Melinda Jennison

put them ahead of others to understand what it takes to secure an opportunity.

But there's definitely things that may enable a buyer to be more competitive in a strong seller's market.

And the most important thing in relation to that is being ready to buy.

And I cannot stress enough for buyers looking to purchase in Brisbane that they do need to be finance ready first and foremost.

When you are competing with multiple other buyers in a real estate transaction, the seller will always have the opportunity to select the best offer.

And sometimes that best offer, when it is a sale by private treaty, is not the highest price.

It might be an offer with the best terms.

So being finance ready enables a buyer to be more competitive when it comes to putting forward an offer that may need a finance condition.

Yeah, and I think people that are looking to bid at an auction always need to think about finance in advance because that's purchasing unconditionally.

However, in Brisbane, auctions are not the most common way to purchase a property.

Instead, most of our properties, the majority would sell

by private treaty and in a strong seller's market what that generally means is that you are competing with multiple other offers and that's why being finance ready and being able to shorten a finance time frame when you're putting forward an offer that's conditional to finance works to your advantage as a buyer because ultimately sellers want that certainty and they want to know the buyer that they select

is not going to be taking too much time before they know that the sale's going to go through and that's unconditional.

It is a question we do get asked quite often and my response at the moment based on what's happened in the last few months and what is likely to happen in the future is of course you can wait and compete with fewer buyers but you have to be prepared to either purchase in a location further away than what you had originally anticipated or accept a property of a lower quality because if prices continue to move you'll be priced out of the market.

So you really have to either compete with other buyers now

or accept a compromise later down the track if the market continues to appreciate in value.

Well, look, I don't like to talk about Australia as one property market, but certainly understanding Brisbane and the supply and demand drivers, not anytime soon.

There's simply too many buyers that are active in the market.

And we'd either need to see a fall in the number of buyers or a massive increase in the number of listings.

So supply, which is the number of properties available to purchase, is also down about 28%.