E122 // Is Selling in Winter a Good Idea?

E122-Selling in Winter
Episode:E122
Show Title:Is Winter a Good Time to Sell?
Cast:Aaron Horne, John McGregor & Patrick Berry
Show Length:20 minutes 38 seconds

The Boys are back and they couldn’t be more excited about it. John has been away in the Philippines and filling his chair has not been an easy feat!… so with great pleasure we announce his return to the Property Pod for a fun and engaging chat that sometimes resembles a small semblance of being property related, but is mostly three old friends catching up on company time!

Watch here, or listen wherever you get your Podcasts.

TRANSCRIPT:

Aaron
What I want to talk about today on the lighter side of the fences, is winter a good time to sell?

John McGregor
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Berry
Well, I hope the answer is yes. Tomorrow, my house goes up for sale, so I’m hoping the answer is yes that this topic is.

Intro

Intro
Going Once, Going Twice, SOLD!…. You’re Listening to the Property Pod!

Aaron
All right, guys. Welcome back to the property powered your weekly engagement into real estate in the Hobart marketplace. I’m your host, Aaron Horne. And I’m stoked to say that from here on out. We’re going weekly for the rest of the year.

Patrick Berry
I was going to say I thought we’ll buy weekly these days as.

Aaron
Committed to the cause, and we’re going weekly again. Like it’s been a rough ride. People have been scared that there’s no more show anymore. And I can’t believe that I got tech saying, what’s happened to the property for what I did? Yep. So we’re we’re kicking forward and we’re back with a vengeance.

Patrick Berry
Thanks, Aaron’s mom for texting.

Intro
She.

Aaron
Really liked the last week. She thought Josh was a good listen.

John McGregor
Spewing in the day was wasn’t there for it actually could be nearly a month and a half since I’ve actually been back on the market.

Aaron
Yeah. So, yeah.

Patrick Berry
We put out two episodes. It’s been rough. We’ve had to. Jon, you’re the glue that holds us together.

Aaron
Run us through where you’ve been, my friend. Because I got back from a little bit of time away, and there I’m, like, sitting in this studio ready to go. And I’ve said to Pat, said, what’s happenin? And he’s not back yet. They might tell me two days ago that he’s gone to the Philippines.

John McGregor
He’s gone. Yep. Yeah, well, that’s exactly where I was. So my partner, Kathy, she hadn’t been back there in eight years. So it was my first time over in the country. Loved it. It was was very different because we didn’t do your traditional staying at resort holidays or anything like that. We’re with her family out in the provinces.

John McGregor
Yeah. And the that’s I mean, it’s just such a different world. And when you get home, it really gives you an appreciation for just how lucky we have it in Australia. Indeed. And but one thing that caught me was I’ve never had a worse month sleep in my entire lifetime. It was I was absolutely wrecked by the time I got back.

Aaron
Yeah. A little holiday from the holiday.

John McGregor
Well, that’s I, I was home for a week before I could get back to work. I was in bed until like 1:00 every day until Thursday. And the only way I got back on my like must have been jetlag. And no sleeping was on Friday. Saturday night I end up buying a bottle of red wine drunk. All of it slept like a baby.

Intro
And woke.

John McGregor
Up at a normal time. And I was. I was healed.

Aaron
You hit the reset button, and you’re all.

Intro
Good people, like.

Patrick Berry
McGregor racing.

Intro
Yeah, exactly right.

Patrick Berry
Your dad’s a fine lover of that reason as well, isn’t he?

John McGregor
That’s probably that’s. I think it’s the Scottish cure. It has to be.

Patrick Berry
This God is giving the.

Aaron
Scottish you. I don’t mind that at all.

Intro
Yeah, yeah.

Aaron
But yeah, just give us a quick rundown of your time there. So it was a surprise for Cathy’s mum, her.

John McGregor
Whole family, for everybody. One of her brothers knew the whole, the whole scheme because she’d been spending about a couple of months trying to get the house that she bought and built for them years ago. Yeah. Prepared a little bit more for us, too, because it’s summer over there. So it’s 30 degrees constant so it’s hot as. Yeah.

John McGregor
And I mean she’s not acclimatized that weather radar. So we had in our bedroom air conditioner so you could retreat to it if you needed to. So you just come and sweat like, like sweat bullets and then like, oh, I need five, five, 5 minutes respite. Go back into the room, come back out. Ready for the world again.

Aaron
Yeah. So you’re saying like, like just generally day to day, they’re not using air con at all. And they had to kind of bring it in for the Western influence to be like, we need to well, say.

