How We Value Every Property We Offer On

The most expensive sentence in Australian property is "it's listed at $850,000, so it's probably worth around that." It sounds logical. It's also how many buyers quietly overpay.

An asking price isn't a valuation. It's an opening position, chosen by the selling side, for the selling side. Your job is to work out what the property is actually worth before deciding what you're willing to pay. The method we use is neither secret nor complicated. It is simply disciplined, and we run it on every property before we offer.

The foundation: what genuinely similar properties actually sold for

In our opinion, the most reliable way to value residential property is to look at what genuinely similar properties have recently sold for, adjusted for the differences. Not what's advertised. Not what the selling agent hopes to achieve. Settled sales. Almost every credible residential valuation, the lender's, the valuer's, ours, is a version of this discipline. The quality of the answer depends entirely on three questions.

1. Is it genuinely comparable?

Not just the same suburb, the same pocket of the suburb, because suburbs are not uniform. Similar land size, bedrooms, parking, condition and position. A renovated house does not comp an unrenovated one, and a quiet cul-de-sac does not comp a main road. The closer the comparison, the more confidence you can place in it.

2. Is it recent enough, and adjusted for the market it sold in?

Property markets move, and a sale from months ago belongs to the market it happened in. A property that sold six months back, when the market was flat, is not worth the same number today if the market has since run hot. So a recent sale is the starting point, not the answer: it needs to be price-indexed to today's conditions before it can tell you anything. And remember, listings don't count at all. They are asking prices wearing a costume.

3. Have you adjusted for the differences?

No comparable