Your Domain: Shelley Craft and Chris Kohler on making the right property moves

Spring has sprung. Flowers are budding, bees are buzzing and, most excitingly for a nation of property voyeurs, the real estate market is emerging from its winter hibernation.

The traditional spike in listings and corresponding bounce in agents’ steps brings equal parts excitement and anxiety for vendors and buyers alike. But while spring 2019 promises to be a unique market – some would say uncharted territory, but more on that later – the experts say the universals of buying and selling remain unchanged.

As design maven and a co-host of the Channel Nine renovation juggernaut The Block, Shelley Craft has seen plenty of theories floated on the art of the best real estate deal.

“There’s a big difference between renovating with an eye to making a profit and renovating to create your ideal home,” she says. “You can follow trends and try to make something that will appeal to that fictitious buyer in your head, but if you inject your own style into the project people will respond to that emotion because real estate is at its core an emotional business.”

Television audiences are now able to see Craft’s real estate know-how transcend The Block as she host Nine’s new property show Your Domain alongside Nine journalist Chris Kohler.

A property show with a difference, Your Domain – which airs Saturdays at 10am – is about the here and now facing Australians who have an active interest in the property market, whether looking to buy or sell, or finding themselves somewhere in the middle of the cycle.

The hour-long weekly show is replete with tricks around increasing the value of your property, getting it ready for sale, choosing an agent, deciphering market statistics, and finding the financial wherewithal to answer the big question: should I?

Craft is in the distinctive position of having 20-plus years as an owner and renovator since buying her first property – a Gold Coast apartment off the plan – about the age of 22.

“The thing is, there’s always something new to learn even if you’re flipping your fourth house,” Craft says. “One thing I’ve learnt to be suspicious of is the idea of the forever home. My houses have always been my ‘forever for now’ homes. People are always evolving, and families are always evolving so there’s really no point saying to yourself, this is the end point and setting your mindset accordingly.”

For Craft, who has renovated and sold “a fair few houses in my time, across Victoria, NSW and Queensland”, it’s always a good time to buy – as long as you’ve done your homework.

“In Australia, no matter what the broader market is doing … there is always an area where you can find a good buy,” she says. “When I was a kid, we had family holidays in Noosa and now my parents always say, ‘If only we’d bought something’.

I don’t believe in the ‘if only’. It doesn’t sit well with me.”

So – should you?

Co-host of Your Domain and reporter for Nine News, Kohler’s take is that the 2019 spring market presents unique advantages for people on both sides of the property transaction.

“The secret is in knowing how to approach what has become quite a unique market right now, with interest rates at historical lows and clearance rates high,” Kohler says. “People have a hunger to know where that leaves them, and there are certainly opportunities to be had. Anything can happen.”

The annual increase in competition at this time of year can yield unexpected results, for one: “The analysts and economists I’m speaking to say it’s expected listings will pick up so the big question mark is, will clearance rates remain as high as they have been, or will listings create an equilibrium?” Kohler says.

The other variable earmarked by Kohler is that market consensus anticipates another interest rate cut from the RBA before the end of the year. “The question mark there is when will it come and how the market responds to it,” he says.

“We had back-to-back cuts in June and July and the latest data show a strong lift in Sydney and Melbourne prices in August, so the theory is another cut will push that further. There are considerable questions, however, to what extent the big lenders are going to be able to pass on the full interest rate cuts now that we’re below 1 per cent on the cash rate.”

A cut sounds like the harbinger of higher property prices – but the experts aren’t calling a repeat of the last boom.

“I’ve heard a lot of commentary along the lines of now being the time to launch yourself into the property market with your ears pinned back,” Kohler says.

“Recent memory dictates that when property prices rise they’re going at double-digit gains per year but the experts who make the most sense to me say we shouldn’t be expecting a big ‘V-shaped’ recovery, in which it shoots back up in the same amount of time it went down.

“They’re saying it’s going to be flat to positive, so the mass urgency is possibly going to be a little short-lived.”

One of the take-home messages, Kohler says, is that first-home buyers have reason for real hope for the first time in a number of years. “It was really rough there for a while with double-digit price growth … but there are gaps to be identified in the current market. There’s most certainly hope for people looking to get that first toe-hold.”

Your Domain,  10am Saturdays on Nine.

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