In any private sale making an offer on a property is one of the important steps. If you make an offer and it’s accepted - just keep your part of the deal and the house is yours. In case you’re thinking of verbal offer or writing an email to the agent “Listen, Joe, I want to offer X for the house on 15 Lime avenue” - that’s not enough.

The way it is done in Victoria is the buyer signs a Contract Note - it’s a proper contract on a house and once the vendor (the seller) accepts the offer, he signs the contract as well and the house is sold. Contract Note should specify the exact details of the deal a buyer offers to the vendor - how much the buyer offers to pay for the house, amount of deposit, settlement date (when the rest of the money is paid and buyer gets the keys to the house) and conditions of sale. This article here explains in details how to fill and sign a Contract Note.

When it comes to signing the Contract Note, you should know that by law you’re entitled to 3 days cooling off period - meaning if you change your mind, you can give a written notice to the agent and the contract is dismissed. Do not forget to read the fine print - it will still cost you money to get out of contract even using the cooling off period, the amount is either 100$ or 0.2 percent of the house price, which ever is the highest (for instance, for a house that costs 280,000 it would be about 500$). Even though the house is sold via private sale, cooling off doesn’t apply always apply. There is no cooling off (for residential properties) in case

Read estate agents will always try to get an offer out of you. Did you notice that on any inspection the thing they are obsessed with getting your name and number? The reason they do it is to be able to ring you and say: “Hi Drew, its Mike from the real estate agency, did you like that house? Are you ready to buy it? Do you want to make an offer on it?”.

If you really liked that agent and want to do him a favor – go ahead and make an offer. The agent benefits whether your offer is accepted by vendor or not. If the vendor wants more money than you are prepared to pay for the property – your offer makes the estate agent look good, because his advertising worked, it obviously brought a potential buyer that made an offer. Also, should another buyer get interested in a house and ask the agent: “Have you had any offers made on that property” – the agent will say “Yes, we were offered this amount and the vendor didn’t take that offer”, to make you go higher.

If you think about it, this way agents turn any private sale into an auction. The offers are used as bids, if you want the house - go higher. The only difference is that in auction you see the bids and in private sale you need to guess, because legally agents can’t tell you how much other buyers offered for the house.

Most vendors (sellers) hire agents to sell their homes and everyone knows that advertising costs a lot. What not many people know is, that vendors transfer that cost to the buyers. Yes, that’s true – the asking price for the house is usually worked out this way – whatever vendor is hoping to sell it for plus real estate agent’s fee.

Here’s a real-life example – I was considering a house that was advertised for 295K. It so happened that I got to speak to the vendor himself. So I made him an offer and he told me –”Well, that’s too low, I am looking to get 290K”. When I checked to see how much was the estate agency fees, guess what I heard - 5000, what a surprise.

So my advice would be - before you start negotiating, work out what the real asking price is for that property. Find out how much the advertising real estate agency charges and subtract that from the asking price. The reason here is, when you make an offer and it is under the asking price but very close to the value of the house, the vendor is more likely to accept your offer.

When you are thinking about a budget for a house you’re going to buy, there are 2 main questions to think about. The first question is “how much” and the second is “when”.

Basically what I am saying is not only the amount matters, but also the time frame - when you have to pay it. Why? Because you may not have the whole amount up front on the day you’re signing the contract, but if you’ll be saving for 3 more months, you will come up with the money.

Some people claim that the right way to buy an investment property is without actually visiting and seeing it. Let me explain: they are afraid that seeing a house with your own eyes might influence your decision. When you do the research and learn everything you can about a house, that information is objective and the decision based on it would be logical. Once you have seen the house, your emotions can interfere with the logic.

Personally, I don’t think that buying sight unseen is a smart move. Seeing the house reveals things no other way does. You get to see the neighbors – which is important even for an investment property. I mean, would you really like the tenant to run away because they have a drug dealer living next door? A real-life example, today I was heading for inspection and in the area of the house I was checking out there was car with no wheels standing on bricks and police were looking for witnesses. Needless to say, I turned around and went to inspect another house in different area

Another reason for personal inspection is to see if the street is noisy or not (how else will you know?) and to see who are the people (not just the immediate neighbors) that live in the area. From my own experience, 20 minutes I spent just sitting in the car parked near a shopping centre, watching the crowd, saved me from buying into area where I don’t want to be.