I sell property up here for a living, so I am hardly neutral. I also live here. We have been in the same house in the Hills for more than two decades, and we raised our kids here.

So take the sales pitch out of it and here is what people actually ask me when they are thinking about moving up from Kelmscott, Seville Grove or further down the flat into Bedfordale or Roleystone.

Four questions, every time.

What about bushfire?

This is the first one, always, and it deserves a straight answer rather than reassurance.

The risk is real. Most of the Hills is designated bushfire prone land, and that designation exists for a reason. You do not get the trees, the bush, the birds and the outlook without also getting the fire risk. They are the same thing.

What has changed is how it is managed.

Land in a bushfire prone area now carries planning and building requirements that did not exist when a lot of the older homes up here were built. New development has to address bushfire risk under State Planning Policy 3.7 and the Planning for Bushfire Guidelines, and a bushfire management plan is a key part of whether a subdivision or a development gets approved at all.

In the newer Bedfordale estates that shows up in ways you can see. The bushfire management plans for those estates provide for eight metre firebreaks and fire hydrants every 500 metres.

Planned burning around residential areas is also far more frequent than it was when we moved up. If you see smoke over the valley on a still autumn day, that is usually a planned burn reducing the fuel load, not an emergency.

And both Bedfordale and Roleystone have very good volunteer bushfire brigades. If you move up here I would encourage you to get involved with yours. The community spirit around them is one of the better things about living in the Hills, and you will learn more in a season with them than from anything you read.

Check the block, not the suburb

This is the practical bit most people miss.

You can check whether a specific property is in a designated bushfire prone area, rather than guessing from the suburb. DFES publishes the statewide Map of Bush Fire Prone Areas, and Landgate’s Property Interest Report will tell you about an individual address.

The current version of the map took effect on 13 December 2025.

DFES’s own advice on preparing is on their site, and their framing is worth repeating because it is not soft: to survive a bushfire, you must be prepared to make your own decisions.

Preparation up here is not optional. It is the price of the view. Your local government issues a firebreak notice each year and you are expected to comply with it. You will spend time on it every spring.

If that sounds like too much, that is useful to know before you buy rather than after.

DFES bushfire prone areas

What about schools?

More choice than people expect.

There are school buses running morning and afternoon down to Kelmscott and Armadale, and across to Lumen Christi College in Martin. Routes and stops change, so check with the school rather than taking my word for it.

In Bedfordale there is Southern Hills Christian College, an independent school on Admiral Road running pre-primary to Year 12.

Roleystone Community College is a public school running kindergarten to Year 10, which describes itself as the largest district high school in the state. For senior secondary there are the Kelmscott and Armadale options plus Lumen Christi, all within a reasonable run.

Are you a long way from the shops?

Less than people imagine. Depending where you are, you are five to ten minutes from either Armadale or Kelmscott.

Roleystone also has its own shopping village, which has a proper country feel to it. There is a good IGA, a chemist, specialty shops and takeaway.

You will do a bigger weekly shop and fewer top-up runs. That is the honest difference.

But the kids cannot just walk to their mates’ place

This is the one parents worry about most, and I understand why. It is also the one I feel most strongly about.

No, your kids cannot walk down the street to the shops whenever they want. And in my experience that has been a good thing, not a bad one.

They have to find ways to amuse themselves, and there is plenty up here to do it with.

Waiting until someone can run you down the road is not the worst lesson a teenager ever learned.

What you see up here that you see very little of anywhere else these days is kids out on their bikes. On the tracks, on the roads, without an adult hovering. They know the other kids in the street. They go out and come back.

There is bush and state forest on your doorstep, and enough wildlife that an afternoon walk is genuinely worth doing.

And both Bedfordale and Roleystone have community centres with skate parks, basketball courts, tennis courts and ovals.

It is not a compromise for kids. It is a different childhood, and after more than two decades of watching it up close, I would choose it again.

What you actually give up

I would rather say this than have you find out later.

You will drive more. Everything is a car trip, and once your kids hit sixteen you become a taxi service for a couple of years.

You have real maintenance. Firebreaks every year, gutters, trees, and a block that does not look after itself.

And you will get the odd week in summer where you watch the weather and the warnings more closely than you would on the flat.

That is the trade. Most people who make it do not want to go back, but it should be a decision, not a surprise.

Thinking about moving up, or selling to do it?

I sell in Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon and Seville Grove, and I live up here.

If you are selling on the flat to buy in the Hills, I will tell you what I think your place is worth, and I will tell you straight what you are getting into up here, including the parts people do not enjoy.

Book a free Perth Hills and Foothills property appraisal

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

This article is general information. Check bushfire requirements for a specific property with your local government and the relevant planning and building
authorities.

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales.

The post Moving Up the Hill: What Actually Changes appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

I get paid when you list, so of course I would rather you moved sooner than later. Bear that in mind while you read this, and note that most of what follows is about not rushing.
This is the question I get more than any other from Hills owners in their seventies and eighties.

How am I ever going to get used to something smaller?

You have a big block. You have space you never think about. And somewhere down the hill is a house that would suit you better, on land you can actually manage, but it feels like giving something up.

Do not overthink it

My advice is always the same. Start looking. Do not commit to anything. Just look.

You will be surprised what is out there, and you will know the right one when you walk into it. It just feels right. That sounds soft for a bloke who deals in numbers, but after more than 1,500 personal sales since 2002, it is what I have watched happen over and over.

There are two things people find hardest, and it is worth naming them now.

Neighbours being closer. Smaller rooms.

Those two take time to get your head around, and that is normal.

Why this is not a logical decision

Here is the part most agents get wrong. They treat downsizing like arithmetic. It is not.

You look out the kitchen window and you see John climbing the tree and falling out and hurting his knee. Mary tripping over skipping on the path. Water bombs in the pool. The dog running around the back lawn.

Those memories are not distant. For most of us, including me, they feel like yesterday.

So no, you should not be rushed. Anyone who rushes you is thinking about their own diary.

The Mount Nasura sale that made the point

I sold a home in Mount Nasura for a lady in her late eighties. Two thousand square metres, a five by two with a lovely Hills outlook. She and her husband had built it, and she raised her family in it.

The family knew the home had become too big for her, now that she was on her own. Her children had looked after both her and the property beautifully, but they had their own families to look after as well.

She was still very active. Her friends were nearby, along with her church group and her quilting club

She had three worries.

She did not want to leave the area or her community.

She wanted room for the grandchildren to stay.

She wanted an outlook, and somewhere she felt safe.

We did not have to rush, and that changed everything

Because her children were local, she had a fallback. If we sold and had not found anything, she could stay with one of them while we kept looking.

That one fact took all the pressure off. She was not going to be forced into a decision by a settlement date.

As it turned out, the week we got an offer on her place, I listed a home in Seville Grove. Quiet cul-de-sac, public open space directly opposite, five hundred square metres, a four by two. Room for the grandchildren. Room for her quilting machine. And nothing to spend on it. She could move in as it was.

She was still close to her friends, her church and her quilting group.

She lived there happily for the rest of her life.

The part nobody expects

The best thing about it was not the house.

Before the move, every time the family came over there was something to do. The old house always needed something. Two thousand square metres does not look after itself. Visits turned into work.

Afterwards, they could turn up, cook lunch or dinner with her and the grandkids, and just enjoy themselves.

That is worth more than the difference in the two prices.

The mistake I see most

It is not choosing the wrong house.

It is not choosing at all.

The decision gets put off, sometimes for years, usually for a mix of reasons. Emotion. Fear of the unknown. And money: what will we sell for, what will we buy for, and will there be enough left to live on?

Then there are the parents who start thinking about leaving something for the children.

My answer there is usually the same. Worry about yourselves at this stage of life. Your children can look after themselves.

