With greedy investors in the market buoyed by the bad policy settings, Australian families are increasingly forced to give up on the dream of owning their first home with house prices up by more than 20 per cent in the past year - the biggest increase since mid-1989.
However, price is not the only hurdle when it comes to buying your first home. The game also requires making sense of and navigating misinformation and doggy agents.
As old as the real estate business itself is dodgy real estate agents with plenty of tactics up their sleeves.
If you wanted to make an offer based on the list of recently sold comparable properties the agent sent to you, think again.
This is a real dangerous game that can end up disastrous for the first home-buyer.
Back in April and May, we received a number of buyer reports about their recent home purchase prices overstated on realestate and domain property listing websites (the sold prices displayed were nearly 10% higher than the actual price they paid).
As their agents were dragging their feet when asked to correct the reported price, they were convinced that there was something more than an innocent mistake in play.
Today one of our readers sent the below screenshot showing a home buyer's post to one of the popular first home buyers group on Facebook:
Should you care? Well, such misreporting of sold prices distort appraisers’ valuations, especially automated quick property value tools offered by most banks and property listing websites.
These systems use suburb recent sales data to identify “comparable” houses to help estimate the values of homes on the market for sale.
Accurate appraisals are particularly important to first home buyers because, unlike experienced investors, they use such quick valuation tools to make their mind. If you offer way above what the property is worth based on such distorted sales information, the bank’s valuer will come in under your purchase price.
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