First, the cost that is not yours: stamp duty

A lot of sellers worry about stamp duty. On the home you are selling, you can cross it straight off your list. In Western Australia, transfer duty (stamp duty) is paid by the buyer, not the seller.

It only becomes your cost when you buy your next home, and there it is one of the biggest upfront numbers you will face. On a $750,000 purchase the duty is around $29,740 at the time of writing, money you need on top of your deposit. It is genuinely one of the biggest things that holds people back from making their next move, so it is worth knowing your number before you start. You can work it out in seconds with our stamp duty calculator. Hold that $29,740 figure in mind. It matters again in a moment.

A quick aside: where stamp duty came from

It is worth knowing what that $29,740 actually is, because it puts the whole thing in perspective. Stamp duty began in colonial Australia as a small tax on legal documents, with some duties charged as low as one shilling. Property conveyance duty, though, was value-
based from the early colonial period, charged as a few shillings per hundred pounds of value, and it has grown from there into a major state revenue source.

Today, transfer duty raises WA roughly three billion dollars a year, somewhere around six to seven per cent of the entire state budget. That is why it has survived. Economists across the political spectrum regard stamp duty as one of the least efficient taxes in the country, because it punishes people for moving house, downsizing or relocating for work. But replacing several billion dollars of annual revenue is politically difficult, so the tax endures, and the bill keeps landing on the buyer at every sale.

None of which you can do anything about as a seller. But it is worth understanding that the single biggest cost in the whole transaction is not your agent. It is the tax the government collects from your buyer for processing the transfer.

The costs you do pay

1. Agent commission
There is no regulated or fixed commission rate in WA. It is negotiable and varies between agents, commonly somewhere around 2% to 3% of the sale price. Our rate is 2.5%, and it
includes GST.

On a $750,000 sale, that 2.5% works out to about $18,750. We will always show you that figure in dollars, not just a percentage, because you deserve to see exactly what you are
paying.

Now here is the part most agents will never point out. On that same $750,000 home, the buyer hands the WA government around $29,740 in stamp duty (the figure from above). The government collects roughly eleven thousand dollars more than your agent does, for processing the transfer, while your agent does the actual work of marketing the home, creating buyer competition, negotiating and getting it sold.

We do not raise that to make light of our fee. We raise it because a cost only means anything in context. The real question is never “what is the percentage.” It is “what do I walk away with, and who gets me the best result for it.” More on the right way to weigh commission in our guide to agent commissions, and the warning signs in.

2. Marketing and advertising
Marketing is usually charged separately from commission. The cost depends entirely on the campaign: professional photography, video, floorplans, portal listings on the major sites, a signboard, and any print or social advertising. A modest campaign might be a few hundred dollars; a full premium campaign on a higher-value home can run to several thousand.

Two honest points. First, ask any agent for the marketing cost in writing before you sign, not after. Second, with us you are not locked in: under our Best Service Guarantee you can cancel at any time and only pay for the marketing actually spent.

3. Settlement agent or conveyancer
You engage your own settlement agent to handle the legal transfer of the property. Conveyancing fees in Australia typically run somewhere between $500 and $2,000, depending on the complexity of the transaction. It is worth getting a quote up front so there are no surprises at settlement.

4. Mortgage discharge (if you have a loan)
If there is a mortgage on the property, it has to be discharged at settlement. That involves two small costs: a discharge administration fee charged by your lender (varies by lender, usually a few hundred dollars), and a fee to register the discharge of mortgage with Landgate (a set government fee, around $200 at the time of writing and indexed each July). Your lender and settlement agent will confirm the current amounts.

5. Rates and water adjustments
This one is not really a fee, but it affects what you walk away with. At settlement, council rates, water rates and any strata levies are adjusted between you and the buyer so each side pays only for the portion of the period they owned the home. You settle your share up to settlement day. It is an adjustment, not a charge, but it comes out of your proceeds.

Costs that apply only in some situations

• Capital gains tax. If the property is your family home (your main residence), it is generally exempt. CGT usually only applies if you are selling an investment or rental property. The rules are detailed and currently under review at a federal level, so this is a question for your accountant, not your agent. We are not tax advisers.
• Fixed-rate loan break costs. If your home loan is on a fixed rate and you break it early,
  your lender may charge a break fee. Ask your lender before you list.
• Presentation and repairs. Optional, but often worth it. What pays off and what does not is covered in should I renovate before selling.

So what does it actually add up to?

Here is an illustrative example on a $750,000 sale. Your numbers will differ, but it shows the
shape of it.

In a typical sale, the costs beyond commission come to a few thousand dollars. The single
largest cost, by a wide margin, is the commission, and the single largest variable is the sale
price the commission is charged on.

The honest point most agents will not make

The cost that actually matters is not any one line on that list. It is your net: the sale price
minus everything above.

A cheaper agent who sells your home for less can leave you thousands worse off than a better agent who gets a higher price. That is exactly what our Select Date Sale method is built to do. Instead of locking your home to a single fixed asking price, which can sit too high and go stale or too low and leave money on the table, it creates genuine competition
between qualified buyers to find the real top price. Two thousand dollars saved on a fee
means nothing if the same agent leaves twenty thousand on the table.

So by all means understand every cost. Then judge an agent on the number that counts,
what you are left with at the end, not the fee they advertise at the start. You can model your own numbers with our cost of selling calculator, and if you want the real figures for your home, that is what an appraisal is for.

Want the exact numbers for your home?

Book a free, no-obligation appraisal with Brendan Leahy. We will give you a realistic sale price for your property and suburb, walk you through the costs that actually apply to you, and show you your likely net in writing. Fifteen to thirty minutes, no pressure, whether you are selling soon or just want to know where you stand. Selling property across the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

Book a free appraisal | 08 6254 6333 | Unit 1/198 Brookton Highway, Kelmscott WA 6111

The post How Much Does It Cost To Sell A House In Western Australia? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

“How long will it take to sell my house?”

The honest answer is simple:

It depends.

Some homes sell within days of hitting the market. Others can take weeks or even months.

Many articles quote average days on market statistics as though they apply to every property.

The reality is they don’t.

As a guide, Perth’s median selling time has ranged from almost two months during slower markets to as little as seven days during some of the strongest seller’s markets in recent years.

Yet two homes can come to market on the same day and sell weeks apart.

Why?

Because the factors that influence selling time go far beyond the Perth average.

The good news is that many of those factors can be managed or improved.

There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Answer

While average days on market figures for Perth can provide a useful benchmark, they should never be used to predict how long an individual property will take to sell.

A family home in Seville Grove may attract a completely different buyer pool to an acreage property in Bedfordale or a lifestyle property in Roleystone.

Different suburbs, different price points and different property types often sell at very different speeds.

That’s why local market knowledge matters.

The Five Biggest Factors That Affect Sale Time

1. Price

Pricing is generally the biggest factor you can control when it comes to how quickly a property sells.

Properties priced correctly for the current market generally attract more buyer interest and inspections.

Properties priced too high often sit on the market while buyers move on to competing homes.

Many sellers believe starting high gives them room to negotiate.

In reality, overpricing often reduces enquiry levels and can ultimately lead to a lower sale price.

2. Buyer Demand

Some suburbs simply have more buyers than others.

When buyer demand is strong, properties typically sell faster.

When buyer demand is weaker, properties can take longer to find the right purchaser.

Demand can also change throughout the year depending on:

• Interest rates
• Economic conditions
• School terms
• Consumer confidence
• Local supply levels

3. Presentation

First impressions matter.

Well-presented homes generally attract more inspections and stronger offers.

