{"id":677559,"date":"2026-05-17T23:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T23:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/677559\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T23:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T23:41:13","slug":"want-to-buy-a-house-in-sydney-be-prepared-to-pay-nearly-120000-over-the-advertised-price-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/677559\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to buy a house in Sydney? Be prepared to pay nearly $120,000 over the advertised price | Housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

As states attempt to tackle underquoting, new data reveals fewer than 4% of real estate agents are listing homes within 3% of the final sale price, with properties selling for more than $100,000 above the price guide in several parts of the country.<\/p>\n

Analysis looking at all published price guides for residential sales in the six months to April, compiled by the property data app Homer, has revealed that across all capital cities, the typical above-guide sale overshoots by 4-9%, while the typical below-guide sale undershoots by only 3-5%.<\/p>\n

Perth and Adelaide lead the country, with 76% and 73% of capital city sales respectively exceeding the guide ceiling. The typical above-guide Perth home sells for $56,000 more than advertised; in Adelaide, it\u2019s $75,000.<\/p>\n

chart<\/a><\/p>\n

But Sydney has the biggest dollar gap in the country. When a Sydney property sells above the guide, it sells for a median $117,500 above the top of the advertised range. Brisbane is close behind at $100,000.<\/p>\n

Melbourne is the national outlier. It\u2019s the only capital where more properties sell below the guide (53%) than above (37%). Regional Victoria<\/a> is even more pronounced at 71% below the guide.<\/p>\n

chart<\/a><\/p>\n

The CEO of Homer, Henry Pedersen, said the industry still has a widespread problem with transparency.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, it leads to buyers engaging with homes they were never realistically in the market for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt causes an enormous amount of wasted time, money and emotional investment, and stress within relationships, all that kind of stuff that goes on because you\u2019re chasing things that you can\u2019t afford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Analysis done by Guardian Australia in 2024<\/a> revealed underquoting \u2013 defined as any sale where the final sale price exceeds 10% of the highest presale price guide \u2013 was more prevalent in Sydney (20% of sales) and Perth (18% of sales), and least prevalent in Canberra, Hobart and Darwin.<\/p>\n

There are laws against deliberate underquoting in New South Wales<\/a> and Victoria, but just because a house sells for more than its price guide does not mean that the selling agent has broken the law.<\/p>\n

While some jurisdictions were trying to curb it, Pederson said it was \u201cmind-boggling\u201d that the reserve could sit outside the price guide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so much confusion in the market,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many different signals buyers are getting. It\u2019s really hard for you to know who you can trust and who you can rely on and what data points are fair and transparent and which ones are just trying to drive inquiry to a property and then sell it 10%, 15%, 20% above that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Fotheringham, the managing director of the Australian Housing<\/a> and Urban Research Institute, said the \u201cgreater concern\u201d was when the auction reached a price within the advertised guide but was then passed in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where the estimate is, in fact, deceptive,\u201d Fotheringham said. \u201cSo there\u2019s a twofold question here: are the estimates accurate? Typically, no, they\u2019re a bit low. But if the auction does land in that zone, is the property actually for sale?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WhyWhy is selling a house online so expensive in Australia? \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Last year, the Victorian government introduced new guidelines aimed at ensuring agents use the most appropriate comparable local properties when determining a home\u2019s likely price before auction, factoring in things such as the dwelling\u2019s age and any renovations. Consumer Affairs Victoria can ask for evidence from agents showing how they chose the three most comparable properties, and penalties apply for not providing these records.<\/p>\n

In NSW, there are new laws forcing property sellers to publish a price guide on all advertising, and agents caught underquoting can now be fined $110,000 \u2013 five times the previous penalty or three times their commission, whichever is greater.<\/p>\n

But because auctions can be unpredictable, underquoting can be very hard to prove, Fotheringham said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easy for an agent to say, oh, well, we got a better crowd than we expected and they were more enthused than we were expecting them to be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if they\u2019re consistently underestimating, it\u2019s suggesting that those rules aren\u2019t having the effect they need to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fotheringham said it was a continuing challenge that was hard to address \u2013 but the growing number of auctions showed a growing shift around housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the fact that we\u2019re doing more auctions these days than private sales is part of the challenge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s part of the broader shift in our thinking about what housing is for. It\u2019s the financialisation of housing. It\u2019s another sign that housing is there to shelter and grow our money more than it\u2019s there to shelter and grow our families.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As states attempt to tackle underquoting, new data reveals fewer than 4% of real estate agents are listing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-677559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677559","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=677559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}