There is one situation where that answer is not good enough, and I will not pretend otherwise. Some parents have an adult child with a disability still living at home, and they need to make provision for them. That is the hardest version of this conversation and there is no easy answer to it. What I say is to talk to a solicitor and a financial adviser who deal with this properly, and to get advice from the support services in that area, before making any decision about the house.

What I would actually do

Look without committing. Give yourself months, not weeks.

Work out if you have a fallback, somewhere to stay if the sale happens before the purchase. It takes enormous pressure off.

Be honest about what you actually need. Room for grandchildren, an outlook, somewhere you feel safe, a shed, a spot for the quilting machine. Write it down. It is a shorter list than people expect.

And think about who does the work on the garden. If it is your children, every visit, that is part of the equation too.

Thinking about it in Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon or Seville Grove?

I will tell you what I think your home is worth and what I would do, including if I think you should wait.

Book a free Perth Hills and Foothills property appraisal

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales.

The post Downsizing Out of the Hills: How Do You Go From Two Thousand Square Metres to Five Hundred? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

I need to declare two things before you read this.

First, I own an investment property myself, and I am holding it.

Second, telling you to hold costs me a listing. I would rather say what I think.

Since the May budget, investors have been ringing me asking whether they should sell.

Here is what I tell them.

Go and see a good accountant

Not a mate at a barbecue. Not me.

The goalposts keep moving, and if your property sits in a self managed super fund or a family trust it gets more complicated again, the rules are different again and there are further changes announced in that area. Get specific advice. The structure matters more than most people realise.

Everybody’s situation is genuinely different. Two people with identical houses can get completely different answers.

What actually changed

Two things, and they work differently from each other.

Negative gearing. If you owned your investment property before 7:30pm on 12 May 2026, you are exempt from the changes. You can keep negatively gearing it until you sell.

Capital gains tax. This one is not grandfathered, and that is where people get confused. Gains made up to 1 July 2027 still get the 50 per cent discount. Only gains after that date move to the new system of indexation with a 30 per cent minimum tax rate.

So it is split by time, not by when you bought.

The difference is smaller than the headlines

This is the part that surprises people.

Treasury’s own worked example, in its budget factsheet on the changes, follows an investor selling two years after the new rules start. On their assumptions, the tax on the gain from that period would have been about $14,100 under the old discount. Under the new system it is about $16,303.

Roughly $2,200 on a two year gain, on their numbers. Yours will be different.

That is not nothing. It is also not a reason to dump a property you were otherwise happy to keep.

Run your own numbers with your accountant. The answer will depend on your income, how long you have held it, and what the property has actually done.

Why I am telling people to hold

Look at what has happened to the rental market since the budget.

In the week ending 20 September 2026, REIWA reported 1,312 houses and 662 units available to rent across the entire Perth metropolitan area. Fewer than two thousand properties, for a city of more than two million people.

In that same week, 612 properties were leased. That is about 31 per cent of the number still sitting available at the end of it.

Meanwhile, WA still has a serious shortage of skilled labour, which means migration keeps coming, from interstate and overseas. There is a shortage of bricks. There are labour costs and government charges on new builds.

Every one of those makes the supply problem worse, not better.

My view is that rents go up from here. I feel for the tenants in that, genuinely. But if you already own a rental property, the case for holding it looks stronger to me now than it did before the budget, not weaker.

That is my opinion about the market, not a forecast anyone can guarantee, and it is not advice about your tax position.

If you are selling anyway, the tenant matters more than the tax

This is the part almost nobody thinks about, and it costs more money than the tax change will.

I sold a home in the Kelmscott hills where the tenant was marvellous. A fly in fly out worker with three young children, and he kept the place like an owner.

He worked around our home opens, had it presented beautifully, and we got a very good price. Those owners were selling to move money into their super before retirement, not because of the budget.

In my experience, that is maybe one in four tenancies. If that. The others go the other way.

Tenants with belongings everywhere who do not want their things photographed. Tenants who agree to a one o’clock home open and tell you at five to one that they have changed their mind, so you stand at the front gate turning buyers away. Tenants who sit in the lounge with the family and the pets while you try to run an inspection. Tenants who will not clean.

Some of it is deliberate. If they do not want to move, making the place look bad is the simplest way to stop it selling.

In my experience, selling into that situation can cost you a large share of what the property is worth. Far more than the difference in tax.

I have one at the moment where the tenant is lovely, but the house is full of boxes and you can barely move, and the gardens are well overgrown. The right answer there is to wait until the tenancy ends.

So my advice on a difficult tenancy is usually the same. Do not sell with the tenant in place. Wait for the lease to end, get the place empty, and spend a little on paint, floor coverings and the garden before you go to market.

The short version

If you already own it, you are probably better off holding it. Check that with your accountant.

If you are selling anyway, the state of the tenancy will affect your result more than the tax changes will.

And if someone tells you there is a simple answer that applies to everyone, they have not looked at your situation.

Selling an investment property in the Perth Hills or Foothills?

I will tell you what I think it is worth, whether I would sell it tenanted or empty, and what I would spend before going to market. Including when I think you should not sell at all.

Book a free Perth Hills and Foothills property appraisal

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

This article is general information, not tax or financial advice. Speak to your accountant about your own circumstances.

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales.

The post Should You Sell Your Investment Property After the Tax Changes? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

The obvious answer is $855,000. On one of my Roleystone sales, taking it ultimately left the sellers $36,000 worse off than the clean offer they already had.

I get paid when your home sells, so you might expect me to tell you to take the biggest number and move on. This article argues the opposite, which is at least a sign I am not just protecting my commission.

Here is the situation I see more than any other when two buyers want the same home. One offer is higher, but the buyer needs to sell their own place first. The other is lower, but the buyer has finance pre-approval and can settle when you want.

Most sellers instinctively reach for the higher number. Sometimes that is absolutely the right decision. Sometimes it is not, and the difference may only become obvious weeks later, when the higher offer falls over and the other buyer has bought somewhere else.

Price is one number on the offer. There are several others.

When an offer comes in, the price is the part everyone reads first. It is rarely the only thing that decides whether you actually end up with that money.

An offer in Western Australia also tells you:

• whether the buyer needs finance approval, and how long they have to get it
• whether the buyer has to sell their own home first
• whether it depends on a building or pest inspection
• how large a deposit they are putting down
• when they want to settle
• any other special conditions they have added

Each one is a way the sale can fail, or be delayed, or be renegotiated before settlement. A higher price with three conditions attached is not the same offer as a lower price with none.

The question I ask every seller to think about is not “which is the biggest number.” It is “which of these is most likely to actually settle, at that price, on a date that works for me.”

Subject to sale is the big one

Across my own sales, roughly three in four of the buyers we work with are also sellers. So a lot of the offers you receive will be subject to sale, and that is normal.

It is not automatically a bad offer. But it means your sale now depends on someone else’s sale, in a market you do not control, at a price you have no say over.

The standard protection is what most people call the 48-hour clause. It lets you keep marketing your home and consider another offer if one comes along. If you want to proceed with that other offer, you give the first buyer notice under the clause. They then generally have two business days, not a literal 48 hours, to satisfy or waive their subject to sale condition. If they cannot, you can usually terminate that contract and proceed with the other offer. The exact wording matters, so read the clause in your contract. The detail is in my subject to sale guide.

But that protection only works if another buyer turns up. In a quiet market, you can be tied to a subject to sale offer for its whole term with nobody else coming through the door.

The practical question to ask is simple. Is the buyer’s own home already on the market? Is it priced realistically? Has it had interest? A subject to sale offer from someone whose home is already under offer is a very different thing from one whose home has not been listed yet.

