How to search for a property to purchase

What You Should know about property websites

            There are probably over 6000 property web sites in Australia listing properties for sale so where do I start and finish searching ? Well let’s have a look at the various types of property web sites in Australia

1.      Your portal type web sites such as ‘Domain’ , ‘Realestate.com’ , ‘Home Hound’etc

2.      Your franchise real estate chain type such as ‘LJHooker’ , ‘Ray White’ etc

3.      Your individual real estate agents web site [they could be part of a chain or an independent.

4.      Your niche market web site such as;

·         For sale by owner

·         Non – Traditional properties e.g. ‘Rent to Own’, ‘Vendor Financed’ etc

·         Investment property e.g. ‘postiive cash flow rentals

5.      Community and individual web sites eg ‘gum tree’  with free ads

6.      Classified ads sites like newspapers, ‘Ebay’, ‘trading post’.

What you should Know about property sale manipulation in Australia

            There is a virtual duopoly in the Australian real estate market something like the Coles & Woolworths market manipulators. This results from the following factors:

·         Approx 50% of realestate sales come about from web site search

·         Approx 40% of realestate sales came about from yard for sale signs

·         All type 2 and type 3 web sites upload or share their data base with type 1 web sites.

·         Only real estate agents are allowed access to list on type 1 web sites [check out realestate.com restrictive practices by trying to buy listing space for a private sale]

·         The Woolworths and Coles of Real Estate are Realestate.com and Domain

·         An individual wishing to purchase wants the full market info of property in his selected area so will generally choose property portal type sites to search, not a type 2 – 6 web site type for his search.

·         An individual wishing to sell wants maximum exposure for his property so he is obliged to use an agent so that his property can end up on a portal type website

·         The hits for type 3 to 4 website might range from 100 to 10,000/week. For a type 1 range might be 100,000 to 1,000,000/wk.

Sorting out the best value properties

            Once you have decided on the type of property / Location / features /budget etc desired you can then do the search on the major portal sites and the niche sites to get your short list to work through. Savvy purchaser’s most often prefer fsbo properties as this automatically eliminates the agents 1.5 to 3% of the asking price and means the the vendor is also open to negotiation as they can think out side of the box. These vendors are far more open to terms which can mean a significant difference in a purchase out come. Those vendors who can think way out side of the box usually offer a non-traditional sale to expedite a sale.

By all means check out the field on the major portals but ignore the niche sites at your expense.

Make Your Search Easy

You can search 95% of all listed property at the hot-properties web site. With the push of one button you can search the major portals and niche.You don’t need to spend hours searching all over cyberspace for Oz property web sites.