Simple improvements such as:

• Decluttering
• Fresh paint
• Garden maintenance
• Minor repairs
• Professional photography

can significantly improve buyer interest.

4. Marketing Strategy

A property with poor marketing may struggle to reach enough buyers.

A property exposed to the largest possible buyer audience often generates more competition and stronger results.

Good marketing should include:

• Professional photography
• Strong online exposure
• Social media promotion
• Database marketing
• Clear pricing strategy

5. Property Type

Some property types naturally take longer to sell.

For example:

• Entry-level homes often attract larger buyer pools.
• Unique acreage properties can require a more specialised buyer.
• Luxury homes may have fewer potential purchasers.

That doesn’t mean these properties won’t sell well.

It simply means finding the right buyer may take longer.

How Long Does It Take To Sell In The Perth Hills?

The Perth Hills market is unique.

Suburbs such as Bedfordale, Roleystone, Mount Richon and Mount Nasura contain many properties that are unlike anything else available in Perth.

Buyers aren’t simply comparing bedrooms and bathrooms.

They’re comparing:

• Views
• Land usability
• Workshops
• Horse facilities
• Water supply
• Lifestyle features
• Privacy

Because of this, some Hills properties can attract immediate competition while others require a longer marketing period to connect with the right buyer.

The mistake many Hills sellers make is comparing their property to a standard suburban home.

Unique properties often attract fewer buyers, but the right buyer may be willing to pay significantly more once they see the value in the lifestyle on offer.

Why The First Few Weeks Matter Most

When the pricing, marketing and negotiation are all right, your strongest offers almost always arrive in the first three to four weeks.

That’s when a listing is fresh and buyer interest is at its peak.

In most markets, that early window is when a well-prepared home sells.

After that, the pattern often changes.

Buyers begin to wonder why a property hasn’t sold.

Interest can cool.

Later offers are often no stronger — and sometimes weaker — than the offers available during the first few weeks.

It’s worth asking yourself a practical question too.

Keeping a home show-ready is hard work.

Especially with children, pets or a busy household.

Do you really want to maintain that level of readiness for months, only to achieve a similar result that may have been available much earlier?

This is the thinking behind our Select Date Sale® method.

It’s designed to concentrate genuine buyer competition into that early, high-interest period so the strongest price has the best opportunity to surface while your property is still fresh.

Can You Speed Up The Selling Process?

Yes.

The fastest sales usually happen when five things align:

• Accurate pricing
• Professional presentation
• Maximum buyer exposure
• Strong negotiation
• Genuine buyer competition

These are the factors that create urgency.

And when buyers feel urgency and competition, decisions tend to happen faster.

Does Selling Faster Mean Accepting Less?

Not necessarily.

One of the biggest myths in real estate is that a quick sale automatically means a lower sale price.

In reality, many of the strongest sale prices occur when multiple buyers compete for the same property early in the campaign.

The key is not how quickly the property sells.

The key is whether the marketing strategy creates enough buyer competition to achieve the best possible outcome.

So What’s The Real Answer?

Some properties sell in a matter of days.

Some take several weeks.

Others take longer.

The time it takes to sell depends on your property, your suburb, market conditions, pricing strategy and buyer demand.

The best way to understand how long your property may take to sell is to speak with an experienced local agent who understands your market and can assess your property’s individual strengths.

And remember:

A home has no recommended retail price.

There is no sticker on it.

What it sells for — and how fast — comes down to the strategy behind the campaign and the agent running it.

Get both right and you give yourself the best possible opportunity to achieve an exceptional result.

Want To Know How Long Your Property Could Take To Sell?

Book a no-obligation appraisal with Brendan Leahy and the team at Naked Real Estate.

We’ll provide honest advice on your property’s likely value, current buyer demand and the strategy most likely to achieve the best result.

Related Reading

• Why Bedfordale Online Valuations Are Often Wrong
• What Factors Actually Affect Your Property’s Appraisal Value?
• How Accurate Are Online Property Valuations?
• Do I Really Need A Property Appraisal Before Selling?

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

The post How Long Does It Take To Sell A House In WA? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

Sometimes the estimate appears too high. More often, it’s significantly lower than what local agents and valuers believe the property is worth.

The reason is simple.

Bedfordale is one of the most difficult suburbs in Perth for an online valuation system to assess accurately.

While automated valuation models can work reasonably well in standard suburban estates where homes are similar, Bedfordale is anything but standard.

Why Online Valuations Work Better In Some Suburbs

Most online valuation systems rely heavily on:

• Recent sales
• Land size
• House size
• Bedroom count
• Bathroom count
• General location data

In suburbs where homes are similar in age, style and block size, this often produces reasonably accurate estimates.

For example, if ten similar four-bedroom homes on 700sqm blocks sell in the same street, an algorithm can usually estimate the value of the eleventh home fairly accurately.

Bedfordale doesn’t work like that.

Bedfordale Isn’t One Property Market

One of the biggest challenges for online valuation systems is that Bedfordale is actually made up of several very different lifestyle precincts.

These include:

• Wallangarra
• Churchman Brook Estate
• Waterwheel Ridge
• Camfield Estate
• Camfield Heights

While they all fall under the Bedfordale postcode, they attract different buyers, offer different lifestyles and often achieve very different sale prices.

Wallangarra is one of Bedfordale’s original special rural precincts and remains highly sought after for its natural bush setting and larger lifestyle lots.

Waterwheel Ridge is recognised for its premium homes, larger lots and family-friendly environment.

Camfield Estate attracts buyers looking for quality homes on generous lifestyle blocks.

Camfield Heights offers elevated positions and some of Bedfordale’s most impressive outlooks.

Churchman Brook Estate is popular for its natural surroundings, walking trails and unique Perth Hills lifestyle.

A property located in one of these precincts can be dramatically different from a property located in another.

Yet many online valuation systems treat them as though they’re part of the same market.

The Features Algorithms Simply Can’t Measure

Many of the factors Bedfordale buyers are willing to pay substantial premiums for are difficult or impossible for automated systems to assess.

These include:

• Scheme water connection
• Horse facilities
• Powered workshops
• Three-phase power
• Side access for caravans, trucks and trailers
• Subdivision potential
• Valley views
• City skyline views
• Privacy from neighbouring properties
• Established gardens
• Mature trees
• Bridle trail access
• Quality fencing and paddocks
• Usable flat land

These features can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to a property’s value.

Unfortunately, many online valuation systems either fail to recognise them or place very little weighting on them.

A Real Bedfordale Example

One Bedfordale property demonstrates the problem perfectly.

Two major online valuation systems estimated the property’s value at approximately $1.2 million.

A licensed valuer who physically inspected the property later assessed its value at approximately $3.1 million.

The difference was almost $1.9 million.

Why?

Because the online systems failed to properly recognise:

• Mains water connection
• Development potential
• Large areas of usable land
• The property’s overall rarity

A qualified valuer standing on the property could immediately identify those factors.

The algorithm couldn’t.

What Bedfordale Buyers Actually Pay More For

After more than two decades selling homes throughout Bedfordale and the Perth Hills, we consistently see buyers paying premiums for several key factors.

Usable Land

A gently sloping or flat block often attracts significantly more buyer interest than a larger block with steep terrain.

Scheme Water

Properties connected to mains water often command stronger prices than similar properties relying entirely on tanks and bores.

Views

Valley outlooks, city skyline views and natural bushland vistas can have a major impact on value.

Workshops And Access

Many Bedfordale buyers place greater value on a large workshop and vehicle access than cosmetic renovations.

Privacy

Privacy remains one of the strongest drivers of demand in Bedfordale and often separates premium properties from average ones.

Should You Trust An Online Valuation?

Online valuations can be useful as a rough starting point.

