As prices continue to fall across housing markets in Australia, the once sought-after opportunity of renovating a cheap property into something that would make a huge amount of money has been steadily floundering.
In a report on News.com.au, Renovation For Profit proprietor Cherie Barber said the current market conditions do not allow sellers to gain so much from flipping properties.
"When the market is down as it is in a lot of states, what it technically means is that you become less wealthy on paper. And you just have to be able to ride it through to the next cycle," Barber told News.com.au.
“Resist the urge to sell … what ultimately makes you wealthy is long-term capital growth, in addition to the growth you manufacture in the renovation.”
The decline in prices was apparent by how much some properties were sold. For instance, a flat in East Perth that was sold for $530,000 eight years ago had its value slashed to only $390,000 just last month.
Barber said the key is for property owners to hold on to their assets for longer and wait for the right moment to sell.
"I have students in Perth who have been holding stock, now technically yes on paper they are poorer now than what they were four years ago as a result of those properties falling out," she said.
"But if they hold onto those properties, the Perth property market is at the absolute bottom of the cycle and in fact, I believe it has begun to swing into the next stage, the recovery stage … Whether it will go back to the degree that it was, I don’t know."
Barber concluded that for a market segment that relies heavily on fast capital gains, flipping a house is not easy to accomplish in this dry spell.
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