Are Real Estate Agents About to Change Tack?

Real estate agents .... three words that have the capacity to send a shiver down the spine. Down the spines of buyers, mainly, in recent times, but this may be about to change, and the reason is this:

The property market has been running hot for the best part of the past ten years and buyers have had to bear the brunt of nauseating spin and blatant lies -- all designed to puff panicked souls into hopping onto the ladder before "prices take off" for the stratosphere and it all becomes too unaffordable. Believe me, a significant chunk of the people who have bought in the past five years have been motivated by this very fear. There have been plenty of speculative purchases too, but when those go sour few tears will be shed. Sympathy should be reserved for the poor souls who have mortgaged themselves to the hilt and may be marginal cases if the market does collapse.

But here's the thing: with the market now definitively on the back-foot, RE agents simply don't have the leverage over buyers that they once did -- the lies and spin simply don't work anymore because any fool knows now that there really is no need whatsoever to rush in. Patience and not panic is the order of the day -- and for the forseeable future. Real estate agents then potentially face a bleak few years ahead unless they're able to keep the old sales turnover going. It's a case of adapt or die (not literally, of course, joining the dole queue might feel like you have done). So, if they can no longer execute sales by leaning on the buyers, what do they do? That's right, they start to lean on the sellers -- the panic will be going in the other direction this time i.e. "These are the worst conditions I've experienced in my 30yr career--you should really consider any vaguely decent offer; If you pass this up now, the next offer may be a lot lower; There's a bloodbath ahead for the property market". And so on. In doing this, of course, the agents will be assisting the market lower, which is ironic, if only for the fact that just about every sale in prior months and years will have been achieved after assurances that the market was likely to double again in the next 5 yrs or so -- you know the score by now: resources, China, well-heeled migrants etc.

There is a bullish alternative that can be spun, I grant you i.e. that the 'shrewd' or 'astute' buyer steps into the market when all the rest are standing on the sidelines, however, the truly shrewd buyer does not step in at the start of a correction in prices to catch the proverbial falling knife , which is where we appear to be right now. In any event, agents will find themselves having to be bullish with buyers and bearish with sellers, so one of the new skills learned by spruikers will be to ensure conversations with each party are not over-heard by the other.