However, they should never be relied upon when making important financial decisions such as:

• Selling your property
• Refinancing
• Estate planning
• Family law matters
• Setting an asking price
• Accepting an offer

Even the companies providing these estimates include disclaimers stating they should not be relied upon as formal market valuations.

So How Do You Find Out What Your Bedfordale Property Is Worth?

The only reliable method is to have someone physically inspect the property and assess the factors that genuinely influence value.

That means understanding:

• Which Bedfordale precinct the property sits within
• Land usability
• Water infrastructure
• Access
• Views
• Improvements
• Current buyer demand
• Comparable recent sales

No algorithm can walk your property.

No algorithm can appreciate your views.

No algorithm can assess your workshop, paddocks or development potential.

A local property expert can.

The Bottom Line

Online valuation tools can provide a useful starting point, but Bedfordale remains one of Perth’s most complex property markets.

When properties range from modern lifestyle homes on 3,000sqm lots through to multi-acre equestrian holdings with subdivision potential, automated systems simply cannot account for all the variables.

If you’re considering selling, refinancing or simply want to understand your property’s current value, a professional appraisal remains the most reliable option.

Related Reading

• What Factors Actually Affect Your Property’s Appraisal Value?
• How Accurate Are Online Property Valuations?
• Do I Really Need A Property Appraisal Before Selling?
• Bedfordale Suburb Profile

Want An Honest Opinion Of Your Property’s Value?

Book a no-obligation appraisal with Brendan Leahy and the team at Naked Real Estate.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

The post Why Bedfordale Online Valuations Are Often Wrong appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

But “can I?” is the wrong question. After more than two decades selling homes across the Perth Hills, the honest question is “should I?” — and to answer that, you have to understand what the job of selling a home actually is. Because it isn’t putting a sign out the front and waiting for the phone to ring.

Let me walk you through what I’ve seen, with real numbers from real sales, so you can decide with your eyes open.

Is it legal to sell your house without an agent in WA?

Yes. It’s completely legal, and no law requires you to use an agent. But very few people actually do it — research suggests only around 1% of homes sold in Australia are sold without an agent. It’s rare for a reason, and the reason isn’t that people don’t know it’s allowed.

In my experience it’s mostly sellers in the middle-ring and outer-ring suburbs who try it, and the motive is simple: they want to save the commission. You almost never see it at the top end of the market. Those owners already understand the value of a good agent, and they’re usually busy people running a business or working a senior role who have no interest in having ten or twenty strangers wander through their home hoping one of them turns out to be a buyer.

That’s the part most people underestimate. A few weeks in, the typical private seller has had twenty groups through, every one of them saying “lovely home, we’ll get back to you” — and then never calling again. Buyers almost never tell you the truth. They won’t say it’s overpriced, or that they didn’t like the kitchen or the layout. They stay polite and they vanish. That’s real estate. It’s the single hardest thing in this job to get used to, and it’s a big reason so many agents don’t last past their first year.

Will you actually save the commission by selling privately?

Usually not — and often you’ll lose far more than you save. Every time I’ve sat down with someone who sold privately and gone through their numbers, I can see where it went wrong. They think they saved 2.5% in commission. In reality they often gave away 5–10% in the negotiation. They just don’t realise it.

Here’s why. Negotiation is a skill, and if you don’t do it for a living it’s very hard. The classic private-sale negotiation is a tennis match: you drop half, the buyer comes up half, and a few volleys later you’ve settled well below where you should have. The for-sale-by-owner
websites make it all sound easy and tell you they’ve got people to help — but they’re generally not experienced agents. Often there’s just one in the whole organisation who is,
and a fair few of those businesses were started by someone who didn’t make it as an agent.

And you don’t even save on the marketing. Every private-selling platform I’m aware of charges for marketing, paid upfront, exactly as you would with an agent.

People rarely admit any of this afterwards. It’s like buying a car — I’ve never once met someone who said they didn’t like the car they bought. We justify the decisions we’ve made. The seller who left $60,000 on the table will tell you the sale went beautifully, because the alternative is admitting it didn’t.

A real example: a $635,000 private offer that should have been $810,000

This is the one that shows it best. I had a seller in Kelmscott with a subdividable block — a five-unit site once you knocked the house down, or a retain-and-build with three units at the rear. He’d been trying to sell it himself and had a contract sitting in front of him ready to sign.

His daughter rang me. She’d told him not to sign yet and to get me to look at it first. So I went round.

The private offer was $635,000 — low to begin with. But the real danger was buried in how it was structured. The buyer was putting down a $1,000 deposit and taking control of the property for the next 18 months while he pushed a subdivision approval through.

Here’s the mechanism, and almost no seller understands it because it’s perfectly legal. With a tiny deposit and a long settlement, that buyer effectively ties your property up for a year and a half at almost no risk. If the approval comes through, he on-sells it and does what’s called a simultaneous settlement — he settles with you and with his own buyer on the same day, and walks off with the profit, having put in almost nothing but the approval costs. If the market turns or the numbers stop working, he simply walks away. His total loss is $1,000.

Meanwhile you’ve sat there for 18 months believing your home was sold, missing every other buyer that came and went.

We took the property on and advertised it properly. Within 18 days we had an offer of $810,000. The owner had been working off an appraisal a different agent had done three years earlier. He knew the market had risen — he just had no idea how far. That’s $175,000 more than his private contract, on a deal that wouldn’t have tied him up for 18 months.

What can go wrong with the contract and settlement?

A lot — and the contract is where a private seller is most exposed, because it’s the part you
can’t see going wrong until it’s too late. Every sale in WA runs on the Offer and Acceptance together with the Joint Form of General Conditions for the Sale of Land, the standard contract published jointly by REIWA and the Law Society of Western Australia. The system is deliberately simple and clear. But the danger lives in the special conditions, and that’s where experience earns its keep.

Every special condition has to spell out four things: what needs to be done, who has to do it, by when, and what happens for both sides if it isn’t done. Get the wording wrong and you can find yourself paying to fix something, or watching money come off your price at settlement. There are real disclosure obligations too — asbestos, whether your RCDs and smoke alarms are compliant, any caveats on the title, easements and what type they are, covenants controlling what can and can’t be built, and whether everything on the property has actually been approved by the council.

There’s also the paperwork that has to travel with the contract: a copy of the certificate of title, and the Landgate Property Interest Report — an increasingly important document that flags things like bushfire-prone-area status, easements, infrastructure, pool compliance and more. Two compliance points catch people out constantly, and the law is specific: at least two RCDs must be fitted before the title can transfer, and smoke alarms must be mainspowered, less than 10 years old and in working order before transfer, with fines up to $5,000 for getting it wrong.

Let me give you a live example of why the wording matters. Right now I’m selling a home with two older hot water systems. They’re 25 years old, but they work. The buyer has it in his head that he’s buying a brand-new home and wants brand-new units installed. Because the contract was written properly, he hasn’t been able to push that through his settlement agent — and that single piece of correct wording has saved my seller $9,730. It’s the same reason we deliberately exclude things like garden reticulation in our contracts. Come the final inspection, I could turn the reticulation on and one sprinkler head wouldn’t fire — a $3 part — and that alone could hold up an entire settlement. We take it off the table in writing from the start, so everyone knows exactly where they stand before anyone gets stressed.

How much work is there really, once it’s “sold”?

A lot — and most people have no idea how much. If a home sells quickly, the assumption is
that the agent got lucky and did nothing. It’s the opposite. In my experience, around 60% of tthe real work in a sale starts after the contract is signed.

Years ago we mapped our entire process onto the wall of our training room — every step from a buyer’s first contact right through to settlement and beyond.

