Buying Off The Plan | Good or Bad?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
It's The Real Estate Podcast brought to you by Ray White, the largest real estate and property group in Australasia. And welcome to another episode of The Real Estate Podcast. Well, we're talking to Tim Abbott from Ray White Lower North Shore. Welcome to The Real Estate Podcast. Thanks very much, Craig. The Lower North Shore, I've noticed that there are some new apartments and townhouses that are popping up there. Are people buying off the plan? Like, is it a pretty good time to get into the market in the Lower North Shore? Yeah, absolutely. We're big fans of the Lower North Shore. We all live here and work here and spend a lot of time. And buying off the plan has become very popular. Yeah, we only market off the plan properties once the DA is obtained from the council.
Therefore, it's a relatively quick process from sale to moving in, somewhere in the order of 18 months to probably a maximum of two years, we find. You know, it's interesting buying off the plan. You get a lot of people that conceptually, they just can't get their heads around buying off the plan. But the minute the crane and a bit of activity goes in, oh, heck, we've got to get in and have a look at it. Too late. They've already been sold, you know? That's exactly right.
What benefits do buyers see in purchasing property off the plan?
We find some people prefer to buy properties that they can see or that they can move into straight away. But the problem is that there's a substantial shortage of suitable new dwellings in the local area here. So we do find that people are willing to commit, even if that means waiting for them to be ready, because when you're making a decision to find your next property that will suit you for the next 15 to 20 years, it's important to ensure that it is exactly right. Yeah, because not everybody has that visualization like you and I, Tim. We can visualize it. We can look at it on the plan and we can see ourselves living there, but not everybody has that. So they can talk to you about that. You can say, look, there's nothing to be scared of here.
Let me just explain the steps, how we do it. Yeah, that's correct, Craig. It is an important thing to be able to explain it correctly. And we spend a lot of time before we launch a project with the developer, just making sure that we understand every single thing about the development. But you will have seen that in some of the marketing that's being done these days with off the plan projects. What we call CGI's or the computer generated images of the interiors and the exterior of the building are exceptional. And actually it helps the architects and the developers work out individual little details of the building. So both they and the customer have a really clear idea of what it's going to be. And so there are no surprises.
Everything's thought through and documented well in advance. If it is an 18-month to two-year period, it actually works quite well for a lot of property owners. It gives them enough time to get their existing house ready for sale. They don't have to move out straight away and allows them to get ready for the downsize or the upsize, whatever move it might be in a stress-free sort of timeframe. So how has the apartments and the townhouses fared with regard to the COVID and what's been happening of late? It's a good question you ask. I think through COVID, everybody's been spending a lot more time at home. And so understanding how the study spaces, how the workspaces, living spaces and so on work, everyone's a lot more au fait with planning and how to spatially work out a townhouse or an apartment.
In regards to the market, we found that it's been surprisingly resilient in this area of Lower North Shore. people have had a lot more time to be searching for property whilst they've been in lockdown. And we've had two lockdowns here. The first month of lockdown was a little bit quiet when everybody was just working out how to work from home and what to do. But after that, once people have got back into the mode of looking for property, we've had some very, very strong months with people buying things off the plans.
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