Yesterday I walked into a home in Bedfordale.

The automated valuation system — the one most homeowners check online before they make any decision — said the property was worth somewhere between $1.2 million and $1.3 million.

By the time I’d finished my appraisal, the figure I gave the owners was $1.8 million to $2 million.

That’s not a small gap. That’s not “the algorithm was a bit off.” That’s the algorithm being wrong by roughly half a million dollars on a single home.

And it happens all the time.

After more than two decades of selling property across the Perth Hills — Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon, Seville Grove — I can tell you the question I get asked most often is some version of: “What’s my home really worth?”

The honest answer is that there is no single number. Your property’s value is the result of a long list of factors, most of which the algorithms can’t see, most of which sellers don’t know to look at, and most of which the average agent won’t tell you about.

This article is about those factors. The ones that actually move the price up or down. The ones that determine whether you walk away with what your home is genuinely worth, or whether you leave six figures on the table.

It’s also about something most sellers never think about — the difference between an appraisal that flatters you and an appraisal that’s honest with you. Because at the end of every campaign, only one of those leads to the right outcome.

Let’s get into it.

What Actually Happens in the First 60 Seconds of an Appraisal

Most articles on this topic say agents look at “comparable sales” or “land size” first. That’s not what happens.

The appraisal starts before I even get out of the car.

I drive up to the home and look at the street appeal. Has the front been maintained? What does the roof look like — do the tiles need work, is the ridge capping cracked, are the gutters rusted? Has it been freshly painted recently or is the paint tired? Have the eaves
gone mouldy? These things are visible from the road and they tell me an enormous amount about the property before I’ve even walked through the door.

Then I step inside, and I’m going to be honest with you here because most agents won’t. The first thing I’m doing is asking whether the home smells.

It sounds funny, but you would be surprised how often this matters. People with pets, or people whose cooking habits involve a lot of certain spices, or households where things just haven’t been aired out properly — they don’t notice it anymore because they live there. But a buyer walking in for the first time absolutely notices, and most agents won’t tell you because they’re too frightened of offending you.

My job is to actually get you to a point where we can sell your home for the best possible price. Sometimes a blunt conversation right at the start is the difference between a good price and a great price. And there is a difference.

From there I’m looking at presentation. Is the house tired? Does it need a fresh coat of paint? Are lightbulbs missing? Is there clutter everywhere? How do the bathrooms and kitchen look — not whether they’re new, but whether they’re functional and clean? Are there small jobs around the place that have been left undone?

Every one of those things affects price. And every one of those things is fixable, often cheaply, if the owner is willing to do the work.
The price I’ll quote you depends partly on what you’re willing to address before we go to market — because once buyers see a home online, you don’t get a second chance at the first impression.

Why the Online Algorithms Get It So Wrong

Let’s go back to that Bedfordale home from yesterday.

The automated valuation system gave a figure between $1.2 and $1.3 million. My appraisal was $1.8 to $2 million. What did the algorithm miss?

A lot.

The square meterage was wrong on the system to start with. That’s not unusual — these systems pull from old council records or guess based on land size, and they get it wrong constantly. From there it just compounded:

The home had a wonderful three-phase powered workshop — significant value to the right buyer, completely invisible to an algorithm.

It had a beautiful playground-style pool, well presented and maintained.

It had views across public open space, down the valley, all the way to the coast. Algorithms can’t see views.

The kitchen was enormous — well beyond what you’d expect at that price point. Algorithms count rooms, not size or quality.

And the overall presentation was spot on. Light, bright, clean, well looked after. That doesn’t show up in any database.

This is why I tell every homeowner the same thing: an online estimate is a starting point at best, and a dangerous trap at worst. The algorithms work by averaging sales of nearby properties with similar bedrooms, bathrooms, and land size. They have no idea whether your home backs onto public open space or onto a busy road. They don’t know your kitchen was renovated three years ago. They don’t know whether the property is dead flat or sits on a steep slope that would cost a fortune to develop. They don’t know whether mains water is connected to your acreage block, which is rare in this area and matters enormously.

These tools can be 10%, 20%, sometimes 50% out either way. And the people who get hurt by that are the people who plan their next move based on those numbers.

Why Most Sellers Get Their Own Price Wrong

Here’s something I see constantly, and it’s worth being direct about because nobody else will tell you.

Most sellers who overprice their home aren’t doing it because they don’t understand the market. They’re doing it because they’re not looking at the home from a buyer’s point of view. They’re looking at it from the point of view of what they want to buy next.

They’ve worked out their budget. They’ve decided they want to move closer to the coast, or to a nicer suburb, or to a bigger home. To make that move work, they need, say, $1.5 million. So now in their head, $1.5 million is what their home is worth — because that’s what they need it to be.

Then friends come around and say “It’s an absolutely beautiful home, don’t let the real estate agent undersell you, stick to your price.” That’s not strategy. That’s hope. And hope has never been a strategy in real estate.

It gets worse from there. They go online and the automated valuation conveniently agrees with the number they want. Or they start looking at bridging finance, and if they’re borrowing less than 70% LVR, the bank will do a “desktop valuation” — basically taking the
agent’s word or the algorithm’s number and rubber-stamping it. At 50% LVR, the bank will tell them just about anything they want to hear to put the finance in place.

So now they’re emotionally and financially locked in to a price that has nothing to do with what their home is actually worth in the market. Here’s the hard truth: the real estate agent isn’t buying your home. The seller isn’t buying your home. The buyers are buying your home.