Finance, deposit and settlement

A finance condition is common and usually fine. What matters is whether the buyer has pre-approval, how realistic the loan is against the price, and how long the condition runs. The finance clause article explains where this catches people out.

The deposit is another term to compare. In WA a deposit is not compulsory and the amount is negotiable. I look at it as part of the overall offer, but I would not assume a larger deposit automatically makes one buyer safer than another.

And settlement matters more than people expect. If you are buying your next home, an offer that settles on the wrong date can cost you more than the price difference between two offers, through bridging finance, rent, storage or a second move. A delayed settlement is not a situation you want to engineer on purpose.

A Roleystone sale where the lower offer was the right one

In early 2019, when the Perth market was still soft after the mining downturn, I had a Roleystone home on the market from $720,000. I have changed the sale figures to protect the owners’ privacy, but the proportions are exactly as they were.

Two offers came in.

The first was $747,000, subject to finance only. The buyers had bank pre-approval, and apart from a building and pest inspection there were no other conditions. A clean, genuine offer.

The second was $855,000, subject to the sale of the buyers’ own home in Canning Vale.

On paper, that is $108,000 more. Easy decision.

So I went and looked at the Canning Vale home before giving the sellers my advice.

That is the part sellers sometimes miss. I was not comparing $747,000 with $855,000. I was working out what had to happen before each buyer could actually hand my sellers the money.

The buyers had been told to expect $1.45 to $1.5 million for it. When I walked through, it was nowhere near ready for market. They were halfway through painting, the gardens were not done, and the place was pretty much a war zone. Even finished and presented properly, I could not see it getting more than $1.1 million at best.

That meant the $855,000 offer depended on a sale that was not ready to start, at a price I did not think the market would pay.

My advice was not to take it. Take the $747,000, which was real and ready to go.

The sellers took the $855,000.

Ninety days later the buyers’ home still had not sold. The subject to sale term ran out, the buyers did not extend, and they walked away from the contract.

The sellers asked me whether the finance buyers were still around. They were not. They had bought another home.

We ended up selling the property for $711,000. Thirty-six thousand dollars less than the clean offer they had in their hand, three months later, after a stressful wait.

Afterwards the sellers said to me, you should have made us take the other offer.

I understood why they felt that way. But that is not how it works, and it should not be. My job is to put every offer in front of you, tell you honestly what I think of each one and why, and then the decision is yours. I cannot make a seller accept or reject anything, and I would not want an agent who tried.

What I can do is make the risk as clear as possible before you decide. Which is why I now explain it the way I do below.

The way I explain it now

Imagine you walk into the casino with $747,000 in your pocket. It is real money, and it is yours.

You walk up to the blackjack table and put the whole lot down on the chance of winning an extra $108,000.

If it comes off, you are ahead. If it does not, you do not get your $747,000 back. You leave with whatever the market will give you on the day you try again.

That is what taking a weak subject to sale offer over a clean one can be. You are not choosing between $747,000 and $855,000. You are choosing between $747,000 now and a bet on $855,000 later.

Sometimes that bet is worth making. The point is to know it is a bet.

One more thing that story taught me. The clean buyer does not sit on the bench waiting for you. The moment you accept another offer, they are free to buy something else, and good buyers usually do.

When the higher conditional offer is the right call

I do not want this to read as “always take the clean offer.” That is just as lazy as always taking the biggest number.

Sometimes the gap is large enough that it is worth the risk. Sometimes the buyer’s own home is already sold and their condition is close to a formality.

Sometimes you are not in a hurry, you have no purchase of your own riding on it, and you can afford to wait and see.

The point is to weigh it, not to follow a rule.

What if there is only one offer?

Everything above assumes you have two buyers to compare. Often you have one.

When there is only one buyer, you cannot make them compete with somebody who does not exist. What you can do is negotiate on more than price.

Conditions are negotiable. A shorter finance period, a larger deposit, a settlement date that suits you, a subject to sale condition with a firm end date, or a buyer agreeing to list their home straight away. Those are all things a single buyer can give you that are worth real money, and many will agree to them to secure the home rather than haggle over the last few thousand dollars.

A good agent is negotiating the whole offer, not just the headline number.

How Select Date Sale® fits in

When more than one buyer is interested, our Select Date Sale® process gives every registered buyer the chance to put forward their best and final offer, and those offers come in with their conditions attached. That puts you in exactly the position this article describes: several offers to compare side by side, on more than just price.

I have explained how that process works, and where it is the wrong choice, in Auction vs Private Treaty vs Select Date Sale®.

The question to ask your agent

Not “which offer is highest.” Ask this instead:

Of the offers I have, which is most likely to settle at that price, on a date that works for me, and why?

A good agent will answer that with specifics about each buyer’s position. If you get a number back instead of a reason, that tells you something too.

After more than 1,500 personal sales since 2002, I can tell you the offers that cause the most grief are rarely the low ones. They are the high ones that fall over.

Frequently asked questions

Should I always accept the highest offer on my house?

No. The highest price only matters if the sale actually settles. An offer with fewer conditions, a firmer finance position or a better settlement date can be worth more to you than a higher one that depends on things you cannot control.

Is a subject to sale offer a bad offer?

Not necessarily. Most buyers need to sell before they can buy. What matters is how far along their own sale is, whether their home is realistically priced,
and whether your contract lets you keep marketing and accept another offer if one comes along.

What is an unconditional offer?

An offer that is not subject to conditions such as finance approval, the sale of another property or inspections. A cash buyer may be able to make one, and some financed buyers choose to offer without a finance condition. Finance pre-approval on its own does not make an offer unconditional. Because it carries the least risk, an unconditional offer can be worth accepting at a lower price.

Can I negotiate conditions as well as price?

Yes. Finance periods, deposits, settlement dates, inspection conditions and subject to sale terms can all be negotiated. When there is only one buyer, negotiating the conditions is often more valuable than pushing for the last few thousand dollars.

How do I compare two offers with different conditions?

Ask which offer is most likely to settle at that price and on a date that suits you. Look at each buyer’s finance position, whether they need to sell first, how far along that sale is, the deposit and the settlement date. Your agent should be able to explain the risk in each offer in plain terms.

Selling in the Perth Hills or Foothills?

If you are selling in Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon or Seville Grove, the offers you get will depend on your home and your buyer pool. How you weigh them is where the result is made.

Book a free Perth Hills and Foothills property appraisal, and I will talk you through how I would handle the offers on your home, before any arrive.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

If you are new to how offers work in WA, start with how the Offer and Acceptance process works in Western Australia.

This article is general information and not legal advice. Every contract is different. If you are weighing offers with conditions attached, talk to your settlement agent or a lawyer before you sign.

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales.

The post Two Offers on Your Home: Would You Take $855,000 or $747,000? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

I should say up front that I get paid when you list, so an article telling you not to wait is exactly what you would expect me to write. Read it with that in mind, and note that there is a section below on when waiting genuinely is the right call. 

Here is the question I get more than almost any other: 

“Should we wait until spring?” 

The advice behind that question is real. It is just not from here. 

The spring rule is mostly an east coast auction rule 

Spring seasonality is mostly an east coast phenomenon, and it exists largely because of auctions. 

In Sydney and Melbourne a large share of homes sell under the hammer, and a lot of those auctions are held in the front yard. Buyers stand outside. Bidding happens in the open. When it is wet and cold, fewer people turn up, so fewer sellers want to go to auction, so fewer homes are listed. Winter thins out, spring floods back, and the pattern becomes the rule everybody repeats. 

Western Australia does not work that way. Almost everything here sells by Offer and Acceptance, and auctions are rare enough in Perth that they barely register in the national auction figures at all. REIWA puts the reason down to how well the Offer and Acceptance contract works and how familiar it is to WA buyers. 