It runs across about a dozen stages and well over a hundred individual steps: first contact,
the appraisal, preparing the listing, running the live marketing campaign, qualifying and following up every single buyer enquiry, the property going under offer, settlement, and the follow-up afterwards — plus separate tracks for when a price needs changing, when a sale falls over, and when a property is withdrawn.

A huge amount of that work sits after a buyer’s offer is accepted — chasing finance week by week, checking the contract conditions, managing the deposit, handling building and pest inspections, and steering the whole thing through to settlement without it collapsing. That’s the part nobody sees from the outside, and it’s the part that protects your price after the handshake. It’s also the exact part a private seller takes on entirely alone.

Aren’t buyers and sellers protected anyway?

This is the part hardly anyone thinks about, and it’s one of the strongest reasons to be careful. When you buy from a private seller, there’s very little consumer protection. If something goes wrong during or after the sale, it’s largely buyer beware. If a private seller isn’t truthful about the property, the buyer often has no real comeback — it becomes one person’s word against the other’s.

A licensed agent is a completely different proposition. In WA we operate under a statutory Code of Conduct, the paperwork is governed jointly by the regulator, the Law Society and REIWA, and complaints can be taken to Consumer Protection. The guidelines are clear and the penalties for breaching them are heavy. That accountability is part of what you’re paying for, and it protects both sides of the deal.

Here’s a dangerous one I see: a buyer offers to rent the home for, say, six months while they “sort out their finance,” then settle. It sounds reasonable. But the people who push this hardest sometimes want the house for something other than living in — including illegal activity — and they’ll bait you with above-market rent and an offer $50,000 or $100,000 over your asking price. Come settlement, the deal evaporates, and the house can be left damaged. In those circumstances your insurance generally won’t cover you at all.

Can’t I just use a settlement agent instead of an agent?

No — they do different jobs, and this trips a lot of people up. A settlement agent is not experienced in how real estate contracts should be written, and they’re not in a position to advise you on how the conditions should be structured. Their job is to follow and execute the contract once it exists. There are clear boundaries between the two roles.

So if you sell privately, you are the one writing those special conditions — the exact thing that, written wrong, costs you money at settlement, as my hot water example shows. The settlement agent picks it up afterwards. Everything before that point — pricing the home, marketing it, qualifying buyers, structuring and writing the contract — is on you.

What about the marketing — can’t I just list it myself?

Not directly on the big portals. realestate.com.au and Domain only allow licensed agents to
list, so a private seller has to go through one of the for-sale-by-owner companies (which are themselves licensed agencies) to appear there at all.

When someone tells me upfront they’re going to sell privately, my advice is always the same: do not skimp on marketing. It’s the most important thing you can do, and don’t leave anything out. It’s like insurance — you don’t know which rock your buyer is going to come out from under. Some buyers only ever look at one website; leave that one out and you can miss a genuinely good buyer.

Where private sellers fall down is the quality. The photography is usually the giveaway, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a private seller produce a proper video walkthrough. Then there are the brochures and how the home is actually presented. All of it feeds how the home feels when a buyer walks through the door, and how it’s marketed is the difference between one person turning up and twenty turning up.

Which brings me to the line that sits under everything: you don’t get your best price in isolation — you get it with competition between buyers who want your home. Creating that competition is exactly what you should be paying a real estate agent to do.

What happens if your private sale doesn’t work?

This is the part the platforms don’t put on the brochure: if your home doesn’t sell, the “saving” you went in for can quietly disappear, and you can end up paying commission anyway.

One way it happens is you give up after burning your best weeks on the market and start again with an agent — by which point buyers can see the home has been sitting, which weakens your hand before you’ve even relaunched. The other way is sharper. Some of the private-selling sites, if your home hasn’t sold, will on-sell your lead to a real estate agent and I’ve seen arrangements where they then take up to 30% of that agent’s commission when the property finally sells.

So you set out to avoid paying commission, and you can end up paying it anyway — with an extra middleman clipping the ticket on the way through.

Is there ever a good time to sell privately?

Yes — and I’ll be honest about it, because pretending an agent is always the answer would
be dishonest. If a family member wants to buy your home, I have no problem with that at all. Call me, I’ll come round, give you an honest value so it’s fair for everyone, step you through the paperwork and point you to a good settlement agent. The same goes for a divorce settlement, or transferring a property or a half-share between family members. In those cases there’s no marketing and no negotiation to handle, so doing it yourselves makes complete sense.

This game is a long game. It’s not about what an agent can extract from you today — it’s about helping, and that builds relationships that last for decades. All I ask in return is that people are upfront. Don’t get me out to do a full appraisal and then find out a week later it was only to shop me for a number. Be straight with me and I’ll be straight with you. That’s how I like to operate.

So, should you sell your house without an agent?

For the reasons above, unless it’s a family member or an internal transfer like a divorce or a change of ownership between relatives, I wouldn’t. I genuinely can’t think of another
situation where it’s a good idea. Yes, sometimes a private sale goes through smoothly —that does happen — but there are too many variables for it to be the simple process the websites make it out to be.

The biggest one is emotion. Yours, as the seller, swinging up and down through the whole process. And the buyer’s, once they’re in a position to buy, doing exactly the same. That emotional tug-of-war on both sides is what quietly kills private sales — and it’s the reason I never sell my own homes myself. I’m too attached, too sure of where I think the price should be. I bring in another agent specifically because I need someone removed from the emotion to tell me what I need to hear.

So here’s the one thing I’d want you to walk away understanding. Stop thinking of it as “selling a home.” You’re not selling a home — the sale is just the outcome. The actual job, the thing you or your agent should be doing properly, is marketing the property, negotiating the sale, and getting it safely through to settlement. That’s the difference, and that’s where homes are won or lost.

If you’re weighing it up — whether to sell privately, or just whether an agent is worth it — get an honest appraisal before you decide anything. Call the office or get in touch with me directly. No pressure, no game-playing, just a straight conversation about what your home is really worth and what it would take to get you there.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

This article is general information based on more than two decades of selling property in the Perth Hills. It isn’t legal advice. For your own situation — especially anything involving contracts, disclosure, trusts, or complex ownership — speak to a licensed settlement agent or a property lawyer.

The post Can I Sell My House Without a Real Estate Agent in Western Australia? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

So if you want the short answer: yes, you can negotiate.

But after more than two decades selling homes in the Perth Hills, I’ll tell you the truth most agents won’t. The commission rate is the wrong thing to be focused on. The question that actually matters — the only one that ends up in your bank account — is this:

What do I walk away with?

That’s it. That’s the whole game.

Is the cheapest commission actually the cheapest?

No. The cheapest commission is rarely the cheapest outcome. What lands in your pocket is the sale price minus the fees, not the fee on its own. A slightly higher fee that delivers a much higher sale price leaves you better off. Focus on what you walk away with, not the percentage.

Let me show you why the percentage is a trap.

Say Agent A quotes you a cheaper rate and Agent B costs you $10,000 more in fees. Most people stop right there and pick Agent A. Feels like a $10,000 win.

But if Agent B sells your home for $40,000 more than Agent A would have — and that happens more often than you’d think — then the “expensive” agent just put $30,000 more in your pocket. The cheap one cost you money.

$10,000 cheaper but $40,000 less in the sale price is not the cheapest option. It’s the most expensive mistake you can make.

I’m not a discount agent and I’ve never pretended to be. We charge 2.5% including GST, plus marketing. I’ll explain both. But I’d rather be the agent who gets you the highest number than the agent who shaved a few thousand off the fee and left tens of thousands on the table.

How much commission do you charge, and why is marketing separate?