And if you list at a price the market won’t pay, what happens is you help every other home in the area sell before yours does. Buyers compare yours to what else is available, and they walk away saying “the one down the road is better value than this one.” That’s the most
painful way to spend a year trying to sell.

What Buyers Are Actually Doing in Their Heads

This part is going to be different from anything you’ve read elsewhere on property valuation, but stay with me, because it’s the most important section of this article.

What a buyer pays for your home has almost nothing to do with logic.
There are three parts of the human brain involved, and they work in this order:

The reptilian brain — the safety check.

When a buyer walks into a home, the very first thing happening is a primitive question: do I feel safe here? Could my family be safe here? Is there anything threatening about the space?

Most buyers walk into the kitchen first. They stand there. And in those first seconds, they’re making a fight-or-flight assessment of whether this is somewhere they could imagine themselves living. If the answer is no — for any reason, even reasons they can’t articulate — they’ve already made up their mind. They might walk through the rest of the house politely, but they’re not buying.

This is why presentation matters so much. A cluttered, dark, smelly, neglected home triggers the wrong response in the wrong part of the brain, and you’ve lost the buyer before they’ve even seen the bedrooms.

The mid-brain — hierarchy and prestige.

Once safety is established, the next layer kicks in. Can I see myself entertaining friends here? Is this the kind of home I’d want people to see me in?

This is the buyer mentally placing a barbecue on the deck, picturing friends arriving, imagining the comments they’d hear. “What a beautiful home. Imagine living up here in the hills.” If your home can let them rehearse that conversation in their head, you’re in the
buying zone.

The neocortex — justification after the sale.

This is the third stage, and it’s where most real estate agents get the whole process backwards.

The neocortex is the logical brain, and it gets activated only AFTER the buyer has decided emotionally to buy. Once friends start asking “you paid how much?”, the buyer needs justification — the playground pool, the workshop, the kitchen, the ducted air-conditioning, the walk-in robe, the ensuite.

A huge amount of real estate marketing is aimed at the neocortex — bullet lists of features, technical specifications, room dimensions. That stuff is for justification AFTER the sale, not for triggering the sale itself. Agents who lead their marketing with feature lists are talking to
the wrong part of the brain entirely.

The sale happens at the reptilian and mid-brain level. The features close it out. One more observation, and I’ll say it carefully because the point matters more than the framing: the buying decision in most family homes is heavily influenced by the woman in the household. And in my experience, women tend to put themselves last. They walk the home in this order: kitchen first, then the children’s bedrooms and bathroom, then the laundry, and finally — almost as an afterthought — the master bedroom.

Then outside, looking at the workshop, the pool, the space for kids, the lifestyle features. If your home doesn’t work for the family at those three checkpoints, the features list at the end won’t save it. And if the agent doesn’t understand any of this, they’re guessing.

The Truth About Renovations and Return on Investment

This came up yesterday at that same Bedfordale appraisal. The owners asked me whether they should put in a third bathroom upstairs, off a teenage retreat.

My answer is the rule I give every seller: if you’re going to stay in the home for the next 5 to 10 years and you’re going to use the third bathroom, then yes, build it. Get value out of it yourself.

If you’re going to be selling in the next 12 to 18 months, don’t bother. A bathroom build is going to cost you at least $30,000 and you won’t get extra money for it at sale.

The same logic applies to most major renovations. Expensive bathrooms and kitchens, swimming pools — if you’re about to sell, these are usually money pits. You won’t recover what you spend.

There’s one caveat: if your bathrooms or kitchen are so rundown that a buyer would need to renovate them immediately, then they ARE costing you money — because buyers are mentally subtracting the cost of those renovations from what they’d pay for the home. In that case, doing something is better than doing nothing. But if your bathrooms and kitchen are functional and clean, leave them alone.

So what should you actually spend money on before selling?

Paint. Dollar for dollar, fresh paint is the cheapest and highest-impact thing you can do. It lifts a tired home faster than anything else.

Lighting. The old fittings in most homes make them look darker. A pack of 10 downlights from Bunnings and an electrician to install them — maybe $1,000 total — will make your home feel modern, bright, and warm throughout. The difference is immediate.

Flooring. Not always essential, but if floors are worn or dated, replacing them isn’t always expensive and can dramatically lift the feel of the home.

Decluttering. This costs nothing and changes everything.
If your home is small and you don’t have a shed or garage to store excess belongings, take the smallest bedroom and turn it into a temporary storage room. We don’t need to photograph that room. Buyers understand — most of them are in exactly the same situation
when they move. Decluttering is the single most underrated thing a seller can do. It makes rooms feel bigger, lighter, and easier to imagine living in. And it costs you nothing but time.

Location Within the Suburb Matters More Than Most People Realise

Every property article you’ve ever read will tell you “location, location, location.” But almost none of them explain what that actually means at a street level.

A suburb isn’t one homogeneous market. It’s multiple markets sitting next to each other, often with significant price differences.

Let me give you two real examples from suburbs I work in every day.

Bedfordale. On the Wallangara side, you can have a 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom home on 2 to 3 acres that’s worth around $1.4 million. Cross Albany Highway to the newer estates — Churchman Brook Estate or Waterwheel Ridge — and the same 4×2 layout on a 3,000 to
4,000 square metre block is worth around $1.8 million.