So the machinery that creates the spring rule barely exists in this state. The rule got imported anyway, because most national property advice is written from Sydney and Melbourne. 

Across my career, and I have been selling in this patch since 2002 with more than 1,500 personal sales, January and May have consistently been my two busiest months for written offers. Neither of them is spring, and plenty of those homes launched in December and April, two of the months sellers are most often told to avoid. 

Season changes how a home presents. It does not change what a buyer will pay. 

This is the distinction that matters, and it is the one most seasonal advice blurs. 

A buyer who wants your home, in your street, at your price, wants it in July as much as in October. What changes across the year is how the property looks on the day they walk through, and presentation is a solvable problem. 

The reason you are selling is not solvable. It does not reschedule itself to suit the garden. 

The dry summer paddock 

Here is the objection I hear most about summer in the Hills. By February the paddocks are brown, the lawns are tired, and the whole place looks dry. 

That is true. It is also mostly a non-issue with local buyers. 

People buying in the Perth Hills know what a WA summer looks like. They have lived through them. They know that brown grass in February is not poor land, and they know it greens up the moment the rain comes. A buyer from Roleystone is not startled by a dry paddock in Roleystone. 

What does hurt you in summer is not the colour of the grass. It is a property that looks neglected: dead growth left standing, gutters full, gardens untended, nothing done. Buyers can tell the difference between a dry season and an owner who stopped caring, and so can I. 

Winter in the Hills helps some homes and hurts others 

Winter is where the “let’s wait” conversation usually starts. Sometimes that is sound advice about a specific property. Sometimes it is just easier than doing the work. 

Winter genuinely helps a home with green paddocks, a creek running, a valley outlook opened up by bare trees, a fireplace, or the kind of misty hills lifestyle that people move here for. Those things do not photograph in January.

Winter genuinely hurts a home that is dark, south facing, damp, has drainage problems, a muddy driveway, or an outdoor entertaining area that is the main selling point. If that is your house, the honest answer may be to fix the drainage and go to market in October. 

That is a judgement about your property. It is not a judgement about the month. 

Which season suits which home 

Acreage and lifestyle properties. Winter, early spring and autumn all work well. The land, the trees, the water and the feel of the place are the product. 

Homes where the garden is the feature. Late winter through spring, once the garden is prepared properly before the campaign starts, not during it. 

Pools and outdoor entertaining. Late spring and early summer show these at their best. 

Dark, damp or poorly drained homes. Avoid deep winter unless the presentation work has been done. 

Standard family homes. Season matters least. Price, presentation and what else is for sale matter most. 

Rare homes with almost no direct competition. List when there is a buyer pool, whatever the month. 

The test that actually matters 

Not “what season is it”. Ask this instead: 

How many homes like mine are for sale in my suburb right now, and who is looking for one? 

If there is nothing comparable available in Bedfordale or Roleystone this week, that is a stronger signal than any month on the calendar. Waiting until October might mean four direct competitors list on your street in the meantime, and you have handed buyers a choice they did not have. 

That is the whole thing. Buyer demand against competing stock. Everything else is decoration. 

When waiting is genuinely the right call 

Wait if painting or repairs will materially change the result. Wait if major landscaping is

nearly finished. Wait if a tenant is about to move out and the home will present better empty. Wait if a directly competing property is on the market right now and will likely be gone in six weeks. Wait if your next purchase is not clear, or you are simply not ready to move. 

Those are strategy. Waiting because it is not spring is habit. 

So when should you sell? 

When your life says it is time. 

You are selling because something changed. Upsizing, downsizing, a separation, a relocation, retirement, school catchments, getting closer to family, releasing equity. Those reasons do not care what the garden looks like, and they should not be overruled by advice written for a different state’s auction calendar. 

Get the price right, get the presentation right for whatever season you are in, and get the sale process right. That is what decides the result. 

Frequently asked questions 

Is spring really the best time to sell a house in the Perth Hills? 

Not for the reason people think. The “wait for spring” rule comes from the east coast, where a large share of homes sell at auction and cold weather thins out both buyers and listings. Auctions are rare in Perth, so that seasonal machinery barely applies here. What matters far more than the month is how many comparable homes are for sale in your suburb and who is looking. 

Does winter hurt house prices in WA? 

Season changes how a home presents, not what a motivated buyer will pay. Winter genuinely helps some Hills homes: green paddocks, a running creek, a valley outlook through bare trees, a fireplace. It genuinely hurts others that are dark, damp, poorly drained, or reliant on outdoor entertaining space. It is a judgement about your specific property, not about the calendar. 

Should I wait to sell until my garden looks better? 

Only if the work will materially change the result and is nearly done. Preparing a garden properly before a campaign can be worth waiting for. Waiting simply because it is not spring, when the presentation is already fine, usually just hands competitors time to list against you.

When is the right time to sell in the Perth Hills? 

When your reason to move is real, your price is right, and your presentation suits the season you are in. The strongest timing signal is local: little comparable stock and active buyers beats any month on the calendar. If a competing property is on the market now and will be gone in weeks, that is a better reason to move than the season is to wait. 

Selling in the Perth Hills or Foothills? 

Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon and Seville Grove are six different markets, and the right timing depends on your property, your competition and your situation. 

I will tell you straight whether I think you should go now, do some work first, or wait for a better window. Including when the answer is wait. 

Book a free Perth Hills and Foothills property appraisal. If you want to understand how we run the sale itself, read Auction vs Private Treaty vs Select Date Sale® and our Best Service Guarantee. 

Truth. Strategy. Sold. 

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales. Learn more about Brendan Leahy and the Naked Real Estate story.

The post When Is the Best Time to Sell in the Perth Hills? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

I should say up front that I market myself too. I write these articles, I post on social media, and I have a commercial interest in you thinking well of me. So take what follows as an argument you should test against me as much as anyone else. 

I was at a kitchen table for an appraisal not long ago when the owner asked me something I am hearing more and more. 

“How many social media followers do you have?” 

I showed her, then asked why it mattered to her. Another agent had been through and told her he had around seven thousand followers across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. 

I understand why that sounds like something. Big following, big reach, more buyers, more competition, better price. That is the chain of reasoning and each link sounds sensible. 

The problem is the first link.

A follower is only worth something if they could buy your home 

Someone watching a property video in Sydney, London or Shanghai is not buying in Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon or Seville Grove next weekend. 

That is not an argument against social media. Used properly it is a genuinely useful part of a campaign, and paid targeting, retargeting and database marketing can put your home in front of exactly the right people. 

It is an argument against treating an agent’s popularity as a selling strategy. 

I would rather have three hundred local followers who live here, know the market and watch what sells, than ten thousand who have no connection to the home. The goal is not attention. It is enquiries, inspections, offers and competition between buyers. 

Views do not pay the seller 

A video can get twenty thousand views and still fail. 

If those views produce no qualified enquiry, no private inspection, no buyer conversation and no offer, then the video helped the agent more than it helped the seller. It entertained the algorithm. 

Sellers do not get paid in likes. They get paid at settlement. 

So the question to put to any campaign is not how it performed as content. It is whether it created buyer competition for your property. 

I am not against video. We were early to it. 

We have been making property videos since 2013, back when most agents used video only on high-end homes. We made it standard because buyers look at video as closely as they look at photos. 

Video shows what photos cannot: how a home flows, how rooms connect, how the land is used, the outlook, the access, the sheds, the feel of standing in the place. Floor plans do the same job from a different angle. Buyers want to understand how a home works before they give up a Saturday to inspect it. 

And it does not need to be long. Most property videos should be a clear walkthrough that explains the home and makes the buyer want to see it, and past a few minutes you are usually not selling harder, you are asking more of the buyer’s attention than the job requires. Our videos from 2013 mostly ran between one and two minutes. That was deliberate then and it still holds. 

