What a crazy, zany property year it has been. Early on, Aussie trophies such as Altona and the ‘Bang and Olufsen’ house went to Chinese interests – for $52 million and $33.5 million apiece no less.
Perhaps that’s what fired up the property market this year? All those rich Chinese, armed with their $5 million Significant Investor Visas, wanting Sydney property. A harbour view would be nice, but these invaders would be just as happy if you had an 8 in your house number, or you were on a big block near a posh school. No matter if it was an old house, they’d just knock it down and build a brand new one.
By the Queen’s Birthday Weekend in June, after everyone had the stylists through to make sure their homes had the right feng shui, the Sydney auction market roared back to life. Auction clearance rates of 80 per cent, every weekend just about. Nothing to do with the lowest interest rates since the 1950s, of course.
On election day on September 7, when there were just 215 auctions because sellers got spooked thinking the buyers would be voting, the clearance rate was 87.6 per cent. It was one of the highest clearance rates on record.
Now there was no stopping the property market. Listings had been few and far between in the first half, but now everyone wanted to sell: the big 600-auction days of September became 900 by November, as buyers became sellers of their redundant properties.
Then, just 11 days before Christmas, the biggest auction day ever of almost 1000 auctions and 300 more this Saturday.
Ludicrous.
But not quite so ludicrous as the ABC’s so-called ‘‘Fact Check’’ service, which reckons it has found the real reason for all this property-buying nonsense. And it’s nothing to do with pent-up demand or low interest rates – or the Chinese.
No, it was everything to do with the devious auction clearance rates methods of Australian Property Monitors, owned by Fairfax Media. Those dastardly analysts were cooking the books, or, the Fact Checker said, ‘‘fudging the figures’’ with its auction results reporting.
The Fact Checkers revelation was that, surprise surprise, the APM team had failed to collect 100 per cent of the results from agents by Saturday night and based their clearance rates on a mere 70 per cent! The scoundrels!
Never mind that APM has used the same methodology for decades, through booms and busts. And others, such as RP Data and real estate institutes used exactly the same clearance rate methodology. Or that election voting intentions are decided on polls of about 1000 people from 23 million.
The fact checkers – and the ABC News editors who thought the findings so worthy that they made the headlines last Sunday night – swallowed hook, line and sinker the crazy ramblings of an Aquasia credit strategist called Mark Bayley.
What’s Mr Bayley’s proposed solution to all this? That the clearance rate should be based on an assumption: all of the unreported results are properties that didn’t sell.
So, for example, rather than the 76.1 per cent from the 636 results that APM knew about on Saturday, the true rate, he says, was ‘‘a dim 51.2 per cent’’ from the 995 scheduled auctions.
Now you’d expect the ABC ‘‘Fact Check’’ service to come down hard on that kind of methodology. That truly would be ‘‘‘fudging the figures’’. But instead of inquiring into that wisdom, ‘‘Fact Check’’ chose to condemn the data provider – specifically APM.
Price exceeds $10 million, a week before Christmas.
China’s love affair with Mosman continued this week with a waterfront trophy home selling for more than $10 million.
The five-bedroom house at 35 Carrington Avenue, with it’s own private jetty and expansive views across Quakers Hat Bay and Middle Harbour, sold to a mainland Chinese buyer on Wednesday night for an undisclosed price .
Selling agent Tim Foote of Belle Property Mosman said the property had been marketed both locally and abroad with a price guide of $10-$12 million.
(35 Carrington Avenue, Mosman.)
The sale price was “well within that range”, said Mr Foote.
An expressions of interest campaign had ended on Tuesday night and the deal was finalised on Wednesday night - exactly a week before Christmas.
‘‘We had three offers – the other two were from another Chinese buyer and a local family.”
As revealed by Fairfax Media, this year buyers from mainland China have accounted for well over $50 million worth of high end property transactions in Mosman alone.
APF - a place where serious people don't take themselves too seriously. There's nothing else like it.
Steven Nicholls is the National Editor of "Domain" at Fairfax Media. A completely unbiased and independent observer of the RE industry...
Let's face it, APM doesn't publicise any systematic followup to its reported auction rate clearance figures, which might correct for a "concentrate on success" bias from the reporting agents. Unless and until it does, an APM apologist like Steven Nicholls deserves to be treated as the hopelessly compromised source of drivel about auction-clearance-reporting that he is, particularly when he attempts to denigrate real journalists reporting on the same topic.
Steven Nicholls is the National Editor of "Domain" at Fairfax Media. A completely unbiased and independent observer of the RE industry...
Let's face it, APM doesn't publicise any systematic followup to its reported auction rate clearance figures, which might correct for a "concentrate on success" bias from the reporting agents. Unless and until it does, an APM apologist like Steven Nicholls deserves to be treated as the hopelessly compromised source of drivel about auction-clearance-reporting that he is, particularly when he attempts to denigrate real journalists reporting on the same topic.
Hey....APM figures " are timely and free". What more do you want?
Accuracy?
Don't be mad, thats the last thing mortgage slaves need.
The want to look at house prices and say "i bought it for $250,000, & sold it a decade later for $500,000....i made a fortune !!!"
How clever are they when they don't count interest , maintenance, taxes and duties costs?
WHAT WOULD EDDIE DO? MAAAATE! Share a cot with Milton?
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