Same number of bedrooms. Same number of bathrooms. Smaller block of land. Higher price. Why? Because the newer estates have different infrastructure, scheme water, different buyer demographics, easier access. The Wallangara side is acreage with bore water and a
different lifestyle entirely. They’re different markets, and buyers approach them differently.

Mount Nasura. A 4-bedroom home at the bottom end of the suburb, near Albany Highway, will sell for around $1 million. Move that same home to the top of Mount Nasura — Rushton Terrace, Blackwood Drive — and it’s worth around $1.5 to $1.6 million. Same home. Different street. $500,000 difference.

This is why an algorithm averaging sales across “Mount Nasura” or “Bedfordale” will get it badly wrong on either side of the spectrum. The data points exist, but the algorithm treats them as one market when they’re really four or five.

A local specialist knows which pocket of the suburb your home sits in, which buyers are likely to be looking there, and what genuine comparable sales actually apply to your property. That’s the part you can’t get from a website.

What Happens When You Overprice — and Why “Negotiating
Down” Is a Trap

Sellers and a lot of agents think that listing high gives “room to negotiate down.” Here’s what actually happens.

The rule of thumb in real estate is that if you’re not within 5% of where the market deems your property to be priced, you’ll get very few enquiries — and if you’re 15 to 20% over the market, you’ll get almost no genuine offers.

Yes, you’ll hear stories about someone who got lucky and an over-market price stuck. But luck isn’t a strategy. 99.9% of the time, the over-priced home sits. So 30 to 40 days in, the agent suggests a price reduction. Let’s say 5%. Now you’re only 10-15% over the market. Same problem. The market knows you’ve adjusted, so they’re
watching you, but you’re still not in the buying zone. The reports that good agents can show you will tell you how many buyers have saved your property on portal websites — a strong signal that they like the home but don’t see the value at the current price.

Another three or four weeks pass. You’re at 60 days. You drop the price again.

Now everyone’s seen the home online for two months. There are websites — old-listings- style tracking services — that record listing history. Buyers actively use them to identify aged listings and negotiate harder, because they know how long you’ve been on the market.

And then there’s the negotiation trap. If your “strategy” was to list high and negotiate down, what you’re actually doing is negotiating with one buyer in isolation, with no competition from other buyers.

Here’s how it typically plays out:
You’re asking $1.2 million
The buyer offers $1 million
You meet in the middle at $1.1 million
They counter $1.05 million
You meet at $1.025 million

Each round halves your position. That’s a brutal way to sell a home — and it doesn’t account for the stress, the time, the months of keeping the home immaculate for inspections, th disruption to family life.
It gets worse in a declining market. If you’ve been on the market for 60 to 90 days and prices have dropped another 5%, you now probably have to drop a further 10% below true market value just to get people interested again. Overpricing in a falling market doesn’t just delay your sale — it compounds your losses.

The lesson is simple. The first 30 days of a campaign are when your property is freshest, most-watched, and most able to generate genuine competition. Waste them at the wrong price and you can’t get them back.

Marketing — and What 10-15% Looks Like in Real Money

How much of the final sale price is driven by HOW the home is marketed, versus WHAT the home actually is?

Honest answer: if your agent doesn’t understand the rules around marketing, or thinks marketing is a waste of money and a few iPhone photos thrown online will do the job, you’re going to leave 10 to 15% of your home’s value on the table. At minimum.

On a $1.2 million home, that’s $120,000 to $180,000. On a $1.8 million home, it’s $180,000 to $270,000. That’s not small money. That’s family-changing money. Here’s why. Almost every buyer in 2026 starts their search online, and the first thing they do is compare your home to every other home for sale in your suburb. If your photos are bad — dark, grainy, badly framed — they scroll past in under three seconds.

You don’t walk into a beautiful hotel or a new display home and find the lights switched off. The same logic applies to your home when you’re selling. It needs to be light and bright in every single photo.
The biggest thing most sellers miss is video. A proper video walkthrough — with the agent describing what the home is like and what makes it special — does what photos can’t. It lets buyers experience the home before they ever step inside.

The other thing most sellers don’t think about is the floor plan. Not a photocopy of something thrown together on the agent’s iPad. A properly drawn floor plan that shows bedrooms with furniture in them, living areas with sofas, the family room with the TV in
place.

Why does this matter? Because I’ve personally listened to buyers walk through a home with a good floor plan brochure and say “Mary can have this bedroom, John can have this one. We could put the wall unit here. The TV can go over there.”

That buyer has just bought the house. They’ve placed their belongings in it mentally. Everything from that point is just bringing the deal together. The brochure itself should be on cardboard, not paper run off the agent’s inkjet at home. When buyers walk away with a quality brochure, the home stays with them.

Miss these elements and you don’t get maximum competition between buyers. And here is the line every seller should remember:
You don’t get the best price for your home in isolation. You get it with competition between buyers wanting your home.

That’s the entire job of marketing. Not to “expose” your home to the market. To create competition between buyers who want it.

The Hardest Truth — Choosing Your Agent

I’m going to be direct with you here because this is the part where most sellers get it wrong.

In Western Australia, becoming a registered real estate representative takes an 8 to 10 day course. That’s it. After 8-10 days, someone is qualified to sell your family home — your biggest financial asset — and most offices then hand them a desk and a phone and say “good luck.”

Of the 1,800 to 2,000 agents trained in WA each year, only about 5 are still in the industry by the end of Year 1. After 5 years, only 2 or 3 of those are left. This is a hard business if you’re not willing to keep working at it.

So the real question isn’t whether your agent is registered. It’s whether they’re any good.

