Issue 31 - 2022
The excitement of buying a new home for some can be slightly offset by the angst in letting go of their existing home. A common “solution” is to keep their existing home as an investment rather than selling it.
The merits and downside of doing so, vary from case to case but are worth assessing.
The primary consideration in keeping your former home as an investment property is deciding whether you can emotionally detach from it. The reality of being a landlord is accepting that no one will care for the respective property quite like you do, as the owner. This is not to say that tenants or property managers would wilfully neglect the property, but the upkeep of properties is sometimes a labour of love. Particularly character homes and the management of the gardens.
An owner is much more likely to overlook imperfections of a property than a tenant. Therefore, address the issues in your home that a tenant would not and does not have to accept. If not, the property manager will simply be dealing with the respective issues early on in the lease term.
To keep your existing home as a rental property having purchased a new home can sometimes mean you own an “emotional investment”. An emotional investment being defined as a property that logically you may be better off selling but prefer to keep for largely emotional reasons, for the time being. People who inherit a property often go through the same thing too. Do we keep it in the family or divest? When a property has been in the family for several decades, selling it is difficult even if the business case to do so is apparent.
Those that find themselves taking a work contract out of town and let their primary residence for the period they are away, also find themselves with an emotional investment of sorts. Clearly selling the primary residence for the purposes of a temporary job transfer is impractical. Hence the reluctant need to lease the property for a period.
Before deciding to keep or part with a property that means a lot to you, answer the below questions:
- What is the net dollar income (after running costs) the property will generate for you on an annual basis? Will the mortgage and maintenance costs absorb the income?
- What are the growth prospects in terms of capital growth and rental value?
- The tax implications in regard to Land Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Income Tax?
- Will the rent cover the mortgage on the investment property?
- What are the opportunity costs you will forgo by having the equity tied up in the investment property?
- Does the investment property offer diversity to your overall portfolio or unduly concentrate it in property and/or location?
- Based on the value of the property, what does the rental return represent as an annual % yield on the property?
Over time the pull of an emotional investment subsides and becomes more a logical investment play. By sitting down to answer the above questions, you will be better positioned to understand the basis for keeping or parting with the respective property.
For more information on investing, check out our recent article VACANCY – The Enemy of Investors.
As a property seller, it is extremely disappointing when the price interest in your home falls short of your expectations. Failing to achieve your price target will happen in one of two ways – private failure or public failure. Failing privately means the agent submits the current buyer’s price interest/offers on your property to you and you decline the offers. You then decide to continue looking for another buyer or you withdraw from the market. Either way, your business remains your business.
When this happens at a public auction, whilst you may be disappointed, the failed campaign has more than likely damaged the value of your property and your business is now everyone’s business. It becomes common knowledge that you tried to sell at auction and failed – and the price that you declined is now published in a multitude of media outlets.
When faced with this logic, most agree that failing to sell at auction is not a good look for the seller, however, what is often overlooked is that no one has ever paid upfront advertised fees, booked an auctioneer and expected the auction to fail. In fact, everyone who has ever embarked on an auction campaign has done so because they expected their property to sell.
Where does the auction stop?
A wonderful question to ask yourself in a cooling market is – how do you have an auction with 1 buyer? The answer is you can’t. The second question that many people don’t ask is what happens if a cashed-up emotional buyer and a bargain hunter are the two bidders for your home? The answer is the emotional buyer will stop one bid above the bargain hunters last bid. Due to the fact the bargain hunters last bid is likely to be well below the seller’s reserve price, the property will then be passed in and the auction has stopped.
The emotional buyers have just been alerted to the fact that they were about to pay more for the property than anyone else in the open market is prepared to pay. In this situation, if the emotional buyer was prepared to pay $50,000 more than the bargain hunter, the seller stands to unwittingly lose up to $49,000, as a lack of competition stalls the auction. This is the practical reality of public auctions – they require multiple bidders all prepared to pay above the seller’s reserve price to work. The notion that 10 bidders will turn up to bid at every auction is more fiction than fact.
Let’s say the seller hangs tough though. The auctioneer will sometimes disclose the seller’s reserve to the market/crowd, usually in the form of a vendor bid.
The emotional buyer cannot believe their luck – the reserve price is lower than they were originally going to pay for the home, its sold! The sellers are then told by their agent of the great result and how lucky they were to sell on the day in “this climate”.
Only the emotional buyer knows that the public failure of the auction drove the final selling price down. The seller will never know and the agent does not want to know.
