Hi

I went to an open on Sat in Aberfolye Park - Sunset Close, the price was offers over $340,000. Anyway the open was cancelled because the lady was ill, the agent took names and contact numbers.
While I was there for minutes, 4 or 5 viewers gave contact details.

Just looked and the open is this Sat but the price is now $385,000 ?

How can they put the price up and expect to get away with it, Im going on Sat and will ask why ?
I know its obvious why she has upped the price with all the interest but I hope they don't sell it now.

A fed up with house hunting

Tina
:sigh:

They can ask whatever they want for a house, and can change the advertised price anytime they like. Let's face it, it's just a "price guide". Any offer you submit in writing, must be presented to the vendor, regardless of what the agent tells you.

I'm not an expert but it is really pretty easy.

Whether they changed the advertised price or not, it could still go well above that for final offers. On any occasion where something is offered for sale - in a shop even - it is just that, an offer for sale. If you wish to buy, you offer to buy. The deal is only closed when the shop agrees to your offer to buy (which is why, if they have put an incorrect price on it and you offer to buy at that price, they are fully entitled to refuse your offer to buy and correct the ticket price).

One wonders whether it was the number of callers that caused the increase, or the pommie accents... :ph43r:

:sigh: Hi Tina, I do sympathise. It seems like a bit of a raffle buying a house - you never know just how much will secure a house purchase.

We are only just starting to seriously look, but not keen already on the vagueness of house pricing.

Maybe see you Friday at Glenelg!


Karenx

One thing that can help is if you keep an eye on realestate.com.au over a few weeks, or even just get your search sorted by most recent listing first - then you know you have a bit more bargaining power over the older ones that haven't sold yet. But I do agree, it can be very dispiriting when you think something is within your range and goes for way above, we've been caught that way too :(

Then when you put in an offer, make the most of anything like being able to move when the seller wants, or cash purchase if you're really lucky, or mortgage arranged in principle etc - that's the kind of thing the buyer will be looking at if he's choosing between several offers. If a buyer looks good he may not even go for the highest offer if you can suit his timescales.

All the best with your search, I am sure that things will get moving much more once Christmas is out of the way.

Exactly the same thing happened with us with our rental - the price went up by $20 a week after they realised the amount of nterest in the house.

There was nothing we could do if we wanted it and unfortunately that I guess will ultimately be the case with you.

Nikki
x

its such a pain in the backside, it happened to us twice after we had put our offer in, its also maddening because half the time the houses arent even worth the 20,30 or even 40 thousand dollars more that they are asking for. the last time it happened to us i told the realestate agent that we wasnt gonna up our offer, which was already above the original asking price, cos we didnt want to feel forced to offer even more for a house that just wasnt worth it.

is that right Elaine, I thought they had to sell at the marked price.
I'm sure there is a law about it, don't know the right term But .....but something along the lines of Gaining interest by deliberately marking up products lower than they really are hoping you will by it anyway when you get to the till.
Thats why they must sell for the marked price.
This has happened to me twice here.
once when I filled my car up at 13c a litre (because they were in the middle of changing the price over) so it cost me $6 for a full tank.
and buying a microwave in Target, they had the smaller version tag on the large microwave, it scanned at the higher price then I pointed to the price tag and it saved me $50.

Hi Tina

Yes we had the same thing happen. I think there are not enough houses for sale at the moment to go round. Don't give up I'm sure in the New Year something will come up.

From our experience when a house is up for sale for eg $360K+ it seems the vendors actually want 10% more.

I found house hunting very hard here, but I'm sure the more you look, the more of an idea you will have on what the houses are really worth.

Good Luck

Martha

It is hard and I agree with what Martha said 10% more is the expected range, I would say if possible try to do as much research as you can, speak to the agent, take what they say with a pinch of salt and try to talk to the neighbours to find out about the vendors situation.