And here’s a brutal truth that sellers don’t hear often enough: there’s a big difference between “20 years of real estate experience” and “1 year of experience repeated 20 times.”

Plenty of agents got their registration, learned the basics in their first 12 months, and have done no real training since. They’re not better than the 5-year agent who’s been studying their craft. They’re just older.

The psychology and the emotional side of real estate — the three-brain stuff we talked about, the buyer behaviour, the negotiation skills — these are things any decent agent should be trained in. Not “maybe if I have time.” Must.

I still train every morning. I’m reading something or listening to something that makes me sharper, gives me an edge in the marketplace, helps me get my clients a better price. The day I stop doing that is the day my clients start losing money. Most sellers pick the agent who quotes them the highest price. That’s the single most expensive mistake you can make. Because the agent who told you what you wanted to hear at the appraisal is the same agent who’ll be sitting in front of you in 90 days, telling you to drop your price because “the market has changed.”

Before you choose an agent, ask each one these questions and compare the answers carefully:

1. What evidence are you using to support your price recommendation? Look for recent comparable sales, active competition, buyer enquiry levels, real market data — not opinions.

2. How will your strategy create competition between buyers? Exposure alone doesn’t create premium prices. Competition does.

3. How many of your recent listings have actually sold using the method you’re recommending for my property?

4. If your recommended price or strategy doesn’t work, what’s the plan?

5. What do you think buyers will dislike about my property — and what’s your plan to overcome those objections?

6. If this was your own home, would you use the same strategy you’re recommending to me? The answer should be immediate and confident.

7. What happens if the first two weeks don’t go to plan? Ask for a specific answer, not a vague one. The first two weeks are critical.

8. What is the biggest mistake sellers are making in today’s market? This reveals how well the agent understands current conditions.

9. What are you going to do differently that could help me achieve a better result than other agents? Look for a genuine strategy, not promises about photos, advertising, or company size.

10. What training have you done recently — and who have you been mentored by — to keep improving your craft?

The best agents focus on your outcome. Not their awards. Not their office size. Not their personal brand. Your outcome.

And ask yourself this question — the one that matters more than any of the others: Is this the person I want sitting in front of me at the final negotiation, telling me this is the most I’m going to get for my home?

If you can’t trust that they’ll tell you the truth at that moment — the moment that decides everything — then don’t pick them. It’s that simple.

Friendliness is not a substitute for capability. Likability is not a substitute for honesty. The agent who tells you only what you want to hear at the appraisal is the same agent who’ll fail you at the negotiation.

The Bottom Line

Your property’s appraisal value isn’t a single number that comes out of a database. It’s the product of dozens of factors — many of which the algorithms can’t see, most of which the average agent won’t talk about honestly, and all of which add up to either the right outcome or six figures left on the table.

The street appeal. The smell. The presentation. The renovations you do or don’t do. Which pocket of the suburb you sit in. The pricing strategy you choose. The marketing investment.

The buyer psychology you trigger or fail to trigger. The agent you choose to handle all of it.

Every one of those things either adds to your price or takes from it.
If you take one thing away from this article, take this: You don’t get the best price for your home in isolation. You get it with competition between buyers wanting your home. Everything else — the appraisal, the presentation, the marketing, the strategy, the agent you choose — is in service of building that competition.

And the agent you trust to build it for you is the one who’ll be sitting opposite you at the end, telling you the truth about the offer in front of you. Pick the one you trust to do that.

If you’re thinking about selling in Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon or Seville Grove, I’d be happy to come and give you an honest appraisal. No pressure, no obligation, no game-playing.

Just a real conversation about what your home is genuinely worth in today’s market, and what we’d do to maximise it.

Call the office on 08 6254 6333, or contact me directly on 0439 998 867.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

You’ve been in your home ten years. You’ve never really kept track of what it’s worth, but you’ve seen a few places sell down the road and you reckon you’re sitting on around $1.2 million. Interest rates, a renovation, consolidating some debt, helping the kids — whatever the reason, you’re thinking about refinancing.

So do you actually need an appraisal before you refinance? And if the bank does its own valuation anyway, why would you bother getting a real estate agent involved first?

After more than two decades selling homes across the Perth Hills, here’s my honest answer: getting an agent appraisal before you refinance costs you nothing, takes 15-30 minutes, and can save you from a mistake that follows you around for five years. Let me explain why.

First, Understand the Three Types of Valuation

Most homeowners don’t realise there are three completely different types of property valuation, and they get used for different things.

1. The bank’s AVM or desktop valuation. This is an automated valuation — the bank’s valuer uses a computer system and doesn’t physically visit your home. Banks typically use this when you’re borrowing at a lower loan-to-value ratio (under around 70-80%), where their risk is lower.

2. The full licensed valuation. This is ordered by the bank after you submit your finance application. A licensed valuer physically attends your property. This is the valuation banks and courts must use — they’re required to under the rules set by APRA (the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority). It’s the official, legally recognised figure.

3. The real estate agent market appraisal. This is what I do. It is NOT a licensed valuation — real estate agents legally cannot provide those, because we don’t fall under APRA. What an agent appraisal gives you is an informed, experienced read on where your property sits in the current market. It’s the starting point that helps you, and your finance broker, understand your position before you go anywhere near a bank.

The process usually flows like this: you get an agent appraisal to understand your value, your broker uses that to build your application, the application goes to the bank, and then the bank orders its own full licensed valuation.

Here’s the part most people don’t expect.

