Sellers operating at the high end of the region’s market will need to take a strategic approach in 2018, an Illawarra agent says.
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Agent Trever Molenaar from Molenaar and McNeice said that “from the start of 2017 we saw really good growth” in the region.
“There was a lot of interest in the high end. Anything between $2 million and $3 million was going really well to the latter half of the year.
“Along the lines of what’s happened in the whole market, it has corrected itself... We’ve found that leading into Christmas, which is traditionally always the case, the high end has tapered back a bit."
Earlier this year, Mr Molenaar said some high-profile sales in the region’s northern suburbs reinforced that the top end of the market remained strong, and that “$3 million is the new $2 million” in the northern suburbs of the Illawarra.
“Anything over $3 million right now is struggling... The data that I’m collecting is everyone is saying that it’ll (the market) continue to plateau. We’ll see probably growth in the next 12 months of between three and six per cent in prices across the board in the Illawarra.”
Mr Molenaar said as far as the high end was concerned, “your extreme northern suburbs always seem to do well”.
“Anything close to Sydney,” he said.
“Shellharbour is one that has shown a bit of growth and been a bit of a surprise factor in 2017. They were getting some good numbers, although I think that has come back a little too.
“Overall in the market, 2017 was huge, it was a massive year. But in the last quarter we've seen a correction in the marketplace and things are starting to stick around that little bit longer and they're not getting the prices that they once did.
“That’s across the board, but especially in the high end.”
Among Mr Molenaar's high-profile sales this year was a beachside home at 189A Lawrence Hargrave Drive, Thirroul that sold for $2.6 million in September.
“That just shows what the market was doing then,” he said.
“I think we had seven offers on that property and it sold within weeks.
“If it went on the market now it probably wouldn't generate as much interest.”
Mr Molenaar said sellers operating at the high end of the Illawarra’s market needed to take a strategic approach.
“When selling they need to be really cautious of what they do, how they price it and what their strategy is,” he said. “The strategy of just putting it on the market and it's going to sell is not going to fly next year.
“They’ve really got to have a defined marketing strategy, a real process, of how they're going to sell it.”