John McGregor
Just, just in our bedroom as well. Yeah.

Patrick Berry
So it.

John McGregor
It looked, it looked pretty bad, but I don’t think anyone now none of the brothers or cousins or cousins or cousins or cousins cousins and cousins and uncles and aunts and cousins paid any attention because that was the thing, man. There were people running around everywhere.

Intro
Yeah. Wow.

John McGregor
She’s got this because in that little province in the pocket there, the her and her family name is in Corbo. There’s so many connectors. Arnie Arnesen, uncles, all in that area. Yeah. Fantastic. Then the house was just a drop in center while we were there. And you just feed people, feed people, fade people. I’m not being malicious in that statement.

John McGregor
It’s just funny, because that’s exactly what was happening.

Aaron
Yeah, well, I guess, like, sharing, sharing meals and sharing food with with family is one of the best things you can do, and it’s a great way of learning so much about each other. So, yeah, having all these people come back and obviously see her that have missed her. And then to be able to say like, Oh, let’s break bread.

Aaron
Exactly. And yeah, that sounds fantastic.

John McGregor
One of the first ones was to learn how the, how to share the bees. Were the bees with the brothers? And there’s the words like to the guy or something, I’m getting that wrong. But rather than every you know, you have a bee, you have a beehive, a B and we all just cheese is it. You have a glass and I’ll pour it for you.

John McGregor
Then you pour it for the next person. You pour for the next person. We swap the glass while drinking this big red horse, which is, you know, the light beer that we could get like 6.9% pretty pretty damn strong. Yeah. But what happens is, is that your drinking habits become shocking because you sculling every single drink because otherwise you’re sitting there sipping and it’s almost like everyone is just staring at you waiting for that glass to come back round in the turn again.

Aaron
Yeah, you’re feeling the eyes on you just being like, Hey, buddy.

Intro
Given the drink was a drink.

John McGregor
So the second we walk in there, there was a got in. I settle down for 5 minutes and then one of the neighbors came along, gave me a glass of beer. The skull, which I didn’t give, was just skull and then it went around so fast, I never thought I’d got another few glasses in. I start to feel a bit woozy, and then another came in and had this coconut wine that they had, and they gave me a glass of that.

John McGregor
And so we hadn’t been there for 30 minutes. And I was really heartbroken.

Intro
To take the bag.

John McGregor
But then we then for that time, we did do a couple of tours around a couple of different islands. There’s another Pasqua which is sort of resort island tion, which is another a larger, larger province. Yeah. And but most of our time was spent in the house with the family and school, which was a great experience in itself.

John McGregor
And at the same token too, we needed to when we got a bike, we just needed to go away because there’s so many kids running everywhere. So walk out the door and hear this Danny John that John Fedi John’s gone to the John’s they replied with the kids was fine, fine little YouTube. And so then I just, I go back to the room, take 10 minutes, cool off, they come back.

Intro
That guy, the guy yeah.

Aaron
It sounds awesome. Yeah, it sounds like a really cracking trip. Yeah. You’ve come back with a new lease on life obviously after your. Yeah, Scottish cure.

Intro
Yeah.

Aaron
Guess so yeah. If we saw you last week, we tried to record last week, it might have been good.

John McGregor
I couldn’t even talk. Well, I would have been asleep more than anything.

Intro
It still would have been good.

Aaron
But yeah. No, it’s great to have you back in the studio. Yeah, things. The wheels kind of fell off a little bit. There were. We’ve been trying to get everything going, but yeah, probably got to back and I’m laying it on the line. That one. There will definitely be an episode next week.

John McGregor
Well, we need to.

Patrick Berry
Teach about that, guys. Either way. White.

John McGregor
We need it teach me how to use the disc because that way then I can step in on that side.

Patrick Berry
If we can’t. John because you’d be making an episode every, every 5 minutes. Welcome. Back to John Talks.

Intro
Oh, yes, we better talk. Really.

Aaron
Really nice. It’s been so long that we haven’t caught sight but look, it’s winter. Today is the start of my father’s dove recording. So my first kicking into action today. There’s some really great stuff coming like, winter is such an exciting time of the year now that you can kind of do these things. Snow has fallen so low, probably the lowest I’ve seen it this early in the year.

Aaron
In Forever. We went and recorded a little footy teaser for the big freezer. That was really funny. Marty and Shaun yesterday got the snow, was puking down on them. As we were driving up, it was rain that turned into snow. And then as we got to the stage.

Intro
It really wasn’t there. It just started.

Aaron
Puking as we set up, as I was there’s probably not enough snow here. It’s not settling. And then within 5 minutes covering the ground, they probably made snow angels if they wanted to.

