Reporting property transactions to a central body necessary: Curtis Associates

Reporting property transactions to a central body necessary: Curtis Associates
Jonathan ChancellorAugust 27, 2015

Reporting all residential property transactions within 24 hours of contracts being exchanged to a central body is just one recommendation Curtis Associates has made in their submission to the inquiry into Home Ownership.

Curtis Associates believes exchanging contacts of buyer and seller, agreed price, improvements made to the property and its cost would help create a fairer housing market in Sydney.

Curtis Associates said that there is an obsession with the drama of auctions and their clearance rates as well a, an obsession with median prices as a measure of market performance. 

"Agents are presently free to choose what data to report, when to report it and more important, what data not to report - especially if it conveys a downbeat impression of the property market.  

"Prices paid at auction are usually higher than those negotiated in a cooler private treaty environment; the latter of which account for about 75% of all transactions per week.  

"The auction results published by APM each Saturday night/Sunday morning exclude mid week auctions and thus account for less than that 25% of all such transactions."  

"It is submitted that comparing movements in raw median prices is like comparing apples with oranges. 

"Acceptance of the practice of keeping some sales prices confidential; the most absurd illustration of which being sellers who assert confidentiality over a price paid at a public auction. 

"For someone attending such an auction, that price is not only freely available, it is often a source of entertainment culminating in applause. For someone later researching the same price remotely, the result is a silent 'Price Withheld'." 

"In the equities market, such discriminatory withholding of information would almost certainly be unlawful." 

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.

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