Buying property-argh!

British Kiwi · #1 (**permalink**) 23rd January 2009, 11:11 PM

Is it me or is the whole close bid situation when buying property here, just not fair! And what's with all 360 plus! If the vendor wants an additiona. 10%, why don't they just put it on the price! Hmmmmm!
Anyway, we're in the process of looking at houses and was wondering what other people's experience were of house hunting in Oz.

Mel

interplanetjanet · #2 (**permalink**) 24th January 2009, 12:27 AM

We just bought a house here, and so far everything's gone smoothly (except the stupid vendors dented the brand new bathroom counter AFTER our walk through they day before handover!). We didn't buy ours at auction though, so I don't know what you're talking about. 360 plus? Additional 10%? I'm not sure what that means.

weelee · #3 (**permalink**) 24th January 2009, 01:50 AM

have you not thought about getting a builder to build you a house it seems to be a lot cheaper but the down side is it is not a short term investment.

try, [URL="http://mypackage.com.au"]

We have done a fair bit of investigating and it is the option we will be taking, the good part is it lets you evolve with the estate as more people have houses built

kaz101 · #4 (**permalink**) 24th January 2009, 05:40 AM

Property rules differ between the states. Here in South Australia we made an offer, haggled a bit and then settled on a price. No closed bids at all.

Offer made, haggled over and accepted in 3 days...

Regards,
Karen

British Kiwi · #5 (**permalink**) 24th January 2009, 10:27 PM

We've found that as long as you're the only person who is making an offer, you can negotiate openly. Though each time you have to sign a contract note and the offer once signed by the vendor is binding. Thankfully you can put subject to finance and building and pest inspections, but if they come back ok, you can't pull out. The problem we had with the last place we put an offer on is that when someone else makes an offer, both parties put their best offer and submit them, the vendor then picks one. You generally don't get to know what the other person has offered. So you could end up offering a lot more than necessary. And this isn't even for auction.

The whole plus thing is apparently a marketing ploy to get people in the door! I was told by one real estate agent that is not being used so much in the inner suburbs though. If a house is on the market for 380+ then it means the vendor wants 380 + 10%. Very strange and very confusing!!

So now we're back to house hunting. We've found another three and I'm not looking forward to the offer process!

British Kiwi · #6 (**permalink**) 28th January 2009, 10:35 AM

Hurray we've bought a house!!! Can't wait! And no multiple offers, yay!

Dolly · #7 (**permalink**) 28th January 2009, 10:42 AM

!! CONGRATULATIONS !!

It's a great feeling having a 'home' here....

Dolly

British Kiwi · #8 (**permalink**) 28th January 2009, 10:51 AM

Thanks Dolly. Once we recover from the stress of house hunting

we will start the celebrations!

By the way, what's the best beach to try body boarding on the Peninsula? We were told Rye, which we went to, turns out we were at the wrong Rye beach, oops!!