An example of this is - My aunt and uncle are currently looking to move, the agent told them what the vendors would sell for (around 7% more than asking price in this case) my aunt and uncle went to put a conditional offer in based on this info and were told the vendors don't want conditional offers as they have already bought a new property at auction- this indicates to me they would take less than the asking price for a short settlement, so they can get rid quick. My point being it pays to find out as much as you can about the situation so that you know what you could realistically offer.

Good luck with house hunting

You are correct in what you say. An added bonus is if food supermarkets charge you more for a product than the price ticket says, you can ask for it for free. Its under their scanning policy. If you buy six of the same thing tho you will only get one for free and the other five at the correct price.

That's certainly correct in the UK and I believe it is also correct here. If they let you have it at the mis-ticketed price that is purely goodwill, and I've profited from that a couple of times too :)

This covers it a bit http://www.ocba.sa.gov.au/consumeradvice/s...sing/index.html

It says they can 'withdraw the item from sale' if they realise the ticket is wrong. Which is basically what I was saying - that until they accept your offer to buy, there is no contract in place.

Interesting Wiki article here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offer_to_treat

"A shop owner displaying their goods for sale is generally making an invitation to treat (Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v Boots Cash Chemists [1953] 1 QB 401). They are not obliged to sell the good to anyone who is willing to pay for them, even if additional signage such as "special offer" accompanies the display of the good. (But see bait and switch.) This distinction was legally relevant in Fisher v Bell [1961] 1 QB 394, where it was held that displaying a flicknife for sale in a shop did not contravene legislation which prohibited offering for sale such a weapon. The distinction also means that if a shop mistakenly displays a good for sale at a very low price it is not obliged to sell it for that amount [1]."

So it looks like the same laws apply here - after all, you'd otherwise be able to swap labels in the shop and buy your tv in Big W for 99c instead of the choccy bar :happy45:

But in practice, I know that a shop often will let you have it at the wrong price to keep your goodwill so it's always worth asking ;)

Hi

I emailed the agent asking why she had increasd the price since last Sat, this is her reply:-

Hi Tina and thank you for your email.

The vendor has asked to change the price on the internet, because people tend to always negotiate down.

He will be accepting, however the best offer between $360 and $385.

Please don’t let the price scare you.

It’s a great value for money home.

I will be there on Saturday between 12-12.30.



Kind Regards


Its mad !!!!

I think that you'll find that what Elaine has said is true. Most of the time the shops will sell it to you at the reduced price as it's good customer service to do this but when I worked in retail I was lead to believe that the shop had the right to withdraw the item from sale and reoffer it at the correct price.

the women selling the house is wise - a house is only worth the value of what the market is prepared to pay - wouldnt you do the same? - the estate agent gets their fatter slice of the cake too - its a buyers market just as it has been for years in the uk

anyone who says house prices are cheap here needs to wake up - unless you buy a new build up north/down south which as the saying goes you get what you pay for in terms of location facilities and house price inflation

adelaide is cheap if and only if you arrive with a very large deposit or purchase outright your own home- cost of food lower wages increasing utilities all paints a picture of economy no different to the cost of uk living if you have a large mortgage

my advice - get on the property market quick and reap the massive house price inflation that will be around for a while yet

i would need 600-700k to live in a small modest house in the areas i think are the nicest.....i wish

Unfortunately I tend to agree with a lot of what MUPPETBRO is saying.
The north of Adelaide in particular is having a massive boom!
When we arrived 14mths ago we were looking at the 375k-400k mark for a 4bed 2bath pool on 800sqm+.
We havent found 'that' house in the perfect-for-us location, but our budget for that type of house is now over 500k.
We went to see a house last night that is getting towards the 'perfect' house with a price tag of 650k+. It is grossly overpriced but the market is supporting it.

Rant over!

V

Hi

I know houses are not 'cheap' in Adelaide, Im wide awake to that fact.

What I was just pointing out is that no viewers have been in the house and within less than 1 week the price has gone up by $45,000.

Thanks for all the tips on house hunting, I look everyday on realestate and select the most recent sales.

Leaving it now until the New Year.

