Patience is a virtue

Patience can be key when you’re in the midst of a property search — and for a few different reasons.

There’s patience in waiting for the right property rather than compromising on the things that really matter.

There’s patience in staying the course when you’ve missed out a few times and the search is starting to wear you down.

And then there’s the patience required when you finally find the one and you’re in the heat of negotiations.

That’s what this blog is about.

I recently had clients walk through a property that, on paper and in person, ticked almost every box. It was in our desired location, loaded with character, had fantastic lifestyle offerings and genuinely felt like somewhere they could call home. There was just one problem. We believed it was overpriced.

The property had already been on the market for about three weeks, with an auction scheduled roughly 10 days away. I sat down with my clients and went through the property in detail — the positives, the negatives, comparable sales, current market conditions and what other buyers were likely to see as either adding to or detracting from its value. We came to a pretty simple conclusion: yes, we wanted to buy it. But no, we weren’t prepared to overpay for it. And that’s where patience became part of the strategy.

We made it clear to the agent that we were interested. We completed thorough due diligence, went back through the property multiple times and stayed engaged with the campaign. Given we believed the property was overpriced, it wasn’t particularly surprising when the agent began suggesting we make an offer before auction. We were happy to make one —but we also knew our offer wasn’t going to meet the vendor’s expectations at that point. The auction was ultimately postponed by another two weeks.

This is probably the hardest part when you really love a property. You’re invested. You don’t want someone else to buy it. And every instinct can start telling you to just offer a little bit more and get the deal done. But sometimes the best negotiation move is to do nothing. The vendors needed time to receive feedback from the broader market. They needed to see whether other buyers were prepared to meet their expectations. And, over time, they needed to adjust those expectations when the campaign wasn’t gaining the traction they had hoped for.

My job during that period wasn’t to keep pushing my clients’ offer higher. It was to hold them back.

We stayed engaged, kept the lines of communication open and waited until the mood around the campaign had changed. Then, when the timing was right, we put forward a compelling and reasonable offer. And we bought the property, significantly below the vendor’s original expectations and at a price we believed represented fair market value. Had we allowed emotion to take over a few weeks earlier, the outcome could have been very different. 

There’s nothing wrong with falling in love with a property. In fact, when you’re buying a home, I think you probably should. But falling in love with it doesn’t mean you should simply pay whatever the vendor thinks it’s worth. Particularly in the current Melbourne market, where we’re seeing some properties have their expectations adjusted significantly during a campaign, patience can be incredibly valuable.

Sometimes patience means waiting for the right property. Sometimes it means staying positive when the search gets frustrating. And sometimes it means finding the property you want — and having the discipline to wait.

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