John McGregor
I when I watched the video, you could see that in their faces. They were like, we immediately regret this.

Intro
Wait till Thursday.

Patrick Berry
They’re going to regret it more.

Aaron
But yeah, so it’s wintertime things are kind of crazy out there in the real estate market at the moment. I don’t know if you guys want to comment on that or we can have a pretty fluffy we don’t have a fluffy episode.

Patrick Berry
Or a crisis number. We can.

Aaron
Get deep into some stuff, don’t.

John McGregor
We can keep it light because there’s still a lot to report on that would be worth wait until next week. So I mean, the interest rate rises and then talk of inflation and increase in so much stuff. So I think rather than trying to bluff our way through it, let’s, you know, get some data and stuff like that.

John McGregor
We can chew on that next week, hang on.

Patrick Berry
Just to confirm, this is the first episode where we’re not going to bluff our way.

Intro
Through something we don’t stay talking about made this. That doesn’t sound like this podcast.

Patrick Berry
I thought that was our goal in life was to bluff our way through something.

Intro
I really think.

John McGregor
It’s considering a big talk about me and Philip the Philippines doing a one I didn’t go straight into the the effects of interest rate rises might be a bit too much of a change in.

Aaron
Direction. I was going to say as a choose your own adventure, I feel like let’s steer clear of that. But promise that will be back definitely next week. That’s it.

John McGregor
So easy fixed.

Aaron
Now talking about kind of how that’s affecting the market and how that’s affecting people out there. What I want to talk about today on the lighter side of the fence is, is winter a good time to sell?

John McGregor
Oh, yeah.

Patrick Berry
Well, I hope the answer is yes. Tomorrow my house goes up for sale, so he’s hoping the answer is yes to this topic for today.

Intro
You better believe it.

Aaron
Well, like that’s an interesting point. Like, if you’ve hit the button and decided to sell, you’ve got a block of land that you want to build on and you’ve decided it’s time to sell. Is that a consideration? It’s winter time. So should I be doing it now or not?

Patrick Berry
Me as a real estate agent, you’re supposed to be an educated person that knows the ins and outs of the industry. I’ve chosen to buy a property in the higher end of the market. Then decided to build when building costs are at all time high, $3,000 a square meter. And now I’m trying to sell right in the midst of a bunch of interest rates.

Patrick Berry
You know, hopefully it works out in the long run. But.

Aaron
You know, isn’t that just the very way all like this awful barista is? She’ll be right, mate.

Patrick Berry
We’re gonna figure it out as we go.

Aaron
We’ll figure it out.

Intro
That’s always been pretty good.

Patrick Berry
But now I think winter is a great time to sell. I think, for starters, you know, a lot of people get nervous about selling winter for some reason in their head. You’ve got to have the perfect sunny day to sell a house. I actually think the opposite. I thought for quite some time, and I’ve done blogs on it in the past and I website selling in winter can be a super time to sell to buy because you can almost see the property at its worst.

Patrick Berry
So if you see it at its worst, you know it’s going to be freaking great in summer.

Intro
Yeah.

Aaron
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a really good point. Like, rather than kind of saying the dolled up version of it, that’s yeah, like put on full display. It’s kind of like if it’s raining, you’re going to find out whether the water’s coming in the doors or if there’s a really big wind gust. You’re going to find out whether it’s a drafty house from it being in its worst condition.

Patrick Berry
And look at the rain we’ve had over the last couple of weeks. Like if you were to head up to the property when it is bucketing down, you’re going to see how it flows off the block. You’re going to see how it reacts with the area. And, you know, that can be some really great info moving forward to know about a house like what was it about three weeks ago when John was away?

Patrick Berry
We had those big floods or floods in Glenorchy.

Intro
Was I.

Patrick Berry
Remember you a little bit about four weeks ago, right, Mary? Right. Yeah, yeah. Water was like a river coming down. You’ve never seen anybody go down Mary’s Hope Road like it was Jesus I mean, I drove through it and it was literally like a river, but it was then turning on directly present and then hitting this house at the end of the frickin street.

Patrick Berry
Oh, no. Like it had no way to go. And I was just like, Oh, that’s so bad for those people. But I guess this is a great example of how you can see a house and how it behaves in different weather.

John McGregor
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Patrick Berry
But, you know, so you can’t do much about, like, rain. You got to be out of work, which is what it is. But, you know, we’ve seen you can counteract it with blind, you can counteract it with air conditioning. So there’s ways to make a house comfortable in the summer months, but it’s hard to fix all the problems.

