By Grace Ormsby
06 October 2022 | 1 minute read
The real estate coach and trainer has lent his thoughts on the current spring-time property market conditions.
Speaking on a recent episode of Real Estate Exposed alongside Phil Tarrant, Tom Panos shared his insight into current market sentiment. Based on conversations he is having with local agents across Sydney and Melbourne, he revealed his own perception of the changing market, stating: “I think we’re close to the bottom.”
Highlighting that the clearance rate’s gone up after hitting “rock bottom” across July and August, Mr Panos also pointed to the fact that Brisbane’s correction has also hit, while Adelaide’s has “only just begun”.
With these corrections having led to price falls of 15 to 20 per cent this year alone, he doesn’t expect that to continue — in spite of the situation that’s playing out in the United States, where inflation is “out of control”.
Instead, what Mr Panos is now seeing “is that there’s a bunch of buyers that are thinking to themselves, ‘you know what? We might only have a few months before there are people back in there again — this is good buying’.”
If that is the case, and the market is already bottoming out, it begs the question of “how long will it stay bottomed out?”
According to the coach and trainer, “it’s a billion-dollar question”.
“It affects the behaviour of so many people that want to buy real estate at the moment, because the number one fear that buyers have is not fear of missing out like previously, but fear of overpaying.”
Mr Panos went on to explain that buyers are now in the paranoid stage: “They’re paranoid that they’ve worked really hard to save a deposit and they’re going to buy a property for $900k and it’s going to be worth $800k. That’s the fear that people have.”
To counter that, he professed that buyers need to be aware that there’s another fear they should be mindful of: missing the window of opportunity to buy at a really good price.
“It wasn’t in March. It wasn’t in May. It may be right now, from what I can see. You might have another six months maybe,” Mr Panos said.
Even then, the return to capital growth could come even sooner, with Mr Panos pointing to discourse around the idea that “the Reserve Bank doesn’t want Australians to feel poor at Christmas”.
“Their narrative may change. They don’t want to have Australians sitting in their house traumatised with fear, not spending money over Christmas.
“So, there is a possibility that we’ve got November pricing rate increases,” he contemplated.
Listen to the full conversation with Tom Panos and Phil Tarrant here.