Is it too late to list for a 2013 sale?

Over the past twelve months 4.25% of all houses in Melbourne have been sold. While this result is lower than the very strong years of sales over 2007 and 2010, it still represents almost one in twenty houses.

The suburbs featuring the highest number of sales in raw terms are those in the growth areas. Pakenham tops the list, followed by Point Cook, Berwick, Frankston and Craigieburn.

Frankston is the wild card in the list as it is not a growth suburb. This is reflected in the fact that less than 5% of Frankston houses sold over the year. The remaining suburbs recorded over 5%.

Accounting for suburb size some of the newer suburbs top the list. These include Wollert were over one in eight homes sold followed by Sandhurst, Lyndhurst, Brookfield and Cranbourne East.

A more in depth analysis of the list shows that a few suburbs would be considered as ‘established’ but whose high proportion of sales shows they are undergoing substantial change through infill development or significant new estates. The five most significant of these are Mount Martha, Oak Park, Pascoe Vale, Port Melbourne and Aberfedlie.

In the city’s north two of these suburbs undergoing a comparatively high degree of change and where large volume of sales are taking place. The small but well priced suburb of Oak Park with only 1,700 houses has seen 100 properties sold while neighbouring Pascoe Vale which is more affordable, has seen 247 of its 4,314 sold.

Is it too late to decide to sell this year? 

Following the encouraging results from the biggest week in history in the Victoria property market at the end of October for the Victoria property market some intending vendors may be have asking if it’s too late to sell at auction this year.

With only seven weekends left in the year when an auction can realistically be held, a decision to list for sale would not leave much time for a marketing campaign to make the most of your homes assets.

The most important person for a vendor to consult in making that decision is their real estate agent. After all, they are the experts at marketing and selling property.

The key matters a real estate agent will consider will be the length of time needed to prepare a home for sale, the preparation of the marketing campaign including taking high quality photos, the writing, bookings and placement of the advertisement.

These factors need to precede the actual sales campaign and be well executed to maximise the sale value.

The real estate agent may also consider the volume and types of listings scheduled for the time required to hold the auction.

For those considering selling by private sale there is a useful guide of the average time taking to sell a house at the moment which is the RP Data time on market measure. In the month of September houses took an average of 43 days to sell and units took 47 days.