Momentum is key for selling in Sydney and with spring activity creating media headlines with price rises and interest rate cuts, we took a behind-the-scenes look at why our vendors are seeing results right now.

The numbers tell the story.

We’re listing more plus selling more

News reports put Sydney stock levels consistently down, yet stock at BresicWhitney is up 29% in the spring quarter compared to the previous quarter and on par with the spring quarter last year.

BresicWhitney sold 91 properties in September compared with 60 in September 2018. With clearance rates at 81% for the month, we’ve maintained the flow of listings. The message is clear: our vendors are selling.

That means more buyers

Demand has increased for BresicWhitney properties and it shows in our open-home attendance. The average number of buyers through each property in September was double what we saw for the same time last year. Buyer numbers for the quarter also doubled.

Sep 2019: 13 attendees per open home
Sep: 2018: 6 attendees per open home

Across the quarter (July, August and September), BresicWhitney averaged 15 buyers per open home, up from an average of 7 for the same quarter in 2018.

The strength of buyer interest at the moment is obvious.

It’s driving off-market sales

One of the first things that subsided in the downturn was off-market selling. But this quarter, 23% of our sales happened off-market. That means the agent was able to bring about a sale without advertising and without major up-front outlay for the sellers.

Our Balmain office is a hotspot of this activity right now, selling a string of entry-level houses in recent months to a pool of buyers who became activated during the market correction. With Sydney now experiencing 4 months of consecutive price rises, those buyers have been outbidding each other behind the scenes without wanting to hold out for auctions.

It happened across all BresicWhitney offices last quarter from a $446,000 Darlinghurst studio, to a $4.5 million Surry Hills house.

Multiple agents for one result

Another anomaly setting BresicWhitney apart, is that our agents are encouraged to sell properties on behalf of other agents in our network. With teams incentivised to introduce  buyers to each other’s listings, the practice continues to drive results.

62% of our listings sold within the BresicWhitney network last quarter were sold to buyers that our agents were already working with, while with 37% of BresicWhitney sales for the quarter, the buyer was first introduced to the property by another BresicWhitney agent.

If you consider most real estate names in Sydney are franchised brands that don’t share information between offices, this is a powerful point of difference for vendors. We’ve seen Hunters Hill agents introduce buyers to Balmain properties, Paddington agents bringing buyers through Newtown homes, and more.

Looking ahead

The market has turned a corner to give sellers new hope, but optimism isn’t everything. They need more than that to sell successfully. They need momentum.