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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Price reduced. Owner says sell. Motivated vendor. As the property market weakens, some home sellers are cutting their price hopes \u2013 and saying so on their online listing.<\/p>\n Agents who use the strategy say it can drum up more buyer interest, but some experts warn it could leave potential buyers thinking there\u2019s something wrong with the property.<\/p>\n As prices fall and the auction clearance rate lingers below the 60 per cent level<\/a> considered a balanced market, some owners are trimming their price hopes quietly, or going to auction and cutting their reserve on the day, but others prefer to telegraph their discounts to buyers searching property portals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a bit of a marketing tool but it works,\u201d said Matthew Iaco & Associates director and auctioneer Matthew Iaco.<\/p>\n He is handling the sale of a bright, well-presented two-bedroom villa unit in Melbourne\u2019s Carnegie that is now advertised as \u201cprice reduced\u201d.<\/p>\n It was listed for $895,000 to $980,000. The home did not sell at auction in late May when its price guide was $840,000 to $920,000. Now the property is asking $800,000 to $840,000.<\/p>\n Iaco started discussing a possible sale with the owner six months ago, but the market has changed over that time as interest rates rose and the federal budget unveiled changes to investment property taxes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe minute they put the price down I started getting enquiries and I started getting inspections,\u201d he said. \u201c[People say] \u2018We saw this reduced price and that is what brought us here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He said it did not work for all vendors, but the owner of Koornang Road was prepared to meet the marketplace.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cIt prompts people that may have seen it earlier to come back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He has received a couple of offers but they have been under the quote range. One sticking point is that the home is tenanted but most interested parties have been home buyers.<\/p>\n SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher \u2013 speaking broadly about the market \u2013 was more circumspect.<\/p>\n He thought a price-reduction strategy could work if it brought a vendor\u2019s expectations in line with the market, or below.<\/p>\n But he said home owners who get the market wrong to begin with might ruin their campaign.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll list their property over the market, the market is falling and the gap between what they want to sell it for and where the market is at becomes larger and larger. The penny drops and they have to drop the price,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYour best buyer is going to be the one you\u2019re going to find in the first four weeks. If the campaign starts dragging on it can be harder and harder to find a buyer.<\/p>\n \u201cA property becomes essentially stale. The issue is that buyers start to think there\u2019s something else wrong with it. There might not be something else wrong with it \u2013 buyers start to become cautious and think there\u2019s something wrong here they can\u2019t pick up.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article Christopher tracks the amount of distressed listings for sale, marked with language that indicates the vendor needs an urgent sale.<\/p>\n He said there are 4352 distressed listings nationally, down from more than 12,000 in 2020, but creeping up since January this year.<\/p>\n He recommended owners instead consider taking their property off the market for a while, revisit the valuation, speak to agents and find out what more could be done to the home.<\/p>\n In Sydney, LJ Hooker Mona Vale\u2019s Simone Novak is handling the sale of a Collaroy Plateau house advertised with a $300,000 price reduction.<\/p>\n She declined to comment on that property, but thought publicising a price reduction could be an effective strategy in general.<\/p>\n \u201cI think buyers are definitely responding to price reductions,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is definitely generating more interest and good buyer attention.<\/p>\n \u201cBuyers are recognising value.\u201d<\/p>\n Michelle May of the eponymous buyer\u2019s agency said she is seeing more and more prices being adjusted, and some homes are sitting on the market longer.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cI think it works obviously in a sense that the pricing has gone wrong, they probably were a bit bullish when they initially put it on the market, and so now they\u2019re having to adjust it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n It could also help the property to show up in online searches of potential buyers looking in a lower price bracket, she said.<\/p>\n She thought a price cut was not necessarily a reduction if the price was too high in the first place, and the vendor was now meeting the market.<\/p>\n But she warned that buyers could see online how long a property had been listed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe longer a property is listed for, the more people are going to think, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s something wrong with it, why hasn\u2019t it sold?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[A price reduction] doesn\u2019t always mean there\u2019s something wrong with the property.\u201d<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/433a40715bc430ecdff2cd1586506b4b95378483.jpeg\")
The property market has softened.Simon Schluter<\/p>\n![\"15](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/4831e8e615a0b66d1fd4c681c0712335f946b625.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"5\/55](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785274694_382_888a39427c0927cb0dc491acbedb9946b8398d86.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Home](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/79d0cbd435794e9d6353157dbfc650e77b47fefa.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Elizabeth](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7b851c417d189a0af91b8e82d460bae6c0e27460.png\")
Elizabeth Redman<\/a> is the national property editor at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99],"class_list":["post-829873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829873","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=829873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}