We charge 2.5% including GST — in the normal WA range — plus marketing, paid separately by the seller at cost (around $2,600 on average). We keep the marketing separate on purpose: it removes a conflict of interest that would otherwise push an agent to sell fast rather than for your best price.

Two parts: the commission, and the marketing.

The commission is 2.5% including GST. That sits in the normal range for WA and, in my view, it’s what it costs to run a system that actually creates competition between buyers which is what drives your price up.

The marketing is paid separately, by you, up front. You can put it on a credit card, pay by EFT, or use one of the marketing finance companies that lets you settle it later. On average it works out to around $2,600 a property, and every cent of it is passed through at cost. There’s no markup on it. A REA (realestate.com.au) listing is around $1,500; professional photography and video is around $700; then there’s floor plans, the REIWA and Domain listings, and our in-house printed brochures.

Now — here’s the part most sellers never get told, and it’s the most important thing in this whole article.

We charge marketing separately on purpose. It removes a conflict of interest that
works against you.

Think it through. If the agency paid for all the marketing itself, and the agency is carrying ten properties at $2,600 each, that’s $26,000 a month tied up — and a lot more than that when the market slows and homes take longer to sell. When an agency is that far out of pocket, there is enormous pressure on the agent to get those properties sold fast — not for the best price, just sold — so the business can recover its money.

That pressure doesn’t land on the agency. It lands on you. It shows up as your agent quietly leaning on you to “just take the offer.”

When you pay the marketing yourself, that pressure disappears. The only thing left for me to chase is the best possible price for you, because that’s the only thing I get paid on. Our interests point in exactly the same direction. That’s the way it should be.

Real estate is brutal — and that’s exactly why your agent matters

Here’s something most people never think about. Real estate is almost unlike any other sales job, because you don’t start with a product to sell.

Sell cars, boats, furniture, anything — the product is already sitting there. Your job is just to find the buyer and present it to them. In real estate, you’ve got nothing to sell until you’ve won the listing in the first place. No listing, no income. Put plainly: if you don’t get the listing, you don’t eat.

That makes it one of the hardest businesses in the world to make a living in. The only way you survive long-term is by getting genuine results for your clients and building a reputation over years — and most people who start in this industry can’t do it. In my time I’ve watched the large majority of agents who come into the business come and go again inside a year or two.

So when you’re choosing who to trust with your biggest asset, what you’re really looking for is someone genuinely dedicated to the craft. And that is not about age or how long they’ve held a licence. A newer agent can be outstanding — as long as they’re training and getting sharper every single day. The rule I hold myself to is simple: be one per cent better than I was the day before, every day. The agent you want to avoid isn’t the young one — it’s the one who got their licence, learned the basics once, and stopped.

Are discount real estate agents worth it?

Usually not. An agent who slashes their own fee in seconds is showing you how they’ll cave when a buyer pushes back on your price — and most deep-discount agents survive on volume, not results. A weak negotiator who saves you a few thousand in fees can cost you tens of thousands on the sale price.

Here’s something to test any agent with. Ask them to drop their fee, and watch how fast they fold.

If an agent caves on their own commission in thirty seconds flat, ask yourself one thing: if they can’t hold their ground on their own fee, how hard do you think they’ll fight for yours? A negotiator who panics and discounts the moment they feel like they might lose the listing is showing you exactly how they’ll perform when a buyer pushes back on your price. They’ll fold there too.

The deep-discount agents tend to be the ones selling around ten homes a year. They’re often working on commission only, which means they’re frequently desperate for the next deal — and a desperate negotiator is a weak negotiator. I once overheard one say, out loud, “I’ll get it sold, I don’t care what the deal is, I discounted my commission to win it.” That’s not a strategy. That’s a fire sale, and your home is the fuel.

There’s a reason cut-price models keep failing here. A rate below what it costs to do the job properly can look fine while prices are climbing — anyone can look good in a rising tide. It’s the falling market that exposes the model. By the time you account for GST, company tax and the real cost of employing and training good people — wages and rent have both climbed sharply in recent years — the maths on a bargain-basement fee simply doesn’t hold up through a downturn. Around our corridor, the flat-fee and discount agencies that came through over the years have one thing in common: they’re gone.

The clearest example isn’t local. Purplebricks launched in Australia in 2016 promising to disrupt the industry with a cheap fixed fee. They spent a fortune on advertising and pulled out of the country in 2019 — less than three years later — after heavy losses (their final-year Australian operating loss was around A$34 million). One of the model’s fatal flaws: agents were paid an upfront fee whether the home sold well or not, so there was no real incentive tied to your result. They also picked up a fine from Queensland’s Office of Fair Trading for misleading claims about that fixed fee, and were widely criticised for pressuring sellers to drop their asking prices. Cheap to list. Expensive to sell. Sound familiar?

Proof, not promises

I don’t expect you to take any of this on faith. Here are three real sales.

Roleystone — $53,000 more, in 7 days. A home that had sat on the market for 90 days with a previous agent. Phone photos. A briefcase left sitting on the kitchen bench in the listing pictures. No video. Priced at $750,000 and going nowhere. We relisted it properly using a Select Date Sale, created real competition, and sold it in 7 days — four buyers through, two written offers — for $803,000. Same house. Same market. $53,000 difference.

Seville Grove — $81,000 above the offer the owner was ready to accept. The owner would have been happy anywhere in the $750,000–$800,000 range. Through the campaign we drew offers of $792,000, then $805,000, then $826,000. The owner was ready to sign at $826,000 — and most agents would have closed it right there and banked the commission. I held off for one more buyer who was waiting on his bank. Forty-eight hours later that buyer came in at $907,000. That’s $81,000 more than the seller was about to accept. The fee was irrelevant next to that number.

The $2.6 million sale that nearly fell over — and why it didn’t. During Covid I sold a home for $2.6 million in an area where the median was around $780,000. The buyer’s purchase depended on a chain — they had to sell their own $1.2 million property first, and their buyer was a self-employed truck driver waiting on a tax return to get finance across the line. Then the $2.6 million buyer hit family problems and tried to pull out entirely.

That deal didn’t collapse for one reason: the contract was watertight before any of it happened. I’d already had a finance variation pre-signed, and the conditions were written so the buyer would have forfeited a substantial deposit if they walked. I worked it through Christmas and New Year, kept the buyer calm, and got it to settlement — and my seller barely felt the stress, because that’s my job to absorb, not theirs.

Which brings me to the biggest myth in this business.

Does a fast house sale mean the agent did less work?

No — usually the opposite. In my experience, around 60% of the real work in a sale starts after the contract is signed, in the stretch between acceptance and settlement. That’s where dozens of small things can quietly go wrong and sink the deal. A fast sale doesn’t mean the job’s done — it means the hard part is just beginning.

If your home sells in a few days, plenty of people assume the agent got lucky and didn’t earn the commission. Handle that stretch between acceptance and settlement wrong, though, and the deal dies — and you’re back on the market with a “sold and fell over” stamp on your listing.

This is where experience earns its keep, and it’s the part most agents never properly train on.

Every sale in WA runs on the Joint Form of General Conditions for the Sale of Land — the standard contract published jointly by REIWA and the Law Society of Western Australia —together with the Offer and Acceptance. Inside that, it’s the special conditions and the actions attached to an offer that make or break a settlement. We spend serious time staying current on this, including recent court outcomes that change how things should be written, because the rules genuinely move. WA changed its plumbing regulations in February 2024, for instance — what counts as a “fixture,” and who’s even allowed to touch certain work, isn’t fixed in stone.

