A win for buyers!

Finally further progress is being made towards a fairer playing field in the real estate market which in my view will be beneficial to both buyers and sellers! The Review of Vendor Disclosure for Residential Property Sales in New South Wales headed up by Matt Brown MP is something I have strongly supported.

The review has recommended that vendors who sell their home via auction be required to provide a pest and building inspection which, by my estimates shared at the forum in Parliament House on the 15th of September, will save buyers in excess of 40 million a year on duplicated reports for the same property in NSW alone preventing thousands of buyers from going through this expense when there’s no guarantee of a purchase.

Underquoting by selling agents aside (which is another issue in itself) there can be only one winner at an auction and all too often I hear of buyers who have outlaid thousands on pest and building inspections for several properties up for auction – none of which they’ve been successful in buying when the hammer has fallen! Needless to say they become very frustrated at that point and aim to avoid auctions altogether or worse they keep attending auctions and stop obtaining pest and building or strata reports in the lead up. The recommendations from the vendor disclosure review will certainly go a long way to address this problem.

I have to say I am really disappointed that the Law Society and the Real Estate Institutes are not strongly supporting this reform as every solicitor I have spoken with about this and the majority of the good real estate selling agents (and I speak with a lot in my role) are in support of the reform.

Of course this is just one step forward (but a big one) with the recommendations still to go to Cabinet shortly for discussion - so we will wait while the lobbying by the self interest groups try to squash the proposed recommended reforms... Let’s hope with fingers crossed that public interest will be put first by Cabinet members and that they support a sensible and beneficial reform.

For a summary of the current position take a look at this week’s article by the Daily Telegraph.

If you’re interested in learning more about being successful at auction read my best-selling book – The Insider’s Guide to Saving Thousands at Auction