There are surefire ways to tell if a house is right for you.
Love is fickle. Love is quick. Love is a brick veneer with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and LUG. Love is a renovator's delight. Love is close to transport. Love faces north. Love has water views. Love waits for nobody. But how do you really know if a property is love at first sight? (Or at least in the first 20 minutes?)
This is the six-digit home loan question couples toy with each weekend as they crisscross from one open-house inspection to another. Awaiting them is a monumental financial decision that often hinges on a quick Saturday morning look-see between 10.45 and 11.30am, and buyer behaviour fraught with emotional motives.
"It's the old saying, 'First impressions last', " says Robert Skeen, manager of buyer's agents PK Property Search and Negotiators. "Most people only spend 20 or 30 minutes in a home before they decide they want to buy it. It's based purely on emotion, a feeling they get in that first walk through that this is the one for them."
So don't worry, there's no stress. In the time it takes to find a park nearby at your next inspection, you will have made only the biggest investment decision of your life: a simple 20 minutes that could well determine where you live for the next 20 years.
Ten questions to ask the agent in 20 minutes (to make sure it is right for you)
- 1. Have any other properties sold in the street recently, and for how much?
- 2. Why are the owners selling?
- 3. How long has it been on the market for?
- 4. How many contracts have been issued?
- 5. When can we arrange for a building and pest inspection?
- 6. What are the floorboards like underneath the carpet? Where can we check them? Any signs of damp?
- 7. Would you live here yourself? Why? Why not?
- 8. Have any nearby development applications been lodged with the council that I need to know of?
- 9. When can we come back in the morning and evening to check noise and light levels?
- 10. Have there been any offers, and when can we move in?
'WOW' FACTOR
"When you first walk through, if you go 'wow' or sigh - have some type of emotional response - it's a really good sign," says Gina Machado, director of buyer's agents Finderskeepers. "And if you fall straight in love with it, it's essential you walk back through the house with a functional perspective to see if it really does meet your needs and expectations."
Herein lies the deep psychology of consumer behaviour. It's a decision-making process that can be divided at its most basic into either the rational (the right asking price, enough bedrooms, needs no work) or the emotional (we can borrow a bit from your parents, the kids can sleep under the stairs, it'll look gorgeous once we've plastered over the cracks).
Somewhere in between are many varied and intangible buyer motives that lead towards a purchase. That is not to say all the boxes can't be ticked in the first 20 minutes at an inspection.
"When anyone shops for a product, whether it be clothes, a car, or a property, I think first impressions are lasting impressions," says property agent Ivan Bresic from BresicWhitney in Darlinghurst. "When a buyer walks through the door they usually either feel an immediate attraction to it, or a detraction to it. They know very quickly."
GUT FEELING
This morning, gut feeling could decide the sales outcome of untold houses listed in The Directory pages that follow. And it has nothing to do with after-work drinks last night.
"In a perfect world we'd all buy with our heads but unfortunately the majority of people buy with their hearts," says Sandra Peachey, a valuer with Herron Todd White property advisers. "It's the desires of the heart that often make these decisions."
Heartfelt intuition accounts for innumerable property purchases, many of them made in the time it takes to walk from one end of a house to the other. From the front door, it could well only be a few steps before a stickybeak 'just looking' turns into a 'when can we move in?'.
"An active buyer really only needs five, 10, maybe 15 or 20 minutes at the most to find out whether they should add it to their shortlist," says Bresic. "Most buyers then have a second or third inspection at a later time." For this reason, Bresic's agency opens houses for 30-minute inspections, a quarter-hour less than the norm.
"Most people fall in love with their hearts and they probably do it in the first 20 minutes," says Belinda Clemesha, principal at Ray White Clovelly- Coogee. "If people are at an open-for-inspection for longer than 15 minutes then you know they have some interest. If they're there for 20 minutes, it's a keen interest."
"It is remarkable how little time people invest in a property before they purchase it," says Virginia Nicoll, of Harris Tripp First National in Summer Hill. "Quite often people only see a property once or twice before they buy it."
THE BASICS
There are no rules on how to buy a house. Some people spend half a lifetime looking, others have a contract signed after a first weekend of looking. But there are recommendations.
"Buyers should look through the house at least two or three times because you will never pick all the details from the first inspection," says Brendan Jack, director of Buyer's Service for Real Estate and chairman of the Real Estate Institute of NSW's buyer's agents chapter. "Most times on a second visit you will have a totally different impression, be it better or worse."
Jack suggests follow-up inspections at various times of the day to gauge variables such as traffic volumes, ambient noise, flight-path movements, overshadowing and where natural light falls. And, while doing so, keep your emotions in check.
"The last thing you want to do is open your heart to an agent," he says. "Then the agent has you. They can pull your strings. You're the puppet and they're the puppeteer."
It is also essential, for almost any big-ticket consumer purchase, that buyers do their research. Most applied models of buyer behaviour have an ascending order of consumer decision-making states, such as product recognition, attitude, confidence, intention and purchase, that invariably begin with information.
"Buyers need to do their homework," says Peachey. "They need to be asking questions. What's the underlying land value? What else has sold in this street? For how much? What's the suburb's median price? They need to rely on empirical data rather than emotional reaction."
Much of this information can be gleaned from independent property valuation firms, or companies such as Australian Property Monitors that can provide snapshots of specific localities, or the recent sales history of a house.
Machado agrees that reasoning needs to come after the heartstrings have been tugged. "It's well and good to fall in love with a house after two 20-minute inspections, but get someone to come back and have a serious look at the property before you commit to spending that kind of money. We'd always recommend building and pest inspections, and a thorough search of what else is on the market."
STEREOTYPES
This is not a love story. But it could be. And love is not necessarily a four-letter word. It is at the very least an emotion, a selective part of an individual process for finding the right house and living happily ever after. Looking at bricks and mortar may well be pragmatic, but looking for a home certainly isn't.
"Most buyers have a wish list of criteria that they feel is essential," Clemesha says. "But if they see a property that pleases them aesthetically and they've got a really good feeling about it, then sometimes they're willing to forgo those criteria."
In other words, all the rules get thrown out the adorable upstairs dormer window.
Clemesha believes that the longer people look, generally the less fussy they become. "The more properties people see the more they realise everything on the wish list, including the budget, may not equate."
Another common generalisation among agents is that woman buy with their hearts, and men with their heads. "I'm a heart buyer, always have been, always will be," Nicoll says.
"I think women in particular are heart buyers and they make about 90 per cent of the decision in a relationship when it comes to buying property."
Bresic agrees with the split between the sexes. "For most women it's about the heart, for most men it's about the head," he says. "Women tend to think in terms of emotion, feelings, intuition, things like sunlight and security and feng shui. Men tend to think about numbers and the bottom line."
Is it a gross stereotype? Is it true? Are these motives to discuss with your partner when you're at the next inspection, and you say: "I love it, I need to have it" and he or she asks: "Exactly how much do you need to have it?"
But don't fret. Once the hammer falls or the contract's signed almost every couple consummates the deal with an embrace and a big, wet kiss.