Happy Christmas

Tina

tina no worries chuck - - i never post directly to a person and am always generic and always type what is my opinion - sorry if people dont like that but there is alot of unrealistic trash flying on forums - usually from experts who havent set foot on this land..... :D or 24/7 flying brigade who just cant say some things.....

however our experience - we were outbid twice - both times i told the estate agent my offer was final and im not getting into phone line bidding - both occassions we made bids which would have been great bargains but we were not ticking all the boxes so we were cool...

our previous landlord - an estate agent himself - said go onto real estate and get email alerts - ring asap you see a house that smells good then insist on an early viewing before it goes to an open weekend - we viewed a house 24 hours after receiving email alert - i then made an offer on the house which i said i want an answer within 24 hours - one call the next day and an additional 5k second and final offer sealed the purchase for a quick sale - put the estate agent under pressure and be firm with timelines and dates..we were lucky and i reckon our house now would fetch 30k more if it were to go to an open weekend inspection as 2 houses down the road on smaller plots fetched 30 k more than we paid.....

end of the day you have to decide what you think is a good price for the house - we got 900 size plot which is fantastic for growing family a nice average 3 bedroom house and most importantly a nice quiet the same house in brighton would be double the price easily! (700k or more?)

hence the reason why so many new arrivals and young adelaidians are being pushed further north and south out of the city is cheaper house prices -

all the best in your search - it will happen when you find the right place, your never going to lose $ in property over here - just dont be tempted by cheap house prices which look to be good to be true - there are many areas i wouldnt have a house given to me as i value my kids upbringing too much

p.s. may be selling our house with a free car thrown in in the new year !

Out of curiousity i had a look at the house you mentioned Tina. I bet the real estate agent is fed up as she has obviously given the vendor a realistic selling price estimate, entered into an agreement to sell it, and now been told to up the price to (in my opinion as a seasoned property buyer) a totally unrealistic price for this particular property. When it fails to sell the agent will no doubt get the blame for being useless. A quick trawl of realestate.com shows a fair few other places for sale, similar size, in Aberfoyle Park, Woodcroft, Happy Valley, Old Reynella for between $300K and $340K so don't despair, and January will bring even more choice and you'll find somewhere before too long I'm sure. Muppetbro's comments about the buying process are spot on.

I also found myself spending an afternoon trailing round all the realestate agents in the area we wanted asking "do you have anything coming onto the market not listed yet."

This led to being put on e-mail and text alerts for a lot of the agents, this gives you a jump sometimes on opens not advertised in the paper etc. It also turned up a few properties that we could suss out before they were advertised anywhere and request viewings if we wanted. It can be really hard to get them to let you view before the open we found.

We found it hard, you view on sunday, think about it monday, offer tuesday - and its already gone! Still seems to be a sellers market at the low-mid end price range.

Ok Thanks for the info Elaine, Guess Ive just been lucky then.
I suppose on the petrol front, her telling me it came to $75 and me saying it was more like $6 so she had better come and siphon it out had a lot to do with me getting away with it.
;)

Its a nightmare. We searched & searched, with 2 fed up boys who also had a wish list !!
It really is hard. I certainly don't think you get any properties for the price they are advertised, perhaps up to 10% more - less than 5% if you are lucky.
Its very hard work, don't let it get to you, one will come up. The thing I found most hard is when you are narrowing down the suburbs, then you really are looking at the odd 2 or 3.
Fingers crossed for the New Yr.
Merry Xmas, hope to you soon
Angela x

Try Doug at ozzyjock he's an estate agent down south & should be able to help you out.

Tim

Hi

It is a sellers market, at the original price it would have been worth looking for a good 'do up house'. Good location, not a through road.

Thanks for all the tips and contacts.

Tina

I reckon its overpriced by about 80K but worth it to get in with the very nice neighbours :D :D :D

Jo x

How could I not buy it when you live down the road?!?!?!?! :D
I am wearing Daz down, so that offer may be coming - just not at 650k!!!!

V