The Secret Free Property Tools You Didn’t Know About
In This Week’s How's The Market | Edition 71
The Secret Free Property Tools You Didn’t Know About
It’s A Two-Speed Market!
Have You Ever Wondered How Much A Penthouse In Toorak Costs?
The Secret Free Property Tools You Didn’t Know About
Buying a property can be an overwhelming and stressful process.
It’s no surprise that many of the clients that come to us have missed out on many properties in the past, or sometimes they have just been overwhelmed by the speed at which properties transact and have taken time off from looking.
Or they simply don’t have the time to invest into understanding the ins and outs of the real estate landscape.
This can lead to longer time in the market, more heartache and stress and prices increasing.
Sometimes missing out on properties can just come down to the speed of due diligence and being able to evaluate if the property is actually good or not.
So we wanted to try to reduce the amount of times you miss out on properties from not having the right information and give you some of the best free tools that we use to help us analyse properties fast that you might not know about.
1. Real Estate.com
Whilst this first tool is by no means a secret, it’s one of the most important and underutilised tools out there.
This is because, it is often only used to find properties for sale, and is less regularly used to find properties that have sold.
Without using any paid software, the best way to evaluate a home and figure out how much it is worth is by finding comparable properties that have sold in the last few months in close proximity.
This is very easy to do on their platform.
To do this, follow these steps and try it out:
Go to realestate.com.au
Click Sold
Click Filters
Click Sold Date and select Last 3 Months
Input the criteria of the property you are researching. E.g House, 3 bed, 1 bath, 1 car, over 300m2 of land and click search
Once in the search mode, click Map View
Find the target property you are looking to value and zoom out so that you can see 5 - 10 properties. If you can see no properties, change the Sold Date to Last 6 Months.
Click back to List View, then sort the properties by newest to oldest. This will bring up all the properties with similar features that have sold nearby to the target property and arrange them from the newest sale to the oldest.
Now you can match apples with apples and begin to evaluate your next home!
2. Domain Building Profiles
This is one of the most underrated FREE search tools that you can use to analyse properties if you are looking to buy an apartment, unit or townhouse.
I remember being blown away when I first discovered this.
This feature is available for every single unit/apartment/townhouse in Australia.
To access it, you simply need to type into Google the building number of the property along with ‘building profile’.
E.g. if you were interested in the property 3/14 Example Street, Toorak.
You search ‘14 Example Street, Toorak Building Profile’.
So what does it do?
It will give you a snapshot of the entire complex including:
How many dwellings are in the complex
Percentage of owner-occupiers to renters
Annualised capital growth percentages of recent sales in the complex
Prices of recent sales and advertised rent in the complex
Rental yields of properties that recently sold and were then rented
It will also provide you with links to look at the other recent sales in the building.
Oftentimes when evaluating units/apartments you won’t find a better comparable sale than what has sold in the building. Even if this sale is a few months older than other recent sales.
This is because the other dwellings on the block will have exactly the same location and usually pretty similar floor plans, size and layouts.
Check it out on your property if you live in an apartment!
3. SQM
This is a brilliant website that has lots of free data and is the same source that you will often hear quoted in news articles and the media.
Go to https://sqmresearch.com.au/ then click on Go To Property. You will be able to find amazing information for free such as:
Auction Results
Upcoming Auctions
Sold Records
Total Property Listings
Asking Property Prices
Vacancy Rates
Weekly Rent Listings
Rental Yields
Asking Rent Prices
Demographics
And more!
This is one of the best tools to use if you’re comparing suburbs and trying to find the best area.
4. Walkscore
This is another great free tool we use to analyse properties and suburbs based on their walkability.
It provides information on the amount of public transport options available in the suburb or for a specific property and calculates the average time it will take to get to the closest city by PT, car, bike or walking.
It also provides a walk and transit score which you can use to compare against other properties you may be considering.
Check it out at https://www.walkscore.com/
5. Australian Bureau Of Statistics
This is a great free tool that has awesome information regarding the demographics of a suburb.
If you are looking at multiple suburbs that you’ve never actually lived in before, this is a great tool that can give you incredible information surrounding who the people are that live in the region, what they do, what the population of the region is forecasted to be, what the unemployment rates are as well as monthly median income, rent and mortgage repayments. This information is updated every 4 years along from the census.
Check out:
6. Statement Of Information
This is an incredibly handy tool!
In Victoria, a statement of information is a legal requirement for every property that is advertised for sale.
This document will always either show a single price or a price range that can be no more than 10% in variation.
If the agent believes that there are no comparable properties they must state that their property is unique, however, most times the agents will provide 3 properties on the SOI that need to meet the following criteria:
of a similar standard or condition to the property for sale
sold in the last six months and be within two kilometres of the property for sale (for properties in the Melbourne metropolitan area)
sold in the last 18 months and be within five kilometres of the property for sale (for properties outside the Melbourne metropolitan area).
This is a great tool you can use to easily find comparable properties.
Though a warning!
You must actually check if you believe these properties are comparable.
Agents will often use properties that are in significantly worse condition in order to underquote their properties to get increased interest.
What The Agents Are Saying
6 Weeks Until Christmas…
It’s a two-speed market!
I caught up with some agents today that are prominent in the inner city Glen Iris market and surrounds.
After discussing how they’ve found the market over the recent weeks, they’ve told me that there is a clear disparity between apartments and houses.
The general consensus is that apartments are struggling and houses are still going strong.
On average, for a good property, they expect 20 groups to go through a new house on its first Saturday open and 10 groups through a new apartment on its first Saturday open.
Houses will have more enquiries and sell within a 3 to 4-week auction campaign.
Apartments will have less genuinely interested parties and sell in a longer 4 - 8 week period.
Many apartments that don’t have a wow factor will pass in and get lost in the listings of realestate.com if they are not priced competitively.
There is also more stock available as many of the properties online are from investors offloading as they feel the pinch of the higher interest rates.
There are also less investors in the market buying as things are less affordable.
The Wow Factor!
Penthouse, 20 Grange Road, Toorak
Have you ever wondered how much it would cost to own a penthouse in Toorak?
Me too.
Check out this epic listing with luxury finishes on this 3 bed, 3 bath, 4 car apartment in Toorak.
And the price guide: $10,000,000 - $11,000,000
In The Media
Melbourne housing affordability 2025: First-home buyers’ given ominous 14-month deadline
An ominous article for first-home buyers…
This article analyses the widely quoted research paper that has been published in recent weeks by the major accounting firm KPMG.
Whilst it is a fear-mongering, extremely negative and deceptive title that doesn’t paint the full picture of the report or article, it does go into some good data and concerning figures around the percentage of properties that will be available in Melbournes metropolitan areas that are classed as affordable for first-home buyers.
This article is worth checking out if you’re considering whether to buy now or rent for another year!
Final Thoughts
Buying a property isn’t easy and there is a lot you can get wrong and you often need to make decisions quickly under a lot of pressure.
That’s why having all the necessary information to make an informed decision can be incredibly empowering.
I hope you check out and use these free tools to help you analyse your next property purchase faster.
Thanks for reading this far!
We value feedback and if you have any suggestions on what you would like covered in the future please email me at tristan@tomii.com.au
Happy Buying!
Note: This is general advice and does not take into consideration your objectives, situations or needs. Please consider if this advice is suitable for you and your circumstances and speak to a professional before making any financial decisions.