The skill is in how the conditions are written. A couple of examples from our own contracts:

• Garden reticulation. We specifically exclude it. Here’s why: come the final inspection, I’d turn the reticulation on and one sprinkler head wouldn’t fire — a $3 part — and that tiny thing could hold up an entire settlement. So we take it off the table in writing from the start.
• Alarm systems. Half the time people haven’t armed the alarm in years, can’t remember the code, or the backup battery is flat — a $50–$60 fix. The system might be perfectly fine, but nobody can prove it on the day. So we exclude it, plainly, in the contract.

None of that is about cutting corners. It’s the opposite. It’s spelling out exactly where everyone stands before anyone’s stressed, so there are no surprises and no arguments at final inspection. That’s what you’re actually paying a commission for — not the “for sale” sign, the settlement.

What questions should you ask before hiring an agent?

Before you sign with anyone, ask these five questions — the answers tell you far more about an agent than their fee does:

1. How many homes did you personally sell last year? Volume tells you whether they’re experienced or desperate.
2. What’s your average sale price compared to the asking price? Ask for the actual numbers.
3. What’s your strategy to create competition between buyers? “We’ll put it online” is not a strategy.
4. Is the marketing marked up, and who carries the cost? You want it passed through at cost, paid by you — for the conflict-of-interest reason above.
5. What happens between contract and settlement if something goes wrong? Listen for whether they actually understand the General Conditions, or just hand you a form.

My guarantee

When a seller comes to me with a cheaper quote from another agent, I don’t argue about the fee. I put it in writing: if I don’t achieve a price you’re genuinely happy with, I’ll do the job at the cheaper fee.

I can say that because I back myself. An agent who’s confident in the result doesn’t need to win you on price.

The bottom line

I’m a bit of a Formula One buff. There are twenty drivers on the grid and every one of them is good — you don’t get there otherwise. But only two or three are great, and those are the ones who keep winning the championship, year after year.

Real estate works exactly the same way. There are plenty of good and average agents. The thing to be sure of, before you sign anything, is that you’ve got a great one — because over the life of a sale, that’s the difference measured in tens of thousands of dollars, not a fraction of a percent on the fee.

Don’t shop for the cheapest car. Back the driver who wins.

If you’d like an honest appraisal and a straight conversation about what your home is really worth — and exactly what you’d walk away with — call the office or get in touch directly. No pressure, no padding.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

The post Are Real Estate Agent Commissions Negotiable in WA? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

What’s actually happening on 1 July 2026

From 1 July 2026, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) obligations will apply to real estate agents, buyer’s agents, property developers and several other professional service providers across Australia. These are commonly known as the Tranche 2 reforms.

Until now, banks, casinos and other financial institutions have been operating under these laws since 2006. Real estate sat outside the system. From 1 July 2026, that changes. The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024 was passed by Parliament in November 2024 and received Royal Assent on 10 December 2024.It brings around 70,000 to 100,000 newly regulated Australian businesses under AUSTRAC’s oversight, including every real estate agency in the country.

This article explains what that means in plain English for you as a seller or buyer — and what Naked Real Estate has done to be ready.

What Naked Real Estate has already done

I’ll get to what the law requires shortly. But because this is an article about trust, transparency, and being prepared, you should know what we’ve already done at Naked Real Estate:

• All agents and staff have completed the mandatory three-hour training course
  covering all aspects of the new legislation
• We have already enrolled with AUSTRAC

Enrolment for new Tranche 2 entities opened on 31 March 2026, with a deadline of 29 July
2026. We didn’t wait until the last minute. We’re ready now.

If you’re working with another agency, it’s worth asking them the same two questions: have your team completed AML/CTF training, and are you enrolled with AUSTRAC? If they can’t answer cleanly, that tells you something about how seriously they’re taking your transaction.

Why is this happening at all?

For years, Australian banks, casinos, and remittance providers have had to verify customer identities, track suspicious transactions, and report concerns to AUSTRAC. Real estate did not.

The reason is straightforward: property is one of the most attractive vehicles for laundering money anywhere in the world. Large transaction values. Capital growth. The ability to use companies and trusts. The ability to disguise who really owns what. The ability to transform illicit cash into a legitimate asset.

The Australian Federal Police and AUSTRAC have been saying this for years. Until now, a criminal could potentially move millions of dollars through Australian property without the same level of scrutiny applied by the professionals facilitating the transaction. The Financial Action Task Force — the international body that sets global standards for AML/CTF — had been recommending for years that Australia bring real estate, legal practitioners, accountants and certain other professions under its regime. Australia was genuinely an outlier internationally. From 1 July 2026, that gap closes.

So the laws aren’t government overreach for the sake of it. There was a real problem. The question is whether the solution is well-designed — and that’s where it gets more interesting, but I’ll come back to my honest opinion on that at the end of this article.

When does the AML obligation actually start?

This is the question that confuses most people, because the legislation is dense.

In plain English: at Naked Real Estate, the obligation begins when a client formally engages our services — typically at the appraisal-to-list stage or when a listing agreement is being signed.

We’re not running AML checks on someone who rings the office to ask a general question about market conditions. We’re not checking ID on someone browsing a home open. The obligation kicks in when a client genuinely engages our services for a property transaction.

For sellers: at the point you’re moving from “thinking about it” to “let’s list.”

For buyers: when an offer is being put together and accepted on a property.

Once that point is reached, the identity check process begins.

What the new process will look like for you

The law tells agents what outcome is required — identify and verify the customer, understand the risk, report suspicious matters — but it does not force every agency to use exactly the same process or technology. What I’m describing below is what a typical Naked Real Estate transaction will look like in practice, based on AUSTRAC’s requirements and the systems being adopted across the industry.

For sellers — what to expect

When you sit down for your listing appointment, we’ll collect the things we’ve always collected — authority to sell, property information, marketing approvals. From 1 July 2026, we’ll also need to verify your identity.

You’ll likely hear me say something close to this:

“Before we can act for you, we’re required under federal AML laws to verify your identity. You’ll receive a text in a moment. It takes about two minutes.”

The reality is that for the vast majority of sellers, this will be a smartphone-based process. We’ll send a secure link to your phone. You’ll:

• Photograph your driver’s licence or passport
• Take a quick selfie (called a “liveness check”)
• Submit it

The system verifies your identity in real time. The whole thing typically takes two to five minutes. No office visit required. No paper forms. No photocopying licences. You can do it while we’re still sitting at your kitchen table talking about marketing.

For most owner-occupier sellers, that’s the entire AML process. Done. Move on with selling the home.

For buyers — yes, you get checked too

A lot of people assume only sellers will be checked. That’s not how the reforms work.

From 1 July 2026, agencies are expected to conduct customer due diligence on both sellers and buyers. So when an offer is accepted, you (the buyer) will receive a similar secure link. Same process — driver’s licence or passport, selfie, two to five minutes.

This is usually completed before the contract progresses further.

What about companies, trusts, and more complex situations?

This is where it gets more involved.

If you’re buying or selling as an individual, the process is simple — verify identity, done.

If a company is buying — say “Smith Holdings Pty Ltd” — we’ll need to identify the company itself, the directors, and what AUSTRAC calls the ultimate beneficial owners (the real people who control the company). This may involve providing an ASIC extract and verifying the identities of those individuals.

Trusts add another layer — we may need to see the trust deed, identify the trustees, and understand the beneficiaries depending on the structure.

This part of the law is targeted at one of the most exploited vulnerabilities in property — criminals hiding behind complex layered ownership structures to obscure who really owns an asset. If you’re a legitimate company or trust, the documentation will be straightforward. If you’re not, it won’t be.

Source of funds and source of wealth

For higher-risk transactions, agents may also need to ask about where the money is coming from. This isn’t to be nosy. It’s because the law requires us to understand the transaction enough to spot something that doesn’t add up.

