Is now the right time to sell?

Market conditions matter. They affect the price you’re likely to get and how long a sale takes. They’re also only part of the picture: your reasons for selling, your next move, and how well the property is prepared, priced and marketed are the parts you control. The data you need to judge local conditions is free, local, and takes about an hour to read properly.

Every year, thousands of Australians delay a sale waiting for a better market, and thousands more rush one because a neighbour got a big number. Both groups are usually reacting to headlines rather than data.

Read your suburb, not the nation

National price indexes are close to useless for an individual sale. Your market is your suburb, your property type, and your price bracket. A three-bedroom house in a family suburb and a one-bedroom unit two streets away can be moving in opposite directions at the same time.

Four numbers tell you most of what you need to know:

• Days on market. How long comparable properties are taking to sell. Under 30 days in most capitals suggests a seller’s market. Past 60, conditions generally favour buyers.
• Auction clearance rates (if you’re in an auction city). Sustained clearance above roughly 65 per cent generally favours sellers. Below 55 per cent, campaigns are stalling.
• Total listings. If the number of comparable homes for sale in your suburb is rising month on month, you have more competition and less pricing power.
• Vendor discounting. The average gap between first asking price and final sale price. A widening gap means sellers are overreaching.

You can pull all four from the big portals’ suburb profile pages, your state’s valuer-general data, our suburb profiles, or by watching what sells near you for six weeks. If an agent quotes these numbers without being asked, that’s a point in their favour.

Seasonality: spring is crowded for a reason

Australian listings peak in spring. September to November typically brings the year’s biggest wave of new stock, with a second, smaller surge in late February and March once everyone is back from holidays. Winter and the December-January stretch are the quiet months.

Spring’s reputation is partly self-fulfilling: gardens look better, buyers are active, and everyone has been told spring is the time to sell. The catch is that everyone else got the same memo. A well-presented home in August or early February often faces half the competition it would in October, in front of buyers who have had little to choose from for months.

The practical rule: list when your property shows well and your local competition is thin, rather than because the calendar says so. A north-facing living room photographs beautifully in winter light. A jacaranda-lined street earns its keep in November. Work with what you have.

Sell first, or buy first?

If you’re selling to buy again, this is a bigger decision than timing the market, because you’re effectively trading in the same market you’re buying in. If prices move, they move on both sides of your ledger.

Selling first gives you a known budget, a stronger negotiating position as a cash-ready buyer, and no risk of carrying two mortgages. The cost is uncertainty about where you’ll live: you may need to rent, store furniture, or negotiate a long settlement or leaseback. In a rising market you can also find your sale proceeds buying less by the time you purchase.

Buying first means you move once and you know exactly where you’re going. The risk is the other way: if your sale takes longer or lands lower than expected, you’re funding two properties and negotiating your sale under time pressure, which buyers and their agents often notice. In a falling or slow market, buying first is the riskier order of operations.

A rough rule: in a hot market with thin stock, buying first is more defensible because your own sale is the easy part. In a soft market, sell first and rent if you must. Our guide to selling first or buying first works through both with examples.

Bridging finance, briefly. A bridging loan covers the gap when you buy before you sell. The lender takes security over both properties, charges interest (often capitalised, meaning it compounds onto the loan) on the combined “peak debt”, and typically expects the old property sold within 6 to 12 months. It works, but it is not cheap, and the clock pressure it creates is exactly the pressure that produces discounted sales. Get the numbers modelled by a broker before you rely on it (our bridging loan calculator shows the shape of it), and treat it as a backstop rather than a plan.