was five years ago. Our job has always been the same. To create competition for our sellers - and we can do that in any market. The process remains the same to market our properties as far and widely as possible for our sellers. We’ve never lost sight of that. Mark Roffey Principal, Ray White Maitland WHAT’S HAPPENING IN OUR MARKET?
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