There’s a way to inspect a home (even in lockdown)

219 views 2021-09-07 12:31:33

We speak to the team behind the most intriguing recent property sale.

The property: The five-bedroom house at 12 Dana Avenue, Blairgowrie, Victoria. Sold by private treaty for $3.4 million.

Who was the agent/agency? Rob Curtain, Danielle Vains, Peninsula Sotheby’s Real Estate.

How long was this on the market? [Curtain] It wasn’t quite three weeks.

Why did this one sell? It sold because there’s a lack of quality property on the market at the moment with the lockdown. We should be in the peak selling period coming into summer, but agents are holding off putting property on the market. We can’t do photos and we can’t do videos. This vendor did their own walk-through video and had a member of the family who was tech-savvy enough to edit it. Due to the fact that we were able to give someone a detailed walk-through video that was professionally done, someone felt comfortable enough – more than one in fact, we had two buyers – to put an offer in, sight unseen.

Was it overpriced? No. It’s the market.

What did you think it would go for? The top end of the range.

What was surprising about it?

The buyers came down the day after they secured the property and did the final inspection. Then we marked the property “under contract”.

Everyone’s entitled to a final inspection. Nothing in the rule book says a final inspection must be on the day before settlement. No-one’s said it can’t be within three days of exchanging contracts. Who defines when the final inspection is?

In contracts, once they secure the property, we’re writing their final inspection will occur within three days, within the cooling-off period.

We’re encouraging them to come and do a final inspection on the third day, so if there is an issue – say, there was a two-storey house next door that didn’t come up in the Zoom inspection, they’ve got the opportunity to [pull out].

As an agency and respected agents, the last thing I want is to sell a multimillion-dollar house to a buyer who, when they turn up 60 days later for a final inspection, thinks they’ve bought something they haven’t, or find there’s someone overlooking the back fence.

What happens if we’re still in lockdown at settlement in 60 days’ time?

They couldn’t do a final inspection if we were still locked down. We would make sure the property is in the same order it was when they did the inspection during the three-day cooling-off period.

We, as agents, are representing the vendor, we got the price they were happy to accept, but we also represent the purchaser to make sure they are getting what they paid for.

The risk is the vendors may leave the house untidy, they may not clean the windows or carpet or knock a door or the paintwork. But that’s a lot better thing to deal with if you had final inspection in the cooling-off period, than finding the house hasn’t met your expectations and you don’t wish to proceed.

It’s de-risking a property purchase made sight unseen and giving a purchaser a huge escape valve in case there is a problem that wasn’t highlighted to them in the marketing collateral in making a decision to enter into a private negotiation without an inspection.

What was lovely was at the final inspection, the house exceeded the buyers’ expectations of what the house would be when they got there. Not only did they wish to continue with the contract, they walked away even happier.

Do you reckon we’ll see another result like this: a) next week b) next year c) next cycle d) never?

a) It’s going to happen next week. It’s not the ideal way of selling real estate, but it’s going to keep going.

 

This article is from Australian Financial Review, please click the following link for the original article: https://www.afr.com/property/residential/there-s-a-way-to-inspect-a-home-even-in-lockdown-20210906-p58p3i

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