Saturday, Aug 08, 2009
Melbourne estate agents facing prosecution
The Age (Oz): Probe finds underquoting breaches
Melbourne estate agents have been breaking local laws by advertising properties at significantly lower prices than the estimated selling price, thereby boosting demand for the property and feeding the buying frenzy at auction. Funny thing that.
Posted by monty @ 02:43 AM (417 views) Add Comment
3 Comments
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1. mander said...
Is housing a legalized monopoly? I mean at any point in time if you take 10 shoppers for a certain product they will have a choice of at least 10 products but with housing they sell us the shortage and supply and demand stories. However the practice of the players in the housing market has never been regulated:
Builders practice for example when they will not put on the market houses unless they have 20 interested buyers who will end up paying an arm and a leg. But on the other hand it is illegal for supermarkets to buy land around them in order to stop a competitor building another supermarket close to them. Will builders buy land close to each other and build in the same time?
Organizations with interest in the housing market to go up are allowed to publish reports instead of having only an independent body making expert reports.
And before I become too boring houses are not even brand new goods as the rest of the goods ; they have been used like twice or 3 times already and have been paid off a few times.
2. p. doff said...
Don't know how it works in Oz, but it's standard practice here for a low auction guide price to be quoted in order to drum up more interest and a higher attendance at the auction.
3. crashpad4me said...
Bit the reverse in the UK. I heard a very brief mention on Radio 4's Today programme this morning (unfortunately had to get up) that the NAEA are complaining the valuers are downvaluing properties by up to 10% with the result that sales and remortgages are falling through. Well, we know the answer, don't we children?