Why the Bank’s Valuation Almost Always Comes in Lower

When I appraise a property before someone refinances, I always tell them the same thing: the licensed valuation that the bank orders will usually come in lower than my figure. Often 10-15% lower. Sometimes more.

This isn’t because I’m inflating the number or the valuer is being difficult. It’s because the licensed valuation is answering a completely different question.

My appraisal answers: “What could this property realistically sell for on the open market?”

The bank’s licensed valuation answers: “If this borrower defaults and we have to repossess and sell quickly, what’s the safe figure we could recover?”

Those are two different numbers for two different purposes. To put it bluntly, the licensed valuation is the bank covering itself.

Here’s a worked example. Say your home is worth $1 million on the open market and you want to borrow 90% — that’s a $900,000 loan. If the bank ever had to repossess and sell, they don’t need to chase the full $1 million the way you would. They only need to recover $900,000 to cover what they lent. A conservative valuation protects that position and means their lenders mortgage insurance doesn’t need to be claimed.

So when your bank valuation comes back lower than you hoped, it doesn’t necessarily mean your home isn’t worth what you thought. It means the bank was never trying to tell you your market value in the first place.

The Five-Year Mistake Most People Don’t See Coming

Here’s the warning that matters most, and the reason I tell people to get an appraisal before they apply, not after.

The bank only does its valuation AFTER you submit your finance application — because the bank pays for it, so they won’t order one before you’re actually in the process. That means if you go in with a wrong idea of your value, you can find out the hard way.

If your application gets knocked back — because your loan-to-value ratio was too high, or because your home was worth less than you assumed — that declined application lands on your credit reference report. And it stays there for five years.

Every future lender who looks at your file will see that you applied for finance and were declined. It reduces your credit score and it affects your ability to borrow down the track. One rushed application built on a guess can damage your borrowing position for half a decade.

That’s why the free, no-risk first step — getting an agent in to tell you where you really sit matters so much.

A Real Example: The Client Who Called Too Late

Late last year, a client called me in — but only after it was already too late.

They’d applied for additional finance to help their business. The valuation on their property came back lower than they expected. At the same time, their business had hit a downturn, which reduced their borrowing capacity. The low valuation pushed them to a 97% loan-to- value ratio, and the bank ended up asking them to pay down part of the loan.

That’s when they called me — to see what could be done about the low valuation.

Unfortunately, by that point there was almost nothing I could do. Once a licensed valuation is completed, it is extremely difficult to get the number changed. In my entire career, I think I’ve only ever managed to get a valuation revised twice. Once it’s done, it’s effectively fina — as far as both the valuation company and the bank are concerned.

Here’s the thing that still bothers me about that case: if they’d called me BEFORE they put in the application and triggered the licensed valuation, we could have sat down and talked through their circumstances and the real value of the property. Given the business downturn and the tight numbers, the best advice might well have been not to approach that bank at all, and to look at an alternative instead.

That’s the real value of a pre-application conversation. It’s not just about getting a number. It’s about working out whether you should even be making the application in the first place — before it hits your credit file, before the valuation locks in, before the bank can demand a paydown.

What a Proper Pre-Refinance Appraisal Actually Involves

When I come out to appraise a property before a refinance, you should expect a full appraisal pack — genuine knowledge of the suburb, recent comparable sales, and what’s currently on the market. You should also get practical advice on simple things you can do to improve your position.

And here’s a tip that costs you nothing: declutter and give the house a good clean before the valuer comes out.

It sounds trivial, but it genuinely matters. The licensed valuer is a human being. If they walk into a property that’s a mess and poorly kept, they note it in their system, and it affects the figure. Why? Because they’re assessing whether the property is in a sellable state on the day they look at it — remember, they’re thinking about whether the bank could sell it if you defaulted. A property that presents poorly gets marked down.

One more honest point: it’s handy to give the valuer what your local agent has appraised the property at — and they’ll record it on the valuation form. But understand the valuer can only go off the sales evidence they produce themselves. They legally cannot be influenced by outside parties. So the agent figure is useful context, not leverage.

The Biggest Misconception: Trusting the Online Number

The most common mistake I see is homeowners building their refinance plans around an online valuation.

They go to a home open or two, browse a few comparable properties online, or run their address through an automated valuation system. The AVM tells them their property is worth $1.2 million. Then the licensed valuation comes in at $900,000 — and their whole plan falls apart.

The gap exists because automated systems can’t see the things that actually drive your home’s value: whether the property is connected to scheme water, whether it’s subdividable, whether it has valley views, Hills views, or a city outlook, whether the block slopes or is level, whether it has side access for a workshop, a swimming pool, reverse-cycle ducted air-conditioning, or built-in robes. All of these make a marked difference to price, and none of them appear in the algorithm.

I’ve written a whole separate article on exactly how unreliable online valuations can be and why — it’s worth a read if you want to understand the detail before you refinance.

The danger in a refinance is specific: if you build your borrowing plan around an inflated online figure, you’ll assume you have more equity than you actually do. Then the real valuation comes in lower, your LVR is higher than expected, and you’re staring down the credit-file and loan-paydown problems we’ve already talked about.

Things to Be Careful About Before You Refinance

The advice above applies no matter why you’re refinancing. But there are some specific traps worth knowing about.

Watch your loan-to-value ratio and stress-test it. Don’t borrow to a level that only works at today’s interest rates. Ask yourself: if rates went up half a percent or one percent, could you still cover the repayments? Borrow with that headroom in mind.

