Victoria is set to become the first Australian state to scrap the property market’s sold-price secrecy law, a practice that withholds the final price of a property from public records for months after the sale.<\/p>\n
In recent years, the Victorian housing market has seen a slew of new laws favouring renters and homebuyers over agents and vendors, including a requirement for vendors to pay for building and pest inspections and a ban on all forms of rental bidding.<\/p>\n
The new law, set for 2027 implementation, aims to lift the sold-price secrecy act in hopes to curb underquoting and create a fair property market.<\/p>\n
The law lift will require agents to disclose final sold prices immediately after the sale, rather than months later.<\/p>\n
Hailed as a big win for buyers, agents and vendors might be expected to feel the sting.<\/p>\n
Sold-price secrecy allows for off-market advantages and overall market distortion, which benefits agents in setting a low benchmark for future property listings.<\/p>\n
It also protects their reputation if a property undersells.<\/p>\n
Buyers have long been left in the dark, with sold prices often listed as \u2018withheld\u2019 or \u2018contact agent\u2019.<\/p>\n
Without access to recent comparable sales, buyers are left in the dark and unable to properly gauge property prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This leaves room for buyers to overpay, and undertake disadvantaged negotiations, while agents’ underquoting attracts potential buyers.<\/p>\n
Consumer Affairs Minister Nick Staikos said the change aims to create a safer and fairer property market.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuying a house is stressful enough \u2013 so we\u2019re making it fairer by requiring the sold prices of homes to be disclosed,\u201d Mr Staikos said in realestate.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Real Estate Institute of Victoria Chief Executive Toby Balazs said lifting the curtain on sold-price secrecy will allow buyers to make better-informed decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Price withheld\u2019 is a term that we too often see on recently sold residential property listings,\u201d Mr Balazs told realestate.com.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBy significantly limiting this practice, this change will help to lift the curtain on current market data that can help stakeholders make better informed decisions.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Balazs said removing the secrecy will help curb the inflated reserve prices and reintroduce transparency to the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to strongly advocate for the roll-back of the government\u2019s proposed mandatory seven-day reserve price disclosure requirement for auctions,\u201d Mr Balazs said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving the potential to trigger inflated reserve prices, a fall in clearance rates and an increase in offers prior to auction, this flawed requirement threatens to compromise the transparency and effectiveness of the public auction process.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victoria is set to become the first Australian state to scrap the property market’s sold-price secrecy law, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164,271259,271260],"class_list":["post-548228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-sold-price-secrecy","tag-victoria-property-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}