For most buyers — finance approved through a bank, deposit from a savings account, normal Australian transaction — this won’t involve much beyond what your bank or broker has already documented.

For more unusual situations — overseas transfers, third-party funding, large cash components — more questions may be asked.

What about privacy and your data?

This is one of the most important parts of the new system, and one most articles on this topic don’t talk about honestly.

Every time identity is verified, data is collected. Photo IDs. Selfies. Personal information. Records of who bought what, when, from whom. Under AML/CTF obligations, this data must be retained for record-keeping purposes — many industry guides reference a seven-year retention framework.

That data has to live somewhere. The risk isn’t the law itself. The risk is poor implementation. A large franchise with enterprise-grade cybersecurity is one thing. A small agency with weak security is another.

In my view, data security is going to become a much bigger conversation over the next five years than AML/CTF itself. Every agency now holds significantly more sensitive personal data than they did before — and that data becomes a potential target.

When choosing an agent, it’s worth asking them how they store and protect the data they collect. Not as a hostile question, but as a reasonable one. A well-prepared agent will have a clear answer.

What if something doesn’t look right?

This is where the law becomes very different from how most real estate agents think.

We are not detectives. We are not required to prove a crime has occurred. The legal test under AUSTRAC’s guidance is something close to:

Would a reasonable person with my training and knowledge think this transaction may involve money laundering, proceeds of crime, identity fraud, tax evasion, terrorism financing, or another serious offence?

If the answer is yes, an obligation to consider what’s called a Suspicious Matter Report (SMR) is triggered. So what kinds of things might trigger that obligation? Here are some general examples — not based on any specific Naked Real Estate client.

Example 1: The buyer wanting to pay in cash

A buyer offers $1.8 million for a home. Nothing unusual there. Then during discussions they say: “I can pay the whole thing in cash. Actual cash. Can we split the payments into smaller amounts?”

Two separate issues arise. The cash itself is unusual in a modern property transaction. The attempt to split payments may indicate an effort to avoid reporting thresholds (sometimes called “structuring”). Either issue on its own warrants further questions. Both together would justify careful review.

Example 2: The mysterious third party

The contract is in John Smith’s name. Then John says: “My cousin in another country will send the money.” You ask why. The explanation is vague. Funds arrive from a different name, a different country, with no obvious connection.

This is a classic red flag because the person controlling the property and the person providing the funds are different people — and there’s no clear reason why.

Example 3: The company nobody can explain

A property is being purchased by “Blue Horizon Investments Pty Ltd.” You ask who owns the company. The representative cannot explain. ASIC records lead to another company. That company is owned by a trust. The trust has overseas beneficiaries. Nobody seems able to identify the ultimate controller.

Complex ownership structures are not illegal. Unnecessarily complex ownership structures are a recognised money-laundering risk indicator.

Example 4: The overseas buyer who never sees the property

Important caveat first: being overseas is not suspicious. Buying sight-unseen is not suspicious. Perth agents handle these transactions regularly with completely legitimate buyers — expats, FIFO workers, investors.

The concern arises when multiple unusual factors combine on the same transaction. Overseas buyer, never sees property, pays well above market, uses multiple intermediaries, refuses to explain source of funds, pushes for unusually fast completion. Individually those may all be explainable. Together they may justify a closer look.

Example 5: The seller who wants no questions asked

The agent asks for standard ID verification. The response is something like: “Why do you
need that? Just list it. I don’t want my information recorded. Can’t we skip that part?” Most genuine clients are mildly annoyed by extra paperwork but comply. Active resistance to basic identification can itself become a warning sign.

What does “reporting to AUSTRAC” actually involve?

For most agencies it isn’t a phone call. It’s an electronic Suspicious Matter Report (SMR) lodged through AUSTRAC’s reporting system.

The report generally covers:

• Who’s involved
• What’s being transacted
• When it’s happening
• Why the agent considers it unusual
• How the behaviour is presenting

It’s closer to an intelligence report than a criminal complaint. AUSTRAC receives it and
decides whether further investigation is warranted.

Does the deal stop?

This surprises a lot of people. Usually, no.

Lodging an SMR does not automatically stop a transaction. AUSTRAC receives the intelligence and decides what to do with it. In many cases the property transaction continues to settlement. The AML obligation runs in parallel with the transaction, not on top of it.

Is the client told?

Generally, no — and this is critical.

It is an offence under AML laws for an agent to tell a client they’ve been reported to AUSTRAC. This is called “tipping off” and exists to prevent investigations being compromised. So an agent cannot say: “We’ve reported you to AUSTRAC” or “We’re delaying because AUSTRAC is looking at you.”

If you’re a genuine seller or buyer reading this, none of that is relevant to you. But it’s worth understanding why your agent might not be able to explain certain delays or process
changes in certain rare scenarios.

My honest opinion on the new laws

I’ll give you the politically careful answer and the honest one. The honest one is more useful.

The good

Australia was genuinely behind international standards. Property has long been a known vehicle for laundering money — large values, capital growth, ability to use companies and trusts, ability to disguise who really owns what. The Australian Federal Police and AUSTRAC have been saying this for years. Bringing real estate, legal practitioners and accountants under the same framework as banks is a reasonable policy objective.

If someone tells you “there was no problem, this is just government overreach,” I don’t think that’s accurate. There was a problem.

The reality check

The people most affected day to day will not be organised crime groups. It will be ordinary
buyers, sellers, agents, lawyers and conveyancers.

That’s almost always how AML systems work. The sophisticated criminal rarely walks into a real estate office saying “I’d like to launder $5 million.” The sophisticated criminal hires lawyers, accountants, nominees, trust structures, intermediaries. The more sophisticated the criminal, the more likely they are to adapt around the rules.

Meanwhile, every legitimate seller and buyer now goes through more identity checks, more data collection, more compliance screening. The burden is spread across 100% of
transactions to catch a small percentage of bad actors.

Will it catch real money launderers?

Yes — but not all of them, and probably not the smartest ones.

I think these laws will reliably catch careless launderers — the ones who use obvious third-
party funds, can’t explain ownership structures, produce inconsistent ID. Those people become much easier to identify.

I think they’ll catch mid-level criminals — the ones who previously relied on weak verification and poor record keeping. Those people are now operating in a much less friendly environment.

I don’t think they’ll consistently catch sophisticated organised crime — people moving serious money already employ professionals and structures specifically designed to obscure ownership and funds. These laws make it harder, more expensive, and riskier. Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes it isn’t.

The better question isn’t “will this stop money laundering?” It’s “will this reduce money laundering?” I think the answer is probably yes.

My biggest concern: data security

This is the thing I think most people are missing.

Every additional database storing passports, driver’s licences, selfies and personal financial information becomes a potential target for cybercriminals. The risk isn’t the law itself. It’s poor implementation by under-prepared agencies.

I suspect data security will become the bigger story over the next five years.

What was necessary, what may have gone too far

If I were rewriting the law, I’d absolutely keep:

• Beneficial ownership transparency (knowing who really controls a property)
• Sanctions screening
• Basic identity verification

What I’d watch carefully is whether government has shifted too much investigative responsibility onto private businesses. There’s a real difference between “verify identity and report concerns” and “become a quasi-financial-crime investigator.” If compliance becomes so complex that small independent agencies need dedicated AML staff, then I think policymakers have probably overshot.

So if you’re a seller or buyer reading this — how should you feel?

In my view, mildly annoyed.

Not angry. Not grateful. Just mildly annoyed at the extra friction.

Here’s your licence. Here’s your passport. Three minutes later, get on with selling or buying the house.