Be careful rolling short-term debt into your mortgage. Consolidating loans into one repayment can be a good move — but only if you’re disciplined and don’t go out and buy more toys with the freed-up cash. And think about the timeframe. A boat, caravan, car or motorbike would normally be financed over four or five years. Roll it into your mortgage and you could be paying it off over the 20 years left on your home loan — paying interest the whole time. That adds up to far more than you’d expect. Have a play with the mortgage calculator on our website to see exactly what adding that debt does to your repayments and total interest.

Think hard about extending your loan term. People often refinance a mortgage with 15 years left back out to 25 or 30 years. It can substantially reduce your monthly repayments — but it also adds an enormous amount of interest and years to the day you finally own your home outright. It’s a genuine trade-off. Talk it through properly with a finance broker or your bank.

Choose your broker carefully. Just like real estate, there are good brokers and bad brokers. Some will write you a new loan as fast as they can blink, because they earn a substantial commission on every loan written — and some will come back every two or three years to refinance you again for another commission. Plenty of brokers would never do this, and I know some excellent ones. Just be aware it happens. Sadly, I sometimes see the end result: a client calls me because they’ve been put in a position where they now have to sell before the bank repossesses.

Be especially careful in a separation. I’ve seen couples split amicably, agree to a 50-50 division based on an online valuation, and get badly caught out. A year later, the person who kept the house goes to sell and finds it’s worth less than the figure used in the settlement — or the person who moved out discovers the home sold for $150,000 to $200,000 more than they were paid out against. By then it’s too late. In any separation, get a proper licensed valuation and proper legal advice — don’t divide your biggest asset based on a computer estimate.

Your Step-by-Step Roadmap

If you’re thinking about refinancing, here’s the sequence I’d recommend:

1. Get clear on why you’re refinancing and whether it genuinely improves your position 2. Understand the true long-term cost — use a mortgage calculator to model the real impact

3. Get an agent appraisal so you know your actual value before you commit to anything

4. Talk to a good finance broker or your bank about your options

5. Then, and only then, submit your application — with realistic numbers and no nasty surprises

Don’t rush. Don’t over-borrow. And don’t let anyone push you into a loan that benefits them more than it benefits you.

The Bottom Line

For simplicity’s sake, your first port of call should be to get an agent in — just so you get a lie of the land before you make any decisions. It costs you nothing.

That one free conversation can tell you whether your refinance plan is realistic, protect you from an application that damages your credit file, and stop you from making a decision you can’t undo.

Thinking About Refinancing? Let’s Talk First.

If you’re considering refinancing and you want an honest read on what your property is genuinely worth in today’s market — give us a call, send an email, or drop a text.

We’ll come out, have a look, and give you a clear picture before you make any decisions. No pressure, no obligation. It doesn’t matter if you’re refinancing next month, next year, or just weighing it up — that’s what we’re here for.

Brendan Leahy, Naked Real Estate
08 6254 6333
brendan@nakedrealestate.com.au
Unit 1/198 Brookton Highway,
Kelmscott WA 6111

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

Disclaimer: Brendan Leahy and Naked Real Estate are not licensed valuers, mortgage brokers, or financial advisors. This article is general information based on experience in the local property market, not financial or legal advice. Always speak to your finance broker, lender, accountant, or solicitor before making refinancing decisions.

Every week, sellers in the Perth Hills contact me with a number in their head. Sometimes the number is from realestate.com.au. Sometimes it’s from Domain, Cotality, or a link their bank sent them. Sometimes it’s from all of them — and the numbers are $100,000 apart from each other.

So how accurate are online property valuations, really? After more than two decades selling homes across Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon and Seville Grove, the honest answer is: it depends entirely on the property, the suburb, and what the algorithm can and can’t see.

In some cases, the online estimate is close enough to use as a rough starting point. In other cases, it’s out by hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the difference between those two outcomes is almost never something the seller can predict from looking at the website.

Let me show you three real examples from properties I’ve sold.

Three Properties Where the Algorithm Got It Badly Wrong

Churchman Brook Road, Bedfordale

Both realestate.com.au and Cotality valued this property at around $1.2 million.

We listed it from $2.5 million. It sold for $3.1 million — almost $1.9 million above the automated estimate.

What did the algorithm miss? Three things that completely changed the value of the property:

– The block had mains water connected, which is rare on acreage in this area
– It was subdivisible into three separate blocks
– The blocks were dead flat — meaning the earthworks cost for any future subdivision was a fraction of what it would be on a sloping block

No algorithm can read a contract of sale, walk the land, check a deposited plan, or assess subdivision potential. It can only see what’s in the public record about square metres and recent sales. So it valued a near-million-dollar opportunity at the price of a standard residential block.

Urch Road, Roleystone

The automated valuation systems had this property at around $800,000. We listed from $900,000. It sold for $1.1 million.

The algorithm missed two things that any buyer noticed within ten seconds of walking through:

– Stunning views down the valley
– An exceptional internal finish — the kind of presentation and detail that makes a buyer want to write a cheque on the spot

You cannot put a price on the feeling a buyer gets when they walk into a beautifully finished home with a view they fall in love with. No algorithm can see views. No algorithm can see craftsmanship. They see square metres.

Blackwood Drive, Mount Nasura

Automated valuation: $750,000. We listed from $800,000. Sold for $926,000.

