Before you commit to selling your property with a full public marketing campaign I suggest you do what dozens of people are now doing - they are giving us a call at EPS to let us know! Every year we buy several properties from people who have contacted us privately to let us know they are intending on selling their property in the near future...

I’m very excited to be able to share the news that EPS Property Search has taken out top honours in the Asia Pacific Property Awards in association with Bloomberg Television! At a gala event in Hong Kong the EPS team was named the Best Property Finder for both Australian and Asia Pacific in 2010...

Just last week we bought a great property with magical views over middle harbour for $1.6million. The vendor bought it in 2003 for $1.55million. Ok, yes we bought about 100k below what we feel was fair money for the property (not easy to do in such a strong market). However the question that came to mind was how much did the vendor overpay by 7 years ago?

It’s not easy to work out however based on comparable sales in 2002 and 2003 and factoring in market growth since in the suburb we feel around the $1.3million mark would have been fair money in 2003. In short, after factoring in buying and selling costs the vendors have lost a substantial amount of money. So how does that happen?...

People probably get sick of hearing me say that prospective buyers must research the market. Well this time I will let independent property analysts Residex explain just how important it is to understand current market values.

An article in The Sunday Telegraph recently reported that “a quarter of Sydney homeowners who bought and sold their properties during the past five years lost money” and that these losses were attributed to a combination of factors namely “poorly informed buyers and over-the-top valuations”...

Just the other week one of my clients was gazumped a matter of hours before exchange by, in the agent’s words, "a substantial increase on our agreed purchase price".

It turns out that the purchaser had not internally inspected the property or conducted a building and pest inspection...

Gazumping happens when a buyer reaches a verbal or even written agreement to buy a property with a vendor, however before the “contracts are exchanged” a second buyer comes in at a higher price, or offers better terms, and contracts are instead exchanged with them – leaving the first buyer high and dry.

Is it a fair practice? Probably not if you’re the buyer who missed out, but if you’re the successful buyer or the seller then I’m sure you’re going to be ok with it...

I read an interesting article the other day by property analysts, RP Data, which showed that Sydney properties located in the premium postcodes had a significant increase in values above and beyond less prestigious areas.

The report showed a significant variation in the growth of values across the different price points over the last five years...

We’re seen most financial institutions tighten up their lending criteria since the global financial crisis and considering what happened around the world on the money markets in the last 12 months it’s hardly surprising.

Recently, Westpac announced that first home buyers would need to meet a loan-to-valuation ratio of 87% instead of the previous 92%...

If you’ve been house hunting for a while and you come across that perfect property you’ve been looking for it’s tempting to rush in and try to buy it as quickly as possible.

The selling agents are sure to tell you that they’ve had plenty of interest already and that it’s unlikely to stay on the market long, and you may start to feel the desperation of missing out on your dream home...

The countdown to Christmas has begun and the pressure is on to organise the gifts, the lunchtime feast and holidays away. While it’s important to have fun and enjoy the break, don’t get too carried away and blow your budget – particularly if you’re saving a deposit for a home or investment property...