Good photos, video and floor plans all serve one purpose. Selling the home. 

Is the home the hero? 

This is the simplest test there is. Watch the video and ask who it is about. 

A good property video makes the right buyer understand the home and feel something about it. In the Hills that might be the usable land, the workshop access, the valley outlook, the quiet street, the fireplace, the privacy, the school run, the layout, or the specific reason a family would stretch to buy it. 

There is room for personality and there is room to be creative. Some homes suit it. But the property should not become the backdrop to somebody’s personal brand. 

Every one of our videos is captioned 

This sounds like a small thing. It is not. 

Plenty of buyers watch property videos with the sound off. At a desk at work having a quick look at what is open on the weekend. On the train home. On the couch with the television going. If your video only works with audio, those buyers get half of it. 

It still surprises me how many agents skip this. 

There is a second benefit. Search engines read captions, so an accurate caption file means the suburb, the street and the features of your home are indexed as text. Auto-generated captions are not good enough for that, because they routinely mishear street and suburb names, which are the exact words worth indexing. 

It costs a bit of time per video. It costs the seller nothing, and it works whether the buyer has the sound on or not. 

The numbers that actually matter 

When you are choosing an agent, ask about the numbers connected to a result rather than to an audience. 

How many enquiries did comparable properties attract? How many inspections, and how many second inspections? How many buyers were followed up, and how? How many offers were created? How was competition between them handled? How did the final price compare to the original guide? How many buyers missed out and are still looking? 

I will be straight with you: those are the numbers I am strong on, so of course I am pointing you at them, just as the agent leading with follower count is

pointing you at his. The difference I would ask you to weigh is which set of numbers actually ends up in your bank account. Marketing creates attention. Follow-up creates competition. Negotiation creates the result. An agent who is strong at the first and weak at the other two will produce a busy campaign and a disappointing number. 

Five questions worth asking 

If an agent leads with their following, ask these: 

1. How many of your followers are plausibly in the buyer pool for a home like mine? 
2. Will my property be marketed only to your followers, or targeted beyond them? 
3. In your campaigns, what matters more: views, enquiries, inspections or offers? 
4. Can you show me how a recent campaign turned attention into buyer action? 
5. In the video, will my home be the hero, or will you be? 

A good agent will not be offended by any of that. They should be able to answer all five without hesitating, and if they cannot, you have learned something useful for the price of asking. 

Frequently asked questions 

Do social media followers help sell a house? 

Only the followers who could actually buy your home in your area. Reach for its own sake does not pay the seller; a video seen by thousands of people with no connection to your suburb creates no competition. Local, targeted reach and proper follow-up matter far more than a big follower count. 

How do I choose a real estate agent in the Perth Hills? 

Judge them on numbers connected to results, not to an audience: enquiries, inspections, second inspections, offers created, how buyer competition was handled, and how final prices compared to the original guide. An agent strong on attention but weak on follow-up and negotiation produces a busy campaign and a disappointing price. 

Does video actually help sell property? 

Yes, when it is about the home. Good video shows what photos cannot, how a home flows, the land, the outlook, the access, and helps a buyer decide the property is worth inspecting. Captions matter too, because a lot of buyers watch with the sound off. The test is simple: is the home the hero, or is the agent? 

Is a longer property video better? 

Usually not. Past a few minutes you are generally asking more of a buyer’s attention than the job needs, though some properties, large acreage in particular, genuinely need the extra time to show the land and the outbuildings properly. A clear walkthrough that makes the buyer want to see the home in person does more than a long video that performs well as content but produces no enquiry. 

Selling in the Perth Hills or Foothills? 

If you are selling in Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon or Seville Grove, do not choose an agent on a follower count. Ask how they will reach the buyers who could actually buy your home, and what they will do once those buyers put their hands up. 

That second part is where the money is. 

Book a free Perth Hills and Foothills property appraisal. If you want to see how we handle buyer competition once interest appears, read Auction vs Private Treaty vs Select Date Sale® and our Best Service Guarantee. 

Truth. Strategy. Sold. 

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales. Learn more about Brendan Leahy and the Naked Real Estate story.

The post Is Your Agent Marketing Your Home, or Marketing Themselves? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

I sell Mount Richon property for a living, so factor that in. The case study below is published with the permission of both the seller and the current owner.

Mount Richon is long and narrow, running along the Darling Scarp, and the property changes considerably depending where you are in it. Newer homes and larger lifestyle blocks. Older homes closer to Armadale. Half-acre blocks. Properties of two or three acres. Valley outlooks, coastal views and some of the better sunsets in the Hills.

One median figure hides all of that.

The different parts of the suburb

At the southern end around Richon Heights you get newer homes, including properties on roughly half-acre blocks. Around Cooliabberra Drive and nearby, some properties run to two or three acres, which appeals to buyers wanting a more substantial hills lifestyle.

Through the middle towards Bedfordale Hill Road there is another mix of larger homes and half-acre properties. Towards the northern end, closer to Armadale, the housing gets older, blocks get smaller in places, and convenience to shops, transport and schools gets stronger.

On the eastern side some properties have valley and creek outlooks. On the western and elevated sides, homes take in the coastal plain and the sunsets.

Want to know what your Mount Richon property is worth? Ask for a free appraisal.

What I look at

Exact position in the suburb. Block size and usable land. Slope and access. Views and orientation. Age and condition, including structural condition. Renovations. Workshops and sheds. Outdoor entertaining. Character features. Proximity to Armadale. What else is on the market. And demand at that particular price point.

Then one question that can matter more than all of it: what problems does the buyer inherit?

A house I sold twice

One Mount Richon property let me see that from both ends, because I sold it at two very different stages of its life.

The first time, it had already been on the market for about five months without selling. The problem was not hard to find. The house had significant structural cracking throughout.

The earlier campaign had not put that front and centre, so buyers were arriving with one expectation and finding something else once they walked in. That is a strategy problem, not a price problem, and it had been playing out for five months. A house does not sit that long by accident. It sits because the marketing is aimed at the wrong buyer.

My advice to the owner was to be completely upfront about what we were selling.

We advertised the cracks

We made the structural cracking part of the marketing. The message was effectively: if cracks frighten you, this is not your house.

That sounds like the opposite of what an agent should do. But five months had already shown that soft-pedalling it did not work, and I did not think the answer was simply dropping the price. I thought we needed to change who we were talking to.

We were not trying to get every buyer to like the house. We were trying to find the one buyer for whom the problem was manageable.

We went back to market from $399,000, which was higher than it had been advertised at. It sold in about a week for $411,000.

So it finished $22,000 above the $389,000 the earlier campaign had been asking, and $12,000 above our own from-price. On a house that had sat for five months, we put the price up rather than down.

The buyer was a builder whose work included underpinning and restoring homes with exactly that kind of cracking. The thing that frightened everyone else was something he knew how to fix and could price accurately.

Good marketing is not about attracting everybody. It is about attracting the right somebody.

Then I sold it again

Years later I was asked to sell the same property, except it was no longer the same proposition.

The structural work had been completed. The owner had done a genuinely good renovation and, importantly, had not stripped the character out of it. The jarrah floorboards stayed. So did the architraves and the arches. But the home had been brought up to date where it needed to be.

He had also added a substantial workshop, and built a deck that finally made proper use of the outlook towards the coast. You could sit out there and watch the sun go down, which the house had never really let you do before.

By the time we came back to it, there was essentially nothing left for the next owner to do.

I initially thought it would land somewhere around $800,000 to $850,000. We launched from $850,000, had three offers within about three weeks, and it sold for $904,000.

That result gave those owners enough to buy their block in Mount Nasura and start on the house they had wanted to build for years.

Are you interested in finding out what the value of your Mount Richon property is? Ask for a free appraisal.