Looking at the system as a whole, I’m cautiously supportive. Not because I think the laws will eliminate money laundering — they won’t. Not because I think criminals can’t adapt — they can. But because property was one of the last major gaps where Australia was behind comparable countries internationally. Closing that gap is defensible policy.

The one-sentence summary:

These laws are likely to catch some criminals, inconvenience almost everyone, stop very few sophisticated operators completely, but still leave Australia with a stronger property-
transactions framework than it had before.

What you should actually do as a seller or buyer

Practical, in priority order:
1. Have your ID ready.
A current Australian driver’s licence or passport will cover the vast majority of cases. If you’re selling or buying through a company or trust, have your ASIC extract, trust deed or relevant ownership documents ready as well.
2. Ask your agent two questions before you sign anything.
Have your team completed AML/CTF training? Are you enrolled with AUSTRAC? Any agent that can’t answer cleanly hasn’t taken this seriously.
3. Ask your conveyancer or lawyer the same questions.
The Tranche 2 reforms apply to them too. They have the same obligations to verify identity and report concerns. A coordinated, professional team across agent and conveyancer is what you want.
4. Push back if anything seems excessive.
The law requires identity verification, beneficial ownership transparency, and reporting of suspicious matters. It does NOT require agents to demand information that goes well beyond what’s necessary. If something feels disproportionate, ask why it’s being requested.
5. Take data security seriously.
Ask how your information is stored and protected. A reputable agent should have a clear answer about which compliance platform they use and how data is secured.
6. If anyone tells you there’s a way around the rules — be very worried.
There isn’t. The fines for non-compliance reach into the millions for businesses, and individuals can face significant penalties personally. Any agent suggesting shortcuts is putting both themselves and you at serious risk.

The bottom line

We’re here now. Most of the world has been doing this for years. We don’t have a choice in the matter — it’s federal legislation, and the penalties for getting it wrong are heavy. So have your ID ready. Be prepared for it. There’s no way around it. And if somebody tells you there is, be very worried.

At Naked Real Estate, we’ve completed the training. We’re enrolled with AUSTRAC. We’ve prepared properly so that for our clients, the new process will be as quick and as painless as the law allows.

If you have questions about how this affects your specific situation, give us a call. If we’re not the right people to answer it — and for some specific legal, accounting, or financial questions we won’t be — we’ll point you toward someone who is.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

Final Disclaimer
Brendan Leahy and Naked Real Estate are not lawyers, accountants, or financial advisors. This article is general information based on industry training and publicly available guidance from AUSTRAC and the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024. The law in this area is new, complex, and subject to ongoing guidance updates from AUSTRAC. If you have specific questions about how the new laws apply to your circumstances — particularly involving companies, trusts, foreign ownership, complex funding arrangements, or any matter where compliance is unclear — please seek advice from a qualified lawyer, accountant, conveyancer or licensed AML/CTF specialist.

Brendan Leahy Director and Licensee, Naked Real Estate Selling in the Perth Hills since
2002
Office: Unit 1/198 Brookton Highway, Kelmscott WA 6111
Phone: 08 6254 6333
Mobile: 0439 998 867
Email: brendan@nakedrealestate.com.au
Truth. Strategy. Sold.

The post Anti-Money Laundering Laws for Real Estate: What Sellers and Buyers Need to Know Before 1 July 2026 appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

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.

The post What Factors Actually Affect Your Property’s Appraisal Value? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

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.

The post Do I Need an Appraisal to Refinance My Mortgage? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

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.

The post How Accurate Are Online Property Valuations? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

1. They list the home as-is (under-prepared), or
2. They over-capitalise on renovations the market won’t pay for.

Both cost you. The sharp move is the middle ground — five low-cost, high-impact updates that consistently lift a Perth Hills home’s sale price without blowing the budget or delaying your campaign.

Here they are.

1. Paint the interior in neutral tones

The cheapest, highest-impact update you can make. Fresh paint says “this home has been cared for.” It also brightens the space, which matters more in Perth Hills homes where established trees and elevation can make interiors feel darker than they really are.

Stick to: warm neutrals — off-whites, soft greys, pale beiges.

Avoid: strong feature walls, trendy colours that date quickly, anything you personally love but the market won’t.

Approximate cost: $2,000–$5,000 for a professional interior repaint depending on size. One of the highest-returning preparation investments you can make.

2. Declutter and depersonalise

This one is free. Most sellers skip it because it’s emotionally hard.

Buyers need to picture themselves living in your home. They can’t do that when every shelf is covered in your family photos, your trophies, your kids’ artwork, or your collection of anything. Pack it.

Rule of thumb: remove half of everything visible. Empty surfaces. Empty walls. Empty wardrobes — buyers will look inside, and full wardrobes signal a lack of storage.

The home should feel like a hotel-staged version of itself, not a lived-in family scrapbook.

Approximate cost: $0. If you don’t have somewhere to put it, hire a small storage unit for the campaign — usually $50–$100 a week.

3. Sort the kerb appeal

Buyers form an opinion within seconds of pulling up. If the front of your home is tired, you’re climbing a hill before they walk through the door.

Quick wins:

– Mow, edge and weed
– Mulch the garden beds
– Paint or replace the front door
– New letterbox if the existing one is faded
– Pressure-wash the driveway and front path
– Add two large pots with healthy plants by the front door
– Clean the windows inside and out

Approximate cost: $500–$2,000. Returns far more than that on sale day.

4. Minor kitchen refresh — NOT a renovation

This is where sellers most often over-capitalise. A full kitchen renovation rarely returns more than it costs at sale.

What works:

– Replace cupboard handles
– Refresh the splashback if it’s dated
– Replace the tapware if it’s tired
– A coat of paint on tired cupboards
– Deep-clean the oven, rangehood and benches

Approximate cost: $1,000–$4,000 for the whole refresh.

Do NOT rip out and replace the kitchen unless it’s genuinely unusable. The maths almost never works in the seller’s favour.

5. Modernise the lighting

Old pendant lights and yellow bulbs date a home faster than almost anything else. Walk through your home at night and look up. If the fittings are dated, replace them.

The simplest version: replace every bulb with a modern warm-white LED. Brighter, cleaner, instant lift. A few dollars per bulb.

The next step up: for visible fittings — the pendant over the dining table, the vanity lights in bathrooms, the entry light — invest a bit more. Modern fittings are widely available and disproportionately impactful for the price.

Approximate cost: $200–$1,500 depending on how far you take it.

The trap: over-capitalising

What sellers should NOT do before going to market:

– Full kitchen renovation
– Full bathroom renovation
– New flooring (unless the existing is genuinely unsalvageable)
– Pool installation
– Extensions or additions

These rarely return more than they cost. They also delay your campaign by months. If a buyer wants to renovate, let them — and price the home accordingly.

The point of these five updates is to remove buyer objections, not to add features. Buyers pay a premium for a home that’s presented and move-in ready. They don’t pay extra for someone else’s renovation choices.

The truth about presentation

Presentation matters. So does pricing. So does method.

Naked Real Estate averaged 14.01% above list price across 79 settled sales in 2025 and has been ranked on the REB Top 50 Agents WA every year from 2022 to 2025. That premium doesn’t come from any single thing — it comes from a defined process that combines correct presentation, sharp pricing, and the trademarked Select Date Sale® method to create competitive tension between qualified buyers.

Updates help. Strategy is what closes.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

Book an appraisal

Thinking of selling? Book an appraisal with Brendan Leahy at Naked Real Estate for a frank discussion about what to fix, what to skip, and what your home is genuinely worth in today’s market.

See our full industry recognition for the complete track record.

The post Sell Your Home for More with these FIVE Updates appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.