MY, HOW THINGS Did we pay HAVE too much? In 20 years’ CHANGED time, we’ll probably talk about how little we paid. - Marna
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oung Brisbane couple Marna and Josh began searching for their first home mid-2020. ACT-based John Buckley has been in real estate since 1994. How do their experiences compare? We asked John to reflect on the ‘old days’ and Marna whether she could relate. John had been in the building industry but wanted to get into real estate sales. He approached three agencies and got three job offers. He thought he must have been a stand-out but soon realised that everyone got a job if they asked because it was commission only and there was such a high turnover. He said, “They asked how long you could survive without income, then threw you in the deep end.” Back then, every real estate office had enormous window displays with hundreds of listings. In 1995, the average price of a Canberra home was $110,000. Now it’s $949,700.
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MARNA: Houses were already hard to find by the time we began looking and prices had already gone up. In the end, we accepted that we would have to pay a lot more than we’d thought - and settle for less. We ended up paying $100k more than probably the property’s true value, but everything was inflated due to COVID. The market fell for the first six years that John was in real estate, which was a good market for an agent to cut their teeth on. Price reductions were the norm. “You had to be good at getting a property sold. It was a tough market that only got tougher. There was little regulation and a lot of cowboys.” Advertising has changed a bit from the early days of John’s career. Canberra Times property ads were devoid of colour. Letterbox dropping with photocopied ads was another avenue.
