The Real Estate Primer

The Golden Rules of Buying and Selling

Geoffrey Gibson

• Publisher: Modern History Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781615992287
• eBook ISBN: 9781615992294
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Real Estate
• Index: Business

You would not set out to climb Everest without the right training and equipment. Same with real estate, do not even start unless you know what you are doing. This book can be your guide, it is the result of thirty years in a very competitive real estate market. Let the author walk you through the marketplace in this easy step-by-step guide. This will help you achieve your real estate goals and save your hard earned money. Learn how to: Set up your search. Assess value. Understand the golden rule of real estate. Overcome the hurdle of price. Read the real estate market. Negotiate to buy or sell. Auctions. Successfully invest.

Geoffrey Gibson spent thirty years in the highly competitive real estate market of Sydney's Lower North Shore. He has sold some of Sydney's finest homes, and was also known for his marketing of the area's commercial, retail and industrial property.
Business & Economics : Real Estate - Buying & Selling Homes

Chapter 1 – Buying a Home.

For most of us, buying a home is the biggest financial undertaking we will ever make, and it is important that we get it right. “The agents I deal with have been absolutely charming,” you say. Exactly, the successful ones always are. This book is all about guiding you through the business of buying or selling a property. I have written this guide because after thirty years as a real estate agent and valuer on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, Australia I find the need for a decent primer even greater now than when I started all those years ago.

Perhaps it is the pace at which we live. We are bombarded with information from all directions and most of it is irrelevant to what we need. Our cell phones can tell us what is happening all over the world. We are pulled one way and then another as pundits tell us what is hot and what is not. We need to withdraw from all this information overload and set a clear goal of what we want to do and then concentrate on achieving it.

For some people, the idea of borrowing such an enormous amount of money and undertaking to pay it back is simply overwhelming. Others set out on the journey in the belief that they don’t think they can have much influence on the outcome. Let me assure you, they can and they should. How many friends have you seen obsess over choosing a refrigerator or the new family car, the value of which will plummet as soon as they leave the showroom? I have often thought that people spend more time researching those purchases than they do on buying their home.

This booklet was written for conditions in Sydney, Australia, but the principles of getting out there and doing your basic research are the same wherever you are. Here the legal obligation is for the agent to operate on the vendor’s behalf. However, they may be specifically employed to act as a buyer’s agent. This basic understanding is very important, so check out how the legal obligations work in the market wherever you intend to buy or sell.

Enough preaching from me, as now it is time for reality and I would like you and your partner to contemplate the following.

“I set out into the property market alone, therefore I must learn all I can about the transaction I am about to make, since nobody else can learn or make it for me. The money I make, save or lose in the transaction is my responsibility and no one else’s. I understand that real estate agents and their sales staff normally act only for the vendor. They operate in a marketplace and are heavily influenced by their need to make constant sales to survive. Nor do they provide a free property finding and buying service, and should not be confused with a specifically appointed buyer’s agent. Therefore, I must do my own research as my and their interests differ.”

Our research is underway and we begin to collect our data. The first thing you should have is an improvised spreadsheet ruled with vertical columns, which will probably run over two pages. Use it to record the details of each property you inspect across the page: that is the address, a brief description, the agent and their phone number, the date it came on, whether it is a sale by auction or by private treaty (PT), when it was sold and the sale price. Treat the result of a sale by treaty or auction as being exactly the same. The most important item we are after is the sale price. For our purposes it is worth its weight in gold, and hearsay or approximations will not do.

Your spreadsheet might look something like this:

Already, things are falling into place, and you are beginning to educate yourself in what properties are selling for and therefore honing your buying and selling skills. There are no short cuts, as it is essential to know the price of similar properties. You just have to get out into the marketplace and methodically go through the properties that are for sale, then do your inspections.

You cannot inspect too many properties. After all, this is what effective agents have to do all day. I suggest you set a goal to inspect, say, forty or so. See as many as you can that are similar to the sort of home you would like to buy, and follow them through until you have recorded their sale price. A word about the time frame for this. Auctions and private treaty sales take some weeks ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 – Buying a Home
• Chapter 2 – Reading the Real Estate Market
• Chapter 3 – Selling
• Chapter 4 – Preparing our property
• Chapter 5 – Investigating Our Real Estate
• Chapter 6 – The Negotiation
• Chapter 7 – Readying to enter the Market
• Chapter 8 – Buying and Selling Investment Property
• Appendix: On Borrowing
• About the Author