Should you sell or sit tight?

THERE’S no denying that we are firmly in a sellers’ market

The latest sales and listings data from CoreLogic proves it, with numbers for the past quarter showing that property sales have surged against listing levels, rising to 171,100 nationally. This is 53.4 per cent up on figures taken at the same time over the past five years.

Meanwhile, only 121,200 new listings came on to the market in the same threemonth period, taking the ratio of sales to new-listings to a national high of 1.4, where 1 is balanced and anything more than that indicates strong selling conditions.

Over the past 10 years, the ratio has struggled to reach 0.9, meaning buyers have, for a long time, been in the driver’s seat when it comes to the property market.

After clawing our way steadily out of the hole that was the GFC, in 2020 the pandemic had the market temporarily on tenterhooks with everyone bracing for another crash.

It turned out to be a false alarm, and the property market has been riding a wave of record sales and price growth ever since.

Demand is outstripping supply by so much that some sellers are pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital growth on their homes in not just years, but months.

If you are fortunate enough to hold investment properties or a rarely used holiday home, have been land banking or perhaps are looking to downsize, now is the time to list your asset and, potentially, make your millions.

However, not everyone is in a position to capitalise on the buoyant conditions yet some homeowners are making rash decisions after being blinded by dollar signs.

I’ve spoken to a growing number of sellers recently who say they have put their properties on the market “because it’s too good an opportunity to pass up”.

But when I ask them where they are moving to, they shrug and say, “We’ll figure it out”, or “We’ll rent for a while”. Those words leave me uneasy. There is no doubt that most people who have owned their home for several years, could easily offload it in today’s market for a significant sum more than what they bought it for.

But if it is their one and only home, what purpose does it serve?

Selling your home with the idea of “renting for a while”, until the market cools and you can buy in the next market dip, is a risky strategy.

What if the market doesn’t dip? So whatever you buy in future is going to cost you at least what you sold your home for, and then some.

The catch-22 in all this, of course, is that the only way to even out the housing market is if supply increases to meet demand.

If you have a well thought out Plan B, by all means list your house pronto, you have a lot to gain.

If you don’t, forget dollar signs. It may serve you better to just sit tight.