Why the last sale price is not today’s value

A previous sale is useful information. It is not a valuation.

Take that earlier price and apply average Mount Richon growth to it and you would miss the structural remediation, the renovation, the retained character, the workshop, the deck, the proper use of the outlook, and the simple fact that a problem which had ruled out most of the buyer pool no longer existed.

The property had changed. So had who could buy it.

Do renovations return dollar for dollar?

Not reliably.

Some return more than they cost. Some return less. Some do not lift the price much at all but make the property considerably easier to sell, which has its own value. And some strip out character that buyers would have paid a premium to keep.

What I liked about this renovation was that the owner did not try to turn an older character home into a new one. Keeping the jarrah and the arches while modernising what needed it is a very different decision from making everything new, and in this suburb it was the right one.

Workshops are not all equal

A good workshop has real appeal to certain Mount Richon buyers. But I want to know the size, the construction, whether it has power, the vehicle access, where it sits on the block, how much usable land it eats, and whether it suits the buyer the property will actually attract.

The right workshop is a selling feature. A poorly positioned shed dominating the backyard is something else.

Having a view and using a view

Some Mount Richon homes have excellent outlooks. Having one and using one are different things.

A well-designed deck or outdoor area changes how buyers experience the place. Instead of noticing there is a view over there, they picture themselves sitting in it with a drink watching the sunset. That is emotional value, and emotional value shows up in the price.

If your property has a problem

Hiding from it is rarely the play. A buyer will find it. A building inspection will find it. Their lender may ask about it. Pretending it is not there destroys trust at exactly the moment you need it.

Often the stronger strategy is to name the issue, get proper professional advice where it is needed, and market honestly to buyers who understand what they are looking at.

Five months at $389,000 with the issue soft-pedalled. About a week at a higher asking price, sold for $411,000, once the marketing was honest about what it was. Sometimes the problem is not price. Sometimes it is strategy.

Curious about the value of your Perth Hills home? Let Brendan Leahy provide you with a property appraisal

Frequently asked questions

Are all Mount Richon properties valued similarly?

No. Block size, age, views, position, slope and improvements vary widely across the suburb, and it is long enough that the northern and southern ends behave like different markets.

Do coastal views add value in Mount Richon?

They can. The quality of the outlook, the orientation, the privacy and whether the home is designed to use it all affect how much buyers will pay for it.

Does a workshop increase value?

A useful, accessible, well-positioned workshop can be a strong feature for the right buyer. It needs to be assessed as part of the whole property rather than added on as a figure.

Will renovating increase my Mount Richon home’s value?

Possibly, but not dollar for dollar. The type and quality of the work matters, and so does what was there before. Removing character can cost you.

Can I sell a house with structural cracking?

Yes, and I have. The circumstances matter and appropriate disclosure and professional advice may be required. Marketing honestly tends to attract buyers who understand the issue rather than disappointing unsuitable ones at inspection.

How do I find out what my Mount Richon property is worth?

Start with relevant recent sales, then look at the position, the land, the outlook, the condition, the improvements and what buyers can currently choose from instead.

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales. Learn more about Brendan Leahy and the Naked Real Estate story

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

The post What Is My Mount Richon Property Worth? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

Here is a Mount Nasura sale that still makes the point for me. The automated valuation said around $600,000 to $650,000. Another agent thought $700,000 was the ceiling. It sold for $835,000. Same house, three very different numbers, and I will come back to why below.

First, my interest: I sell property in Mount Nasura, so of course I would like you to pick up the phone. Take what follows with that in mind, and test it.

The biggest reason those three numbers were so far apart is the mistake almost everyone makes here: treating Mount Nasura as one market. It is not, and the differences sit inside a surprisingly small area. Older homes on smaller blocks closer to Armadale. Larger properties around 1,200 square metres and half-acre blocks. Homes looking across the valley. Homes with city and coastal plain views. Properties within walking distance of the hospital, the shops and the train station. And occasionally something that does not fit the Mount Nasura mould at all.

Which side of the hill you are on

A median cannot tell where you sit in the suburb. Buyers can, and it changes what they will pay.

The lower parts tend towards older homes on smaller blocks with excellent access to Armadale’s shops, the hospital and public transport. Move higher and both block sizes and housing styles change. On the southern side of Blackwood Drive and nearby, properties can have attractive valley outlooks. On the northern side, some homes look towards the city and the coastal plain, which is a genuinely different living environment from the west-facing outlook you get across much of the Darling Scarp. Around the eastern side towards Paterson Road, the outlook turns towards the Brookton Valley.

Before anyone walks through the front door, position within the suburb has already changed who the likely buyer is.

Find out what your property is worth by booking a free appraisal.

What moves the number here

Position within the suburb. Block size, slope and usability. City, coastal or valley views. Orientation. Sewer or septic. Age and condition. Renovations. Access. Proximity to the hospital, the shops and the train station. Schools. Outdoor living. Privacy. What else is currently on the market. And the type of buyer the property is likely to attract.

Then one more question that matters more than people expect: does this property fit the comparable sales at all?

The 320 square metre home that did not fit

The sale I opened with makes that point better than any explanation.

It was not on a half-acre block. It was not on 1,200 square metres. The original block had been subdivided and this home sat on roughly 320 square metres.

On paper that made it very hard to compare with most of the suburb. The automated valuation put it somewhere around $600,000 to $650,000. Another agent had been through and thought around $700,000 would probably be the ceiling.

I saw it differently.

The owners had designed the home around the smaller site and done it well. Two storeys, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the presentation was as good as I have seen. The design worked with the block rather than apologising for it.

More importantly, there was a buyer for whom 320 square metres was not a compromise. Close to Armadale Hospital. Public transport nearby. Walking distance to the train station and the shopping centre. For someone who wanted a beautifully presented, low-maintenance home in the hills without a half-acre to manage, this offered something almost nothing else in the suburb did.

So I did not think we should price it by taking larger Mount Nasura homes and discounting for less land.

My recommendation was to go to market from $750,000.

Twenty-three groups, and no offer

We ran it as a Select Date Sale®. The first home open brought twenty-three groups through.

And no offer that weekend.

It is easy to tell property stories where everything lands in twenty-four hours. Real selling does not always work like that. We ran private viewings through the week and opened again the following weekend.

By Monday night we had six offers, running from about $750,000 up to the one the owners accepted at $835,000.

Set that against where we started. An automated estimate of roughly $600,000 to $650,000. Another agent’s ceiling of about $700,000. A sale at $835,000.

Was the algorithm wrong?

I want to be fair about this. An automated system can only work with the comparable sales available to it. If almost every property around this one is substantially different, what exactly is it supposed to compare against?

The computer was not stupid. The property did not fit the dataset.

A human appraisal could weigh things that do not reduce to bedrooms, bathrooms and land area. The design. The presentation. The low-maintenance proposition. The walkability. And most of all, the specific buyer who wanted that combination and could not find it anywhere else in the suburb.

Want to know the value of your Mount Nasura property? Book a free appraisal

Views are not a fixed dollar amount

A home with an uninterrupted outlook towards the city and the coastal plain is not automatically comparable with one two streets away without it. Same for the valley outlooks.

But I would not add a set figure for “views” either. What matters is which rooms have them, whether they can be built out, the orientation, whether the outdoor living actually uses them, the privacy, and how buyers respond when they physically stand there and look.

The location changes the buyer, not just the price

Proximity to Armadale Hospital is a good example. For some buyers that is enormously convenient and worth paying for. For others it is exactly what they are moving away from, because they want land and separation.

Neither buyer is wrong. They are different markets, and the job is working out who is likely to value what you actually have.

What the $835,000 does not mean

It does not mean everyone should renovate heavily before selling.

