MESSAGE FROM OUR MANAGING DIRECTOR
We ’ ve been around as a company for 120 years . Never in that time has anyone or anything been able to accurately predict the future behaviour of buyers .
And thank goodness for that … it has kept us all in a job !
Our relevance stems from the reality that it ’ s folly to predict what buyers might do in the future . And so regardless of what commentators might believe will happen , our responsibility is to market property to find as many buyers as possible to create and maximise competition . We know from experience that making assumptions isn ’ t in the best interests of our clients .
There ’ s no better case in point than March and April of 2020 . I remember being at home and logging onto the online auctions we were conducting as the world literally shut down . At the time , the ‘ consensus ’ was a minimum price fall of 30 per cent . Yet , on the screen the buyers were clearly making their own decisions . The bidding was intense . And all of this before there were any announcements of government stimulus .
Where did their confidence come from ? Why was it that buyers were seemingly living in a different universe ? Of course , we ’ ll never know for sure . It just happened .
This was the reason we started publishing Ray White Now . We ’ re fortunate that we have the largest network of agents all using the same data collection software supported by a specialist team of data scientists and engineers . The best thing we can do for our clients is to give them as much information as to what ’ s happening now to support their decision making .
So are the same commentators right this time ? Is the market heading for a significant decline in sales numbers and sales prices given the recent and impending interest rate rises ? We of course won ’ t get dragged into that sort of speculation because no-one knows and we don ’ t think the world needs another opinion !
But what we can say is that we sold $ 5.7 billion of property in April 2022 . This was eight per cent up on the same month year . While the value of property sold was higher than last year , the number of properties sold was down six per cent . The average number of bidders per auction fell from 3.6 in April 2021 to 2.9 in April 2022 . If we extrapolate our auction data , there ’ s evidence that in some , but not all markets , buyers aren ’ t as aggressive as they were towards the end of 2021 for some types of property .
However , overall , April was a month of strong activity and results , and well above long term averages . Indeed , a very different story to most of the news headlines .
All of this activity occurred when it was clear to all that interest rates were about to rise . Buyers were buying knowing interest rates were rising . And they are buying today knowing that it ’ s likely that the cash rate will increase another 100-150 basis points .
With new listing numbers still strong , it promises to be a fascinating period of time for the Australian market once the federal election is behind us .
Dan White Managing Director Ray White Group
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