Should your home be always for sale?
Around 40% of Australians move every 5 years. So, is it time for a mind-shift change when it comes to the permanence of our properties? Should we think of our homes as "always for sale"?
Residz Team 3 min read
Along with the Great Resignation, Australians are also undergoing the Great Shift. Even before Covid-19, just over 40% of Australians were moving every five years, more than twice the worldwide average. With that in mind, should your home be “always for sale”?
A mindset shift
Being “always for sale” doesn’t necessarily mean listing your home, but rather staying in touch with its value and the real estate markets generally. It’s a mindset shift:
- Away from having a vague notion as to your home’s worth;
- Towards continually monitoring your home’s worth the way you monitor your bank account or your health.
- Ready to spring into action if a DreamPrice(™) is offered.
Forever no more
With the rapid changes in lifestyle happening these days, it is unlikely that your current home will be your forever home.
The pandemic has shifted our attachment to permanence and living in any particular city. With video conferencing, it’s not as important to live close to where we work or where we were brought up.
Being fluid
Campervans and 4WDs have become hugely popular. Sleepy towns are enjoying a revival from digital-natives-turned-digital-nomads.
Being mentally prepared to sell your home year round is tapping into that spirit. It’s being fluid, not fixed. It’s seeing home ownership as an opening up of possibilities.
What’s it worth?
The humble home is the largest component of household wealth, and the world’s biggest asset class. The time that suits us to sell may not coincide with the timing of buyers able to offer the best price. It’s like selling shares when you need the cash, not when they’re booming. Knowing what our house is worth at all times (being “always for sale”) puts us firmly in the driver’s seat.
The home as an asset
The home is no longer the family “seat” kept for generations. It’s an asset, and its value is rising in a hockey stick pattern. According to study No Price Like Home: Global House Prices, 1870–2012 the price of a house in the 1960s wasn’t much different to its price at the beginning of World War I. But from the sixties, prices rose steeply as rising demand, higher transport costs, and regulations on land use made the family home more than triple in value.
Your home’s value
This rise in value means selling a house at exactly the right time can make or break a family’s fortune. It isn’t (and shouldn’t be) like selling a car. As we said, being “always for sale” doesn’t necessarily mean listing it, but keeping in touch with its value and the property market.
Changing the mindset
If you’ve ever sold a house you’ll know that sinking feeling when your agent tells you the market has shifted. “It’s a buyer’s market right now,” they’ll say, hoping to lower your expectations so you’ll accept yesterday’s lacklustre offer. But if you have the mindset of “always for sale” you already know the value of your home at any moment, and the subtleties of the markets.
DreamPrice(™)
Always for sale is more an attitude than an action ie. being open to a sale and monitoring the market so that when and if your DreamPrice(™) can be met, you can accept it with confidence that you are informed. A DreamPrice(™) is an aspirational sale price set by the homeowner on their address at Residz.com.
Buyers and sellers
Buyers can find homes right now that are for sale only if they can match the DreamPrice(™). Although the properties aren’t on the market, Residz passes on any interest to the homeowner anonymously. It’s a new concept that’s just taking off, but the early signs are that both buyers and sellers like the idea. As well, Residz.com shows the average price of homes in the suburb, so you can keep track of your home’s value.
For sale 24/7
What would change if you adopt the mindset of your home being “always for sale”?
- You’d monitor neighbourhood property sales, and average suburb prices on Residz.com.
- You’d seek our experts in the property industry such as solicitors and conveyancers.
- You’d research real estate agents.
- You’d declutter. Owning only things you love (as organiser Marie Kondo advises) makes your home a showpiece year-round.
- You’d clean. You’d repair broken things.
- You’d improve your home’s visual appeal (which would lift the whole neighbourhood).
- You’d adjust your DreamPrice(™) based on your needs and circumstances.
Summary
Waiting until a house no longer suits your needs and then quickly researching the price you want to achieve seems out of step with the digital age of “always on”. Given we are always discussing property (“Australia’s national sport” says former Selling Houses Australia host Andrew Winter), perhaps having every homeowner thinking of their property as “always for sale” will lift this sport to Olympic-level!
Image: A modern house in Bronte (2006) by Charlie Brewer