Those owners had built a home where design and presentation were fundamental to the whole proposition. On a different property, spending $100,000 before sale could be entirely wasted.

The question is never whether renovations will make the house nicer. Of course they will. The question is whether the buyers you are targeting will pay back more than you spend.

Let Brendan Leahy tell you what your property is worth and put a strategy together to sell your Mount Nasura home

Frequently asked questions

What is the average property worth in Mount Nasura?

Averages give you context and not much else. The suburb contains enough variation in blocks, views, position and housing style that a median can be a poor guide to any individual property.

Do city views increase value in Mount Nasura?

They can. How much depends on the quality of the outlook, whether it is permanent, the orientation, and whether the home is designed to use it.

Does a smaller block reduce value?

Not necessarily by as much as people assume. A well-designed, low-maintenance home close to amenities can attract a buyer pool that larger properties in the same suburb do not reach.

Are online valuations accurate in Mount Nasura?

They work reasonably on standard properties with good comparable sales. They become unreliable when the land size, views, position or design fall outside the dataset.

How do I get my Mount Nasura property appraised?

Combine recent comparable sales with an inspection that considers the exact position, the outlook, the land, the improvements, the presentation and what else buyers can currently choose from.

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales. Learn more about Brendan Leahy and the Naked Real Estate story

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

The post What Is My Mount Nasura Property Worth? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

I make my living selling Bedfordale property, so read this knowing I have an interest in you calling me. What I can offer in return is that the story below starts with me telling a seller not to spend more than $60,000 preparing her home for sale, because I did not believe she needed to.

If you want to know what your Bedfordale property is worth, start here: Bedfordale is not one market.

Two properties that look identical on paper can be worth very different money. Four bedrooms on five acres, both of them. One has five genuinely usable acres. The other is steep enough that only a fraction of it is practical. One has scheme water. The other runs on tanks, a bore and a dam. One has a proper workshop and good truck access. The other has a beautiful view and nowhere to put anything.

And sometimes the house is not the most valuable part of the property at all.

Why Bedfordale is hard to compare

There are several different Bedfordale markets sitting inside the one postcode.

Around Wallangarra and nearby, lifestyle and equestrian properties commonly sit on roughly three to six acres. Around Cairns Road, Carradine Road and the older rural parts, blocks run to ten acres and considerably more. Then there are the newer lifestyle estates, homes on roughly 3,000 to 4,000 square metres, often with scheme water and a modern build.

Those attract three different buyers with three different budgets and three different priorities.

Before I even walk through the house I am looking at how much of the land is genuinely usable, the slope, the access, the water and where it comes from, the sheds, the fencing, any equestrian infrastructure, the outlook and orientation, the privacy, bushfire considerations, the age and condition of the home, vehicle access, zoning, which pocket of Bedfordale it sits in, and what else buyers can choose from that month.

A suburb median knows none of that.

Find out how much your Bedfordale home is worth, ask for an appraisal

Does more acreage mean more money?

No. Usable acreage matters more than acreage.

Someone buying for horses will often pay more for level, well-fenced land with reliable water and good access than for a larger block that is steep and heavily treed. Another buyer wants the opposite, and will pay a premium for bushland, privacy and elevation.

Which is why price per acre is close to meaningless here. The land has to be understood in terms of what a buyer can actually do with it.

Water changes the number

Some Bedfordale properties have scheme water. Others run on tanks, bores, dams, or some combination.

Two otherwise similar properties can therefore be offering buyers completely different propositions. A good bore or a dam that does not run dry is genuinely valuable to someone keeping animals or establishing gardens.

But you cannot just tick a box marked bore. Capacity and reliability are the whole question.

Fifteen acres near Churchman Brook

One Bedfordale sale has stayed with me because of how far apart the opinions were.

I was asked to appraise about fifteen acres for a long-time owner. She and her husband had built the home roughly forty-five years earlier and it was still largely original. Dated kitchen, dated bathrooms, presentation that matched the era. She knew all of that.

Another agent had told her to spend more than $60,000 on the kitchen and bathrooms before going to market.

I told her not to touch it.

My reasoning was simple. Replace the kitchen and bathrooms and the rest of a forty-five year old house is still forty-five years old. Then what? Flooring. Paint. Lighting. Window treatments. Sixty thousand becomes a lot more, with no guarantee any of it comes back.

More to the point, I did not think the house was what would sell the property.

The land was. Close to Churchman Brook Dam, looking straight down the valley, north facing. For fifteen acres in Bedfordale it was unusually level and usable. Excellent water, including a good bore and a soak-fed dam that held through summer. And a genuine relationship between the home and the land, where you could sit in the kitchen, look through the French doors and see all the way down to the dam.

Rural zoning gave it appeal to buyers wanting animals, subject to the usual planning requirements.

Those were the things to sell. Not a new kitchen.

The appraisals were $400,000 apart

The automated valuation could not produce a meaningful figure, because it could not find enough comparable sales to work from.

The opinions she had from agents ranged from about $580,000 to close to $1 million. Same property. A gap of roughly $400,000.

I did not think anything over $900,000 was realistic in that market. But I also thought that focusing on the age of the house would badly undervalue what was actually rare about the place.

We launched with Select Date Sale® from $800,000, and the marketing led with the land, the water, the outlook and the position rather than pretending the house was something it was not.

It did not sell in the first weekend. It took about five weeks before an offer came in that she was happy to accept.

It sold for $897,000.

What I liked most was what happened after. The sale gave her enough to move into a riverfront unit in town. No more fifteen acres to look after, and a walk along the river every afternoon, which was the part she talked about.

Ask us for a free appraisal on your Bedfordale property’s value

Should you renovate before selling in Bedfordale?

Sometimes. Not automatically.

The question I ask is whether buyers will pay back more than you are about to spend.

Cleaning, gardens, maintenance and fixing obvious defects are usually worth doing and rarely cost much. Spending $60,000 or $100,000 because someone told you every house needs a new kitchen is a different proposition entirely.

Sometimes the buyer wants to renovate it themselves. Sometimes the value is in the land and the house is simply adequate. And sometimes a partial renovation makes everything you did not touch look worse by comparison.

It is a property by property decision.

Where online valuations struggle here

Automated valuations are not useless. In a suburb with hundreds of similar homes on similar blocks they have plenty to work with.

Bedfordale is not that suburb. An algorithm can read land size, bedrooms, bathrooms, sale history and nearby sales. It cannot tell you whether five acres are usable, whether the bore is any good, whether the workshop is worth anything, whether the access works for a truck and float, or how buyers react when they stand on the place.

Treat the estimate as information. It is not a strategy.

The better question

Start with the data. Look at recent sales and at what is competing for buyers right now. Then go past it and ask which of those sales are genuinely comparable, and what your property has that they did not.

After more than 1,500 personal sales since 2002, the properties that need the most judgement are always the unusual ones. Bedfordale has plenty. That is part of why people live here, and it is also why local knowledge matters when it comes time to sell.

Get the benefit of a local agent’s knowledge by requesting an appraisal now.

Frequently asked questions

How accurate are online property valuations in Bedfordale?

They are a starting point. Acreage, land usability, water, outlook and the sheer variety of Bedfordale property make automated comparison difficult, and in some cases the system cannot find enough comparable sales to produce a figure at all.

Does more acreage always mean higher value?

No. Usability, slope, access, water and buyer appeal usually matter more than the number of acres.

Should I renovate my Bedfordale home before selling?

Not automatically. The likely lift in price has to justify the cost, the time and the risk. Sometimes the land is the product and the house is not what buyers are paying for.

Do sheds and workshops add value?

They can, particularly when well built, accessible and relevant to the likely buyer. A shed that dominates the usable land can work against you.

Does a bore or dam increase value?