This property was:

– Fully renovated — exceptional presentation
– Had outstanding views
– Walking distance to local primary schools
– On the main bus route

Walkable schools, transport convenience, and a fully refreshed home are all factors that drive premium buyer demand. Algorithms don’t measure school catchments by walking distance. They don’t grade renovation quality. They average everything out.

How These Algorithms Actually Work

To understand why the algorithm gets it wrong, it helps to know what it’s actually doing under the hood.

Most automated valuation models (AVMs) work on a fairly simple formula. They take:

– The square metreage of the home’s living area
– The block size
– Land valuations of comparable blocks that have sold nearby

Some systems also use a build-cost-per-square-metre approach minus a depreciation figure, similar to what a licensed valuer might do.

Where this works reasonably well: cookie-cutter suburbs where the homes are nearly identical. A 220-240sqm four-bedroom-two-bathroom home on a 500sqm block in an estate where the only real differences between properties are paint colour, floor coverings and furniture — the algorithm can get within a workable range.

Where it falls apart: the Perth Hills, and any suburb where the homes are genuinely different from each other.

Here’s a partial list of what the algorithm cannot see on a Hills property:

– Whether the block is level or sloping — and how steep that slope is
– Side access — yes or no
– Views — and crucially, whether they face west into the afternoon sun or north toward the city
– Water connection — mains, tank, or bore
– Whether the property allows you to keep pets, horses, or livestock
– Whether you can store trucks or run a business from the property
– The presentation and finish of the home
– The quality of the street and the surrounding area
– Whether there’s a workshop — and if so, whether it has power, and whether that’s three-phase or single-phase
– Pool, established gardens, usable outdoor space
– Proximity to schools, hospitals, transport
– Which buyer group the home actually suits — first home buyer, upsizer, downsizer, or renovator

None of these factors appear in any AVM. Yet in the Hills, every single one of them can shift the sale price by tens of thousands — sometimes hundreds of thousands — of dollars.

There’s one more critical limitation worth understanding. AVMs rely on comparable past sales as the backbone of their estimate. But the algorithm can’t see what those “comparable” properties were actually like inside, in condition, in view, or in any of the factors above. So it’s comparing a flattened version of your home to a flattened version of someone else’s. Two unrelated properties are forced into a comparison they were never actually similar in.

Which AVMs Are Best — and Which Are Worst?

Honest answer: they’re all unreliable, but some are worse than others.

In my experience selling Perth Hills properties, the more useful ones tend to be Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) and realestate.com.au. They’re not accurate enough to base a pricing decision on, but they at least sit closer to reality more often than the alternatives.

The worst ones are usually the in-house systems some banks have built. These often produce numbers that bear no relationship to the actual market — and worryingly, banks then use those numbers for finance and bridging loan decisions.

There’s another problem worth knowing about. Run the same property through the same AVM on two consecutive days and you can get completely different numbers. I’ve seen properties where one day the AVM says $900,000 and the next day it says $1.2 million. That’s not a small error — that’s a $300,000 swing on a property that hasn’t physically changed.

I know one property in our area that recently sold for $3.5 million. The AVM for that property today, AFTER the sale has been recorded in the public register, still says $1.5 million. The algorithm can’t even self-correct from publicly available sale data.

The Algorithm Doesn’t Even Agree With Itself

Here’s something easy for you to test on your own property right now. Look up your home on any of the major AVM sites, and you’ll see they don’t give you one number — they give you a low estimate, a high estimate, and an “expected” price in the middle.

That range is often 10% to 20% wide.

On a $900,000 property, that’s a spread of $90,000 to $180,000 between the algorithm’s own low and high figures — for the same property, on the same day, from the same system.

Think about what that tells you. The algorithm itself isn’t confident in its own answer. It’s giving you a band so wide that you could drive a truck through it, and somewhere inside that band is supposedly the value of your home.

If the system that built the number isn’t sure to within $100,000-plus, why would you make a six- or seven-figure decision based on it?

Even the AVM Companies Tell You Not to Rely on the Number

This is the part most sellers never read.

I’ve called these AVM providers directly when I’ve seen valuations that were significantly out. The standard response, every time, is essentially the same:

“It’s only an algorithm working on the square metreage of the house and the block. Our terms and conditions clearly state that the valuation should not be relied on for the value of the house, or as a market value for a bank.”

Read that again, because it’s important.

The companies that produce these AVMs explicitly disclaim, in their own terms and conditions, that the figure should not be relied on to value your home — and not relied on by banks as a market value.

It’s in writing. You can go and read it yourself on any of these sites. Look for the fine print at the bottom of the valuation, or in their terms of use. The disclaimers are there.

If the people who built the tool are telling you not to trust the number, that should be the end of the conversation.

The Real-World Consequences of Trusting an AVM

This is where it stops being theoretical.

Underpricing — costing you tens of thousands. Some agents will use a low AVM as cover for listing your property cheap so they can sell it quickly. Convenient for them. Expensive for you.

Overpricing — costing you the sale. It’s not always that AVMs come in low. Sometimes they come in exceptionally high. A weak agent will see your inflated AVM and say “well, let’s try that price and see how it goes” — without explaining what happens when a home sits on the market too long. Your home goes stale, buyers wonder what’s wrong with it, and you end up below where you should have been.

Insurance underinsurance. If you insure your home at the AVM figure and your home needs to be replaced after fire or flood, you could be $200,000-$300,000 short of what you need. In the Hills, site works alone can range from $100,000 to $250,000 depending on slope and access to services — before you’ve even laid a brick.

