Real Estate Articles Keep yourself informed in real estate. Discover what agents don't tell you.

“You can’t sell a secret you know.” This is a line given by thousands of agents to thousands of home-sellers in order to persuade sellers to splash out more and more money advertising their homes. The theory goes like that the more places you advertise your home, the more buyers you reach.

“Well. Who’s paying for the ads then” I asked, “Tell me, will you?!” He leaned across the table and gave me the cheekiest smile and said, “The vendors.”

There is one excellent way to know what your home is truly worth: Before you call an agent, call a valuer.

Price Ranges are ‘Bait’ strategies which use a false low price to attract buyers. The Price Range method comes in a variety of names – By Negotiation; Offers Above; Price Guide. They are all similar and they all undersell your home.

Always interview at least two agents. (The only exception is if one agent is highly recommended by people whose opinion you respect).

A common question that budding home-sellers ask agents is: “How much do you charge?”

When you are thinking about selling, you are the most wanted person in real estate. Every agent wants to be the chosen agent who ‘lists’ your home.

Home ownership, that great Australian Dream, is harder than ever before. Across the nation, tens of thousands of families are locked-out of homes they can never afford to buy.

Overseas, they are called ‘Stigma Homes’, where something terrible has happened in the past, usually a murder. Stigma homes – or ‘Murder Homes’ as they seem to be called in Australia – can be hard to sell – as at least one irate home-owner in Melbourne is discovering.

What you are about to read contains information that should be read by every homeseller contemplating selling by the public auction method. It contains simple and logical mathematical proof that selling by public auction is, by far, the worst way to sell a family home.

Anyone who gets involved in the property market – whether as a seller, a buyer, (and even an agent), has probably wondered why so many people tell so many lies.

It is an ancient Moorish symbol which is supposed to bring good luck and ward off the evil eye. In about 1880, Robert Ormond Maugham (one of the founders of the British Law Society), brought it back from a trip to Africa.