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This tool gives you an idea what’s happening on the market, is it a good time to buy or sell, see full explanation here.

Realestate.com.au – Sold properties

This tool gives you the precise picture of a houses price range in the area you’re looking at. Visit Realestate.com.au, click on “Buy” tab and on “Sold Properties” in it, choose your state and suburb and you will see all the sold houses on the map. Many properties (not all but still decent percentage of them) will show the price they were sold for.

Google maps

Using Google maps you can look at any house from above. Actually there are 3 kinds of maps: satellite, terrain and regular map.

Satellite map can help you understand, for example, is the garden facing north or south, how close is neighbor’s house to yours, is the back yard large enough for you to build a workshop there, etc.

Terrain map can tell you for example whether or not your house is located on the hill.

Regular map shows very clearly all the near-by amenities, like recreation centers, schools, shopping centers, train stations, etc.

Google planimeter

Not in every real estate listing you can find the size of land and in many cases even the agents can’t tell you that – but you’d still want to know. This is where Google planimeter can help you – set the points in the corners of the allotment and the tool will measures its area. The downside – no search box, you have to manually find your state/suburb/street/lot on the map.

Gmap pedometer

In many cases you would like to know the distance between, say, your house and the closest bus stop. Using Google pedometer you can easily set two points on the map and it will tell you the exact distance between them.

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Federation (1891 - 1913)

War (1914 - 1945)

Post-war (1946 - 1959)

Contemporary (1960 – present)

Many thanks to Australian Home Design Directory, Australian DIY home resources and Wikipedia for the wonderful photos.

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I have made this short summary to keep handy when I read real-estate listings and it is a great help. It starts with the oldest houses and progresses to the newer ones.

Houses in Australia - different periods and styles:

Victorian 1840 - 1890
Federation 1891 - 1913
War 1914 - 1945
Post-war 1946 - 1959
Contemporary 1960 – present. There are 2 types, “project style” – meaning a house was built from a common plan and “custom built” - meaning a house was built using a unique design.

I will be adding pictures of typical houses soon, so stay tuned!

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Find funny sides of it - make jokes about the houses you see, the estate agents, and your own experiences.

Keep doing sports - I found myself skipping my swims week after week (of course there were always excuses, but they don’t change the fact that I was “wagging”). Sports are a great way to discharge bad energy off your body.

Don’t skip the walks - make sure you walk the dog or your partner at least once a day. Fresh air makes a lot of the bad thoughts disappear.

Go to bed before midnight - I found that if I went to bed even 15 minutes before the midnight I felt much more refreshed in the morning than other days when I fell asleep after midnight. I can not explain this fact but many friends I spoke to about this felt the same way.

Take one step back – remember, there is no such house that you “must have” at any cost. If it becomes a worse deal than you thought, give it up, walk away - you can always find another one and who knows, maybe it will become your dream home.

P.S. It is funny how all the people in the world go through similar experiences. After posting this article, I found another one on the same topic - so here is more about dealing with stress of buying a house.

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those are the signs of “buyers’ market”. It means that the vendors will be more ready to negotiate with the buyers, they will be more flexible because obviously there are more properties on the market than buyers.

Another thing you could do is to gather statistics of weekly sales once a week, on Saturday evening or Sunday – it only takes 10-15 minutes. I use REIV - the best source of property sales data in Victoria. Look at the auctions clearance rate, if it consistently goes down, week after week – that’s a sign of buyers’ market. Write down the addresses of the sold houses, number of bedrooms, was it a private sale or an auction, what the price was (in case of private sale) or
vendor bid and reserved price (in case of an auction). These details can tell you a lot about the real estate market - here’s an example.

Let’s say you have seen a house advertised for 500K in the beginning of January. In the middle of January you see the price reduced to 490K, then in the beginning of February it is reduced again to 485K and then two weeks later sold for 481K - what does it tell you? If it happened to just one house – maybe there was something wrong with it, but if there are more similar cases, it means that you can negotiate a discount of 3% - 5% from asking price when making an offer on a house, because at the moment the buyers have more power than the vendors.

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