Tax consequences. This one catches sellers regularly, particularly on acreage properties. Here’s a typical example, and please remember this is general information only — not tax advice — and you must speak to your accountant before making any decisions.

If you have a 10-acre property and it’s your principal place of residence, the first 5 acres are tax-free, and capital gains tax applies to the other 5 acres. The AVM gives you one number for the whole property. But a skilled agent can break that down properly: the house block might genuinely be worth $750,000-$850,000 on its own, and the back block (especially if landlocked) might be worth significantly less than half the total. Splitting the AVM number in two evenly — which is what many people do — can mean paying tax on money you didn’t need to.

Family disputes and divorce. AVMs hold no weight in court. If your property is part of a settlement, the court will require a licensed valuation, and often will ask for three real estate agent appraisals as well. The AVM is irrelevant to the actual legal outcome — but I’ve seen sellers and their families make poor decisions in the meantime based on those numbers.

A Cautionary Tale from Roleystone

A while back I appraised a property for a woman in Roleystone who was downsizing.

Her daughter was helping her with the sale. The daughter had already taken out bridging finance on a property in another suburb based on the bank’s valuation system, which had the Roleystone home at $1.1 million to $1.2 million. The agent they were leaning toward had appraised it at $1.25 million.

I appraised it at $850,000 to $900,000 — which is genuinely where the market sat for that property.

The daughter would not accept my appraisal. She trusted the bank’s valuation system. They went with the agent who matched the AVM.

The property went on the market at $1.25 million. Four months and multiple price drops later, it sold for $875,000.

That’s below the bottom of my original appraisal range. The home went stale chasing a number that was never real. Meanwhile the family had four months of bridging finance interest stacking up on the daughter’s other property.

Everyone in that family was acting in good faith. The daughter was trying to protect her mum. But the AVM and the agent who matched it caused real, expensive damage.

So What Should You Actually Do?

If you’re thinking about selling, here’s the honest path forward.

Use AVMs only for very early curiosity — say you’re 12 to 18 months out from selling and you just want a rough sense of where the market sits. Even agents look at AVMs to see what buyers will see when they search your property online. So they’re not useless. They’re just not the basis for a decision.

When you’re getting serious — typically around six months out, sometimes sooner — get at least two, ideally three real estate agent appraisals. Free, no obligation, takes 15-30 minutes per agent.

Do not pick the agent who quotes the highest number. This is the single most important point in this entire article.

Many agents are trained in a technique called conditioning. They tell you what you want to hear to get you to sign up for 90 or 120 days. Around week six, they tell you the market has changed and you need a “price adjustment.” Now your home has been on the market for six weeks with the wrong price, it’s gone stale, and you’ve lost negotiating leverage.

A well-priced home in the Perth Hills should sell within three to four weeks. If it’s not selling in that window, the price was wrong from the start — and the agent who told you the high number knew it.

The right pricing strategy is to meet the market — or, even better, to price slightly below the market to create genuine buyer competition.

I’ll be blunt about something most agents won’t say out loud:*you and the agent don’t set the price of your home. The buyers do. There’s no retail price on a property. There’s no manufacturer’s recommended figure. If an agent guarantees you a specific price, they’re either lying to win your listing or they don’t understand the market.

What you can do is set up a process that lets buyers reveal what they’re actually willing to pay.

Why the Select Date Sale® Method Solves This Problem

Buyers buy on feeling. They walk in the door, and they either fall in love with the home or they don’t. No algorithm captures that. No fixed asking price captures it either.

Our Select Date Sale® method is built specifically to solve this. It lets buyers compete with each other to pay what THEY are willing to pay — without knowing what other buyers are offering.

That last part is the critical mechanism. In a normal sale process, if a buyer knows what other buyers have offered, they only need to bid slightly higher. You never find out what they were actually willing to pay. The gap between “slightly higher” and “their genuine top price” can be $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 — sometimes $100,000 or more.

The competition should be between the buyers. Not between you and the buyers.

In a traditional sale, the buyer offers low, the agent suggests meeting halfway, the seller agrees, the buyer pushes again, halfway again — and three rounds of “halfway” later, you’ve quietly given away 10-15% of your home’s value. You weren’t negotiating with the market. You were negotiating against yourself.

Select Date Sale® takes the seller out of that fight. The buyers compete blind. The market reveals the real number — which is almost always significantly higher than the AVM, and often higher than even the most optimistic agent appraisal.

The Bottom Line

Online property valuations are okay for a very rough idea. They’re built on data and algorithms that can’t see most of what makes a home valuable — and in the Perth Hills, that’s almost everything. They can be 10%, 20%, or even 50% out from the actual sale price.

So why wouldn’t you make a phone call?

A real appraisal from an experienced local agent takes **15 to 30 minutes**. It costs you nothing. You get a properly considered figure based on what your specific home is actually worth in today’s market — including all the factors no algorithm will ever see.

Get a Real Answer from a Real Agent

If you’ve got a number in your head from an online valuation and you’re not sure whether to trust it — give us a call, send an email, or drop a text.

We’ll come out, have a look, and give you an honest read on what your property is genuinely worth in today’s market. No pressure, no obligation. It doesn’t matter if you’re thinking of selling next month, next year, or just curious for now — that’s what we’re here for.

Brendan Leahy, Naked Real Estate

 08 6254 6333
brendan@nakedrealestate.com.au
Unit 1/198 Brookton Highway, Kelmscott WA 6111

Truth. Strategy. Sold.