'This is our moment': Why these buyers are pressing ahead with their search

Trish Braithwaite wants a place of her own.

She settled on her house sale two months ago and, together with her cat and her dog, made a temporary move to her sister’s house to give herself some breathing space to find the right property to buy.

Braithwaite is a cash buyer looking for a Brisbane townhouse and thought locking in a purchase would be a breeze.

However, while the rapidly escalating COVID-19 situation has not altered her buying intentions, it may have ramped up efforts from the competition in a shrinking property pool.

“There’s a lot of townhouses for sale now, but not so much in the areas I’m looking in,” Braithwaite says. “And anything I’m interested in sells before I even get a foot in the door.

“I recently found a property I liked owned by a lady in her 70s. She was going to move to Geelong but now she doesn’t know if she should move at all.”

Braithwaite has turned to buyer’s agent Scott McGeever, of PS Property Advisory, to try to secure a home. McGeever, a spokesperson for the Real Estate Buyers Agents Association, says he is still busy and hasn’t had any clients decide to delay their house hunt.

“I think there are a lot of savvy people who can see opportunities for buying,” he says.

McGeever is seeing a lot more off-market transactions and anticipates a drop in stock levels in the coming weeks.

“It’s bound to happen with people being nervous about the market,” he says.

For Parker Buyer Advocates director Lisa Parker, the next two weeks offer a brief window of opportunity for Melbourne buyers.

“I had one of my buyers contact me and ask me if he should increase his budget because he thinks now is a better time than ever to capitalise on the market and buy a better property,” she says. “He’s looking long term and buying blue chip and taking advantage of other buyers’ uncertainty.”

Parker reports that while the daily inquiry rate for her services has dropped, existing clients are sticking with their search.

“It just depends on whether you’re optimistic and see the opportunities or fearful and that fear gets in the way of buying.”

Josh Pattenden decided he had nothing to lose at last week’s Ray White Taylors Lakes auction night. He and wife Allison had been trying to buy their first home for four months but had repeatedly missed out on properties that sold in excess of their budget. After a tense, hour-long bidding war on Wednesday night they again lost to a bidder with deeper pockets. Then their luck turned.

“There was another house [going to auction] that wasn’t on our radar because it was in a nicer suburb and we thought it was out of our price range,” he says. “We hadn’t been to see it.”

When no one made an opening bid, Pattenden asked Ray White agent George Skizas for advice.

Skizas said it ticked all the boxes on their wish list. A short time later the Pattendens signed a contract at the reserve price for a home they hadn’t laid eyes on.

“We ended up paying $5000 more for it than our final bid on the house we wanted and it’s a better house on the same sized block of land. It seemed like a no-brainer.”

Pattenden speculates that buyers may have been concerned about coronavirus and stuck on a “do we or don’t we” cycle.

“You’re going to need a house at some point,” he says. “And the house is still going to be standing once the virus comes to an end.”

After scrimping and saving for more than a year, Joanne Peters and her husband finally got their finance pre-approval in February and engaged buyer’s agent Rich Harvey of Propertybuyer to help them find their new family home in Sydney’s northern beaches.

Peters believes the pandemic will give buyers the upper hand, if only briefly.

“We’re in the midst of COVID-19 but we’re kind of excited because we see it as an opportunity in our favour,” she says. “Even though the world is uncertain, I think this is our moment.”

Peters says she lost money on the sale of her property in Perth last year and sees the current climate as a chance for a little redemption, an outlook shared by Harvey.

“Times of uncertainty and volatility have always proven a great time to buy,” he says.

“Vendors are more negotiable and willing to meet the market.”

Peters says she feels really confident.

“Hopefully we’ll get something in the next few weeks,” she says. “A lot of vendors are a bit uncertain so it might be a really good time to make deals. I think people will want to sell quickly because they don’t know what the future will hold. But I think it’s a very short window as a buyers’ market before it returns to a sellers’ market.”

McGrath Double Bay’s Ben Goodwin says inquiries spiked last week, although he’s not sure if that’s because people are bored sitting at home in isolation or genuinely interested in buying.

Goodwin has entered into off-market negotiations in recent days with two buyers keen to buy “before it gets any worse” and says being able to set up deals with so much negativity in the press shows the market is still strong.

“People will always need to buy and transact real estate no matter what goes on in the world,” he says. “Right now as it stands, I’m seeing a really solid platform of buyers all across the range of properties, from studio buyers all the way up to trophy assets.”