Reliable water is a genuine attraction on Bedfordale acreage, but it depends on capacity and reliability rather than simply having one.

How do I get an accurate Bedfordale appraisal?

Start with comparable sales, then assess what those sales cannot capture: land usability, water, outlook, improvements, position within the suburb and who is currently buying.

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales. Learn more about Brendan Leahy and the Naked Real Estate story

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

The post What Is My Bedfordale Property Worth? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.

Before you read another word, you should know that one of the three methods I am about to compare is ours. Select Date Sale®⁠ is a Naked Real Estate® method. I have a commercial interest in you choosing it.

So I am going to do the fair thing: tell you where it is the wrong choice, and explain how it actually works rather than just telling you it is better.

I have been selling property in this patch since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales. Here is my honest read on the three options.

Private Treaty

Your home is listed with a price, a range or a from-price. Buyers make offers. You negotiate. It is simple, familiar, and buyers understand it immediately.

Its weakness is not the price on the sign. It is what happens after the first offer arrives. Most private treaty sales become a one-on-one negotiation between the seller and whoever moved first. If two other buyers were interested but slower, they often never get the chance to compete, because the property is under offer before they are ready.

The money is not usually lost at the pricing stage. It is lost in the fortnight after the first offer.

Private treaty suits you when your home is easy to price against recent comparable sales, when buyer demand is steady rather than competitive, and when you would rather have a straightforward process than push hard for every last dollar.

Auction

A public bidding process on a set day. Urgency, transparency, and a clear finish line.

Start with what auction genuinely does better, because it is real. If bidding reaches your reserve, the winning bid is unconditional and binding the moment the hammer falls. No finance clause, no building-inspection out, no subject-to-sale. Neither private treaty nor our own method can promise you that. The catch is that it only holds if the bidding gets there. If it does not, the property passes in and you are negotiating with the highest bidder anyway, having spent the campaign and told the market it failed to sell.

One thing to be clear about, because it is often misunderstood: WA has no cooling-off period on any residential sale unless the parties agree to write one in. That is true whether you sell by auction, private treaty or our method, so it is not an auction advantage and I am not going to pretend it is one.

Auction has two real weaknesses in this market.

The first is the buyer pool. A lot of Perth Hills and Foothills buyers need finance approval, a building inspection, a subject-to-sale condition, or a settlement date that lines up with their own move. Auction asks them to bid unconditionally. Some of them simply will not turn up, and you do not know which ones you lost.

The second is structural. At auction, the buyer who gets pushed to their true limit is the underbidder. The winner only has to beat them by one bid. Say the underbidder stops at $995,000; the winner buys at around $1,000,000. They may have been prepared to pay considerably more. You will never know, because the auction stopped asking the moment it had a winner.

Auction suits you when the market is hot, when your likely buyers are genuinely ready to go unconditional, when the property is straightforward enough for public bidding to find its level, and when a certain, binding result matters more to you than trying to extract the top bidder’s full limit.

Select Date Sale®

Here is the mechanic, in plain terms.

The property is listed with a from-price or a price range, chosen at listing. Buyers register their interest and inspect. When an offer arrives that you are prepared to consider, every registered buyer is told that an offer is on the table and invited to submit their best and final.

They are not told the amount of that offer. They are not told your reserve. They are not told what anyone else has put forward. And there is one round only, so if their offer is the one you choose, they cannot be outbid afterwards.

We do not counter-offer. Counter-offers invite a haggle, and a haggle usually moves the seller down rather than the buyer up. If an offer is not the one, we say so and let the buyer decide whether to come back stronger.

The date is yours. It might be tomorrow if a strong offer arrives early. It might be three weeks away. If no offer reaches a level you are prepared to accept, the home stays on the market. There is no artificial deadline. The trade-off, and it is worth naming, is that unlike auction the accepted offer can still carry conditions, so you gain flexibility and a wider buyer pool but give up the guaranteed unconditional finish auction delivers when it reaches reserve.

More than 730 sellers across the Perth Hills and Foothills have sold this way since 2015.

What the difference actually looks like

A recent Perth Hills home drew five offers. The best was just over $1.86 million. The second best was around $1.82 million.

Now run the same buyers through an auction. The underbidder stops at roughly $1.82 million. The winning bidder takes it at the next increment, call it $1.825 million. The seller banks around $35,000 less.

I want to be careful here, because the honest version matters more than the impressive one. Those same buyers might have bid differently in a room. Nobody can run both processes on the same house. But the gap between first and second is the money a bidding contest hands back to the winner, and in that sale it was real. That is the point of the example, not a promise that every seller will see the same gap.

It is also not always $35,000. Sometimes the top two offers are $2,000 apart and the method makes almost no difference at all.

Where Select Date Sale® is the wrong choice

If there is only one interested buyer, it does nothing. Competition you do not have cannot be created by a process. In a quiet market, or on a home with a narrow buyer pool, you are better off negotiating hard with the one buyer you have.

If your home is easy to price and there are five near-identical recent sales in the street, the extra process is probably not earning its keep.

If you want a binding, unconditional result the day the hammer falls, and you are confident the bidding will reach reserve, auction gives you that certainty and this does not.

And if you would rather counter-offer and haggle, this is not for you, because we do not.

The question to ask any agent

Not

“what price will you put on my home”.

Ask this instead:

If three buyers want my home, what exactly will you do to make sure each one submits their strongest position?

Then listen for a process. A specific sequence of steps. If you get adjectives instead of a mechanic, be careful, because that is where the money is made or lost, and it happens after the photos are done and the sign is up.

Frequently asked questions

Is auction or private treaty better for selling a house?

Neither is better in the abstract; it depends on your property and your buyers. Auction can drive strong competition in a hot market and, if it reaches reserve, gives a binding unconditional result, but it excludes buyers who need finance, inspections or a subject-to-sale, and if bidding falls short the home passes in. Private treaty is simple and familiar but often collapses into a one-on-one negotiation with the first offer, so slower buyers never compete. Match the method to the home, not to what the agency prefers to sell.

What is a Select Date Sale®?

It is a method that lists with a from-price or range, then, when a genuine offer arrives, invites every registered buyer to submit one best-and-final offer without knowing the other offers or the reserve. There is one round, no counter-offers, and the sale date is set by when a strong offer lands rather than by an artificial deadline. It is designed to make interested buyers compete rather than letting the first mover negotiate alone.

Can I lose money selling at auction?

You can leave money on the table two ways. If bidding does not reach your reserve, the property passes in, you have paid for the campaign, and the market now knows it did not sell, which weakens your hand in the negotiation that follows. And even when it does sell, the winner only has to beat the underbidder by one increment, so the top bidder may pay less than their true limit. Auction has real strengths, but neither of those risks is small.

Which selling method gets the highest price in the Perth Hills?

The one that makes the most genuine buyers compete for your specific home. In a market where many buyers need conditions, forcing unconditional bidding can thin the field, while a method that keeps those buyers in and makes them compete can capture more. But if there is only one buyer, no process invents competition, and hard negotiation is the answer. The right method follows from the property and the buyer pool.

Selling in the Perth Hills or Foothills

Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon and Seville Grove are not one market. An acreage block with a workshop and a valley outlook attracts a completely different buyer to a family home on a cottage block, and the right method follows from the property, not from what the agency prefers to sell.

I will tell you straight which of the three I think suits your home, including when the answer is not ours.

Book a free Perth Hills and Foothills property appraisal⁠, and read our Best Service Guarantee⁠.

Truth. Strategy. Sold.

About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales. Learn more on Brendan Leahy’s author profile

The post Auction vs Private Treaty vs Select Date Sale®: What Actually Works in the Perth Hills? appeared first on Naked Real Estate: Real Estate Agency Perth, WA.