Now is the time to dust off the marketing guff for hard to sell Sydney properties as listings fall in hard to buy areas and the time on market for small apartments declines.
Agents claim a fall of nearly 10 per cent in the amount of listings in some areas around Sydney when compared to the same period last year means the properties that are normally hard to shift in a soft market are now selling twice as fast.
Raine & Horne Summer Hill principal Gabriela Rodriguez said properties that previously took three months to sell last year are now being snapped up.
“I’ve sold properties on main roads, close to the railway line, that have no balconies or parking that would have been very hard to sell in softer markets,” Ms Rodriguez said.
Deal breakers tend to be overlooked in such markets, according to Raine & Horne Newtown co-principal Michael Harris, who said nearby civil construction plans often have no effect on sales in such a market.
“In quieter markets, properties built on streets with road widening clauses, for example, will be very difficult to sell, yet in a market like we have now, they will sell in a timely manner.”
Lisa Saurian, director of Raine & Horne Parramatta, said apartments without lock-up garages or internal laundries were traditionally the deal breakers. However, the current market is pushing them out the door.
“Recently we sold two one-bedroom apartments for $270,000 and $295,000 and both didn’t have internal laundries,” Ms Saurian said.
“These properties sold in two weeks, whereas in a softer market it’s fair to expect they would have taken months to transfer owners.
“A one bedroom would have been particularly hard to sell since it’s only 48 square metres. With tiny apartments such as this, the banks request that borrowers have bigger deposits, which can make them harder to sell.”