Intro
Yeah.

John McGregor
Especially when there’s a river river running through your house. I’m trying to explain that away. Just get some sandbags. Good. You know, it will include some.

Patrick Berry
Water feature two times every ten years. You’ve got a front swimming pool that is perfect.

Intro
For enjoying some photos from last week. Look at the kids. They love it.

John McGregor
I don’t know who they are, but I’m sure they live nearby.

Aaron
I’ve missed this place. I’ve missed.

Intro
This. This is why we.

Aaron
Do it every.

Intro
Week.

Patrick Berry
So, you know, I think there’s bonuses to sell any winter well.

John McGregor
That was that was certainly all about, you know, looking at it from the purchasing perspective and from and I think yours is a classic example. First off, first and foremost is that you’re not picking the season in which which you do things. You’re doing it as you like. I’ve had.

Patrick Berry
To. Yes. So you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.

John McGregor
Exactly. And I think if you are selling in winter, people are going to be looking for some benefits of the place, too. So yours actually really works well. Like you can heat all the rooms. Well, you can.

Patrick Berry
Straight on that if you’ve got a would hate a fire that bad boy up one.

John McGregor
Hundred percent.

Patrick Berry
You might get a sweatbox in there because the Wood eight is working so well.

John McGregor
Because all of a sudden all the things that didn’t make sense in summer, like all of a sudden really, really work well in winter because you’re looking for that cozy feeling, right? So it’s that all of a sudden trying to work all those other ones that would other be otherwise be and nothing point can actually still work to your strength.

John McGregor
You know, and all.

Aaron
But like heating is a massive one, like even currently at the moment, like when it was just me and Sarah in the house, it was fine to have just the heat pump that we put in kind of pumping through the house and doing what it did. But since we’ve got the two boys now and they’re both kind of getting into their own bedrooms, heating the house and heating their bedrooms, trying to make sure that they’re warm in the night time has been something that we’ve been pulling our hair out with, you know, for the last month and a half being like, Oh, what are we going to do for the winter?

Aaron
Like Snowsuits suits.

Intro
Just grown better, boys.

Aaron
Well, yeah, look, we’ve looked into everything. I was looking into heat transfer kids, so we looked into putting a ducting system in putting in smaller heat pumps. Someone said, I’ll put a gas during. I was like, Oh, when we moved in, we had a gas to, like, pull that thing out and sold it on Gumtree. So. So yeah, that kind of the house is, has been working fine for us in it’s like previous function.

Aaron
But now that we need it for, you know, heating the whole family, making sure all the rooms are a warm, toasty at night time. Yeah. It’s something we’ve got to consider. So yeah, being able to walk into a house that you’re looking into in winter and knowing that, oh yes. Wait, they’ve got heating across all pages or rooms.

Aaron
Yeah, we’re covered.

John McGregor
Well, another thing, when we even in our office was that last week we see, we saw that across all the open homes we had not one home had what, more than five people at that. And it’s a that is very common in during these winter months where this is the lowest turnover of property historically. If on it’s February, March, April and then September, November, sorry, September, October, November, they’re just where like most the houses sell because obviously that the tail end of the nine seasons.

John McGregor
Yeah. So I mean from a purchasing perspective you might find that you’ve either got you may have more choice but also to people are holding off. So if you’ve got if you can if you are selling in winter you may find that there’s an opportunity where there’s almost still very little of properties and you know choice available because everyone’s waiting for that good season.

Patrick Berry
So if you’ve got a house that fits the season, take advantage.

John McGregor
Of it bank because.

Patrick Berry
You’re up against less competition. You wait to spring the market floods with lots of new stock, so no competition.

John McGregor
So yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it’s sort of it’s a hard one because you can talk about both from both angles, from, from, from days in, but it really always goes back to that same point with Patrick is in is it will move with your lifetime horror movie lifecycle not trying to pick it you know pinpoint pinpoint because otherwise you’re just going to keep backing yourself into a corner not making a decision, you know.

Aaron
Well yeah the guess the thing I was thinking while you were describing that from the buyer’s point of view is like if you’re going out to the open homes on the Saturday like the weather’s crappy, it’s raining, it’s snowing, it’s doing the things that aren’t very nice. Like you’re motivated by it. Like you’re not just.

Patrick Berry
Like, hey, I like that. Erin.

Aaron
Exactly. You’re not just thinking like, oh, what I’m going to do Saturday morning. Oh, let’s go have a sticky bike.

Intro
Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Berry
Go for a coffee. We’ll go here.

Intro
Yeah.

