Hey Retrac, I have a few very close friends that are real estate agents around Sydney, mostly in the northern beaches area.
Even though I trust their judgement to some extent, it's quite obvious they will always sugar coat the state of the market as it's in their best interest.
In saying that, they are being straight forward with me in regards to investing and believe that prices are likely to remain flat for quite some time, no need to rush out and buy something anytime soon. If you do buy now, providing you buy in the right location you'll be fine, but just don't expect any solid returns in the short term if that's what your plan is.
For me, I'm personally trying to get out of the market for investment reasons and just stick with my primary home as a place to live.
We've been trying to sell our beach house which has been in our family for over 50 years, it went to Auction a couple weeks ago. Not a single Bid. The Auctioneer had 6 other auctions that same day and not a single bid happened for any one of those too.
A few years ago the next door neighbours home sold at Auction (much less of a location and knock down home btw) sold for $1.58 million. We got one cheap offer which I'm not going to disclose but it seemed like a slap in the face considering it wasn't even close to our reserve.
Unfortunately, we are now going to settle for something much much less than we believe it was worth.
This is our listing, currently under offer. I guess what I'm trying to say is unless you're buying a place to live, I would refrain from investing into the property market any time soon. That's just my personal view as property holder.
