An Australian property guru has revealed the simple tricks he uses to find the asking price of any home without speaking to an estate agent.
Davey Hamilton, from the popular podcast All Property, shared tips for Australians looking to break into the country’s competitive market but only work on a laptop or desktop computer.
“Here’s a trick I bet you didn’t know about. If you’re tired of agents saying ‘contact agent’ and you just want to know the price, do this,” Hamilton said in a video.
‘Go to realestate.com, right click and hit inspect, look for ‘value’ and then scroll down until you see the price.’
While this trick works in New South Wales, Davey said Queensland buyers might have issues with its “lax laws” around pricing and VIC already requires prices to be displayed in ads.
But the next trick will work in all states, and even on Domain: Davey said buyers can also download the property search extension available on Chrome.
Once the extension is installed on your browser, every time you click on a listed property, the price will automatically appear in your search – “Thank me later”.
While the property expert said the price the agent enters for any listing can be lower than the actual market value, Australians loved the “genius-level” tricks.
Australians have dubbed Davey Matthews a “property god” for his incredible tips on how to find out the selling price of a house – without speaking to an agent.
“Wow, this really works! Thanks so much man!” said one potential buyer.
“I’ll thank you now,” another agreed.
“You won me over with the ‘if you’re fed up with the agents’ thing,” chimed in a third.
Others were inspired to share their own creative tips for finding out the selling price without having to make a phone call first.
“On the app, I use the map view and filter the price in increments until the property is no longer listed (so I know what price it is filtering at and therefore the approximate price the agent listed it for),” one man said.
Davey Matthews and Travis Fernandez are the gurus behind Australia’s number one podcast Everything Property
“My trick is to look at the mortgage calculator and it usually gives me an idea of how much they’re asking for,” added another.
Frustrated homebuyers said Australian property advertising needed more transparency and less reliance on having to go through agents for information.
“In Denmark, the price must be listed and there is a record of all changes, i.e. every price indicated, every time it was increased or decreased, what price it was listed at before it was taken off the market and at what price it was sold,” one person said.
While one man argued that tips only revealed the number a real estate agent had entered and did not need to reflect the actual price, many agreed that knowing the agent’s number was a good indicator of affordability for most Australians.
One house hunter thought having to ask the agent for the price wasn’t a bad thing at all: “Let’s normalize calling real estate agents at 3am to wake them up.”
Another thought is that Davey’s hack would do nothing to help solve the current housing affordability crisis plaguing the country.
“Spoiler alert: we’re in Australia and the price tag is already hovering around a million,” he said.