Love It or List It: How long does it really take to sell?

Foxtel’s Love It or List It is back on our screens, with 10 new sets of homeowners deciding whether to stay in their renovated homes or put them on the market. 

Design guru, Neale Whitaker transforms each house in the hopes the owners will ‘love it’, while residential property expert Andrew Winter is tasked with trying to convince them to sell.

Winter gives owners the lowdown on how their property stacks up against the competition, as well as what to consider when looking to list and, ultimately, sell.

He says it’s essential to research and understand your market – particularly looking at days on market for similar properties – but to remember that conditions can’t be contained.

“One factor you can’t control is market conditions – whether the banks are lending easily or if interest rates are up or down. However, the one thing you can do is choose when to list your home,” Winter says.

“As a real estate agent, quite often you’d get two or three weeks in and the homeowner would be saying ‘it’s not moving, we’re not getting any offers’, and I’d say: ‘normally it takes 75 days for a house to sell. On day 20 you’ve not even touched the average yet. Stop panicking.

“It could be 10 days in some cities right now; it could be 400 days in a regional country town. It’s just about making sure that you know what market you’re entering.

“Look at the houses you’re competing against. Look online. Which houses are for sale and what has sold in your area? ‘That one took six days, that one took 10, we’ve been on the market for a month. Something isn’t right…’

“Your agent should tell you, but you should know this, too – the more facts you can find out before you interview an agent, the better.”

Where are Australia’s hottest markets?

If you’re trying to decide whether to love or list your own home, here are the 10 Australian suburbs with the shortest median days on market*, for the six months to 31 August.

1. Battery Point, TAS (11)
2. Glebe, TAS (11)
3. Linden Park, SA (11)
4. Millgrove, VIC (14)
5. Mount Dandenong, VIC (14)
6. Colebee, NSW (15)
7. Kallista, VIC (16)
8. Moonah, TAS (16)
9. Mornington, TAS (16)
10. Mount Nelson, TAS (16)

The most in-demand suburbs in the other states were: Spence, ACT (21), Jingili, NT (22); Petrie Terrace, QLD (24), and Watermans Bay, WA (27).

“If you’re in a very high-demand market, that simply means there’s not enough houses to go around, so there’s going to be an abundance of people waiting,” Winter says.

“So they’ll come and look straight away and could even make decisions [at the time]. But that is not most markets.

“Most are pretty equal or focused on the buyer. If that’s the case, you’ve just got to expect the law of averages means it’ll take some time to get people committed.

“Some things take a long time to sell; that’s just the way it is.”