Aaron
Not bad, actually. Yeah. Like sometimes last Sunday, I was Jones and for a really nice coffee, and Terry was closed because of the Abbot Road market. Yep. And I was just like, What am I going to do? Like, how am I going to sort this out? It’s hard to do. So maybe you’ve got to find open homes. No, but, yeah.

Patrick Berry
Defeats the purpose. I mean, there’s not serious.

Intro
No. You know, I’ve.

Aaron
Had argued myself.

Intro
Like, yeah.

Aaron
They were having an argument at these house about James Bond yesterday.

Intro
Really?

Patrick Berry
And I was on one side. He was on the other. Yeah. By the halfway through, he argued himself out of the conversation, agreed that I was right.

Intro
I.

Aaron
Don’t know if O’Grady was right. I just think.

Patrick Berry
That moving on, he.

Intro
Did.

Patrick Berry
Yeah, I was right.

John McGregor
Just had to back out before you really put your foot there because.

Intro
I of it.

Patrick Berry
Getting off topic though, you raised a valid point that buyers that attend open homes in ordinary weather and you know bad seasons, they are looking motivated they’re serious buyers that you’re probably working with.

Aaron
Yeah and the other side of the coin with that is that they’re motivated and there’s probably less competition among like all these other people that are showing up. So you know that yeah, if people are coming that your place is interesting. People are looking into it and they want to know about it. Yeah. I had another point on it.

Aaron
Well, my south.

John McGregor
It translates also to in the contracts that we’re negotiating because all the foundational stuff of displaying your property still counts no matter what market it is, you know, presentation and a pricing, etc. And we may we are starting to find we’re having one on one negotiations again versus, you know, three, five, ten. Sometimes we have probably with 30 contracts.

John McGregor
Yeah. So to me it sort of shifts to what you could call almost just like a normal market, you know, properties take two, three or four weeks. That’s common. It’s just we’ve been spoiled. I suppose over the last few years to expect that everything goes, goes, goes, goes, goes. But that’s just as that’s a very small blip in what is historically a normal market, which it takes a little bit time.

John McGregor
You know, you’ve got to find that right buy you’ve got to take a little bit long with negotiation. So when we move into winter and all these little factors start to scare people like, oh my God, why is that moving wasn’t it moving? It’s like, it’s OK, relax. You know, it’s that the serious buyers are out there. There’s just not you’re not dealing with 30 people that are just enjoying the nice weather.

John McGregor
It will sell, tick off all the right boxes and hopefully from the purchase perspective, you’re getting a much more honest perspective on the home because of the weather that it’s going up against God.

Patrick Berry
He speaks wisdom, doesn’t he?

Intro
That I know. Tell me that it.

Aaron
Just wraps it all up in a nice little souvlaki just to just consume and.

Intro
Then I.

Aaron
Went with.

Intro
Souvlaki. I’m just trying to think of a food to go ripped off right is souvlaki. That’ll do that’ll do.

John McGregor
For fun it’s.

Aaron
I remember what my other point was just before we sign off I remember I was trying to think of this from the first home buyers point of view and I was like if you want to get into the market, it’s a good time to have the less competition. Yeah. So there’s less people to fight against with all these offers.

Aaron
So first time buyers, it’s a really good time to get out there and do it. You got to strap on those winter coats that you’re probably all holy and stuff because you’ve been saving all your money to get the deposit, but get out there and check them out. This is a really good time for first home buyers too.

John McGregor
Yeah, it’s going to have that choice again.

Aaron
Exactly. You’re not kind of just getting railroaded. That’s the word.

Patrick Berry
It sounds good. Well, that was a very loose episode.

Intro
I really.

Aaron
Enjoyed it. Heaps of fun.

Patrick Berry
If you got this far Thanksgiving.

Aaron
I think Nigel, it’s great to have you back. Yeah, it’s good. It’s good that you had a really good time over way in the Philippines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exciting for everything that’s coming ahead. Four for one for property call and yeah, watch this space. We promise to be back next week and the week after that. All right. Thanks, guys.

Aaron
Yup. You have been listening to the property part recorded and edited by 41 full media house in conjunction with for one for property code.

Patrick Berry
This podcast is general information only in the thoughts of views expressed is the opinion of our panel, and listeners should always seek the use their own investigation into any topic we discuss to ensure they fully understand their own situation.

John McGregor
It does not constitute and should not be relied on as purchasing, selling, financial or investment advice or recommendations expressed or implied, and it should not be used as an invitation to take up any engagement or investment services. No investment decision or activity should be undertaken on the basis of this information without first taking qualified and professional advice.