Selling at a fixed price

Home's coming to market with a listed price, so a fixed price, currently are the largest portion of the Southern Gold Coast listed property, so they're about 30% of the total market down here. So this method involves the vendor naming a firm figure. And it's the most transparent method for a buyer, you know the number before you walk in the door. It's really common on units and townhouses, nearly half of that stock is a fixed price stock. And that's because comparable sales are quite easy to do on those types of homes. From buyer's perspective, you've got the least amount of friction because you can filter, you can compare, you can rule in and out instantly, and a clean price often signals a vendor who's done their homework and knows what they want, or wants a fast low drama sale. From a seller's point of view, you're setting a clear anchor, but the risk is leaving money the table if demand is hotter than expected or scaring off buyers if your price is set too high and the listing goes stale. Agents will pick this method because the property is easy to compare if it's got lots of similar recent sales or the vendor has a firm number in mind or the market is steady enough that a price won't be overtaken by competition either up or down. So, private treaty really dominates on our market, it's usually about 60% versus auctions at about 8%. Whereas auctions are a seller's tool for hot competitive markets, where they likely flush out the most competitive buyers, bring them all together and get the best price in those types of markets. But when a market softens or balances, auction shares fall over and offers over rises. So we get less auctions in those markets and more offer only. So at Fields we generally view private treaty as a good method outside of really hot markets for a couple of reasons. Firstly research by realestate.com.au has shown that 72% of buyers skip over homes that don't show a price. So homes going to auction are getting viewed by a far smaller pool of potential buyers than those that are listed by private treaty. and secondly many homes failed to sell at auction so I've just discussed the low auction clearance rates we have right now and the study showed that those failed auction homes tend to sell just over 1% less than those homes that sold via private treaty