Market Conditions
In a buoyant environment where multiple emotional buyers are turning up to outbid each other at auction, the risk of public failure does not loom as large. The question of whether you sell for the highest price or a high price then comes into play.
It can be an achievement finding one good buyer for your property at present, so why choose a strategy that requires at least 2 good buyers?
If public auctions continue to flounder, sellers are putting the sale of major assets through the riskiest sale process available. The advertising money is at risk, the highest bidder’s confidence in the property is at risk, achieving the best price is at risk and the public deadline (that was meant to pressure the dozens of buyers) now hangs over the sellers, pressuring the one party it wasn’t meant to.
Explore the Whitehaus SMART SALE and Private Auction methodology.
Rents and mortgage rates up, prices & clearance rates down
The retail banks have gone on the offensive in the interest rate battle. ANZ kicked off with a 0.9% increase to their Fixed Home Loan rate which was a market shock until CBA followed up with a 1.4% increase to theirs. The RBA then chipped in with a further 0.50% increase to the official cash rate at their July meeting.
Rising mortgage rates impact all segments of the property market – the impact varies across different locations and/or price points though. What we have seen so far in 2022 is prices for properties above the median house price of $1.4 million are performing better than property prices below $1.4 million. Thus far, the higher end of the market has absorbed the rate rises better. The fact that there is less supply on market to absorb is helping to support this end of the market. The upper end of the market find their personal circumstances are determined more by the broader economy than a shift in interest rate rises.
A significant point to note about the current market psychology is the pullback in prices is driven by buyers backing off rather than sellers panicking or slashing price beyond reason. This suggests there is no wide distress amongst households who, we are told, are sitting on record savings post COVID. The downturn is driven by buyers battling higher mortgage rates and more cautious lending by the banks.
This has contributed to the overall clearance rate dropping to around 40% in the past few months. An unusually high number of sellers are opting against selling for less at the end of the sales campaign and are opting to withdraw instead. Some of these vendors will re-appear in spring and some will wait longer into 2023/2024 to see how this all plays out.
There is no wrong or right answer as to whether a vendor is better off ‘conceding on price to secure a sale’ as opposed to ‘withdrawing from the market’. The decision is circumstantial. For some people, selling less in a falling market so they can upsize is a very smart move. Conversely, some investors looking to sell out of the market may look at the current pullback in sale prices and may elect to keep their investment property longer. They can take the higher rental returns on offer in the rental market instead which is an easy compromise for many.
Rising mortgage rates impact all segments of the property market – the impact varies across different locations and/or price points though.
As an example, we are seeing apartments that achieved $695 per week pre-COVID, lifting from their COVID lows of $580 per week to now achieving $750 in the current market. Many in the media are calling the current state of affairs a “rental crisis”. What we have seen so far is simply a rental recovery. If a rental crisis is defined as sky rocketing rents, then a rental crisis is still to come.
Rising rents and wages will help offset the higher interest rates as we go forward. There is no doubt though the retail banks and the RBA have smashed market confidence. Many consumers will be hoping the RBA offer relief once the inflation number turns for the better.
Interest rates have not jumped this quickly since the late 1980s/1990s. Therefore, there is a generation of Australians under 45 years of age whom have never experienced these conditions in their working lifetimes.
The caution many of their parents had in regard to excess debt levels is being seen through a different lens now.
If the RBA find themselves having to annihilate the economy to get inflation down, they will also change market psychology for sub 45 years old for ever more. Much is at play in the next 12 months.
In our most recent Talking Property segment, property market analyst Louis Christopher says the RBA risks being cornered between a deteriorating economy and high inflation in the months ahead. You can watch the Talking Property interview on our website.
Not all property markets in Australia are falling. Adelaide and Hobart for example are still recording gains. After a sharp rise in the past 18 months, the Brisbane market fell for the first time in 18 months during June 2022. For medium to long term Sydney and Melbourne property owners, it should be noted they are still sitting on significant gains over the last couple of years, even though prices have pulled back a bit in recent months. A property market correction has the biggest impact on those that entered the market late in a boom cycle. A 10% correction in prices can wipe out 50% of their equity, all serious issues for households which makes the RBA’s job all the more challenging.
Stock levels in the Inner West will remain tight through winter meaning buyers won’t find a bargain and sellers who really wish to sell for a fair price will be able to do so. As spring approaches, mortgage rates will continue to rise and stock levels will increase sharply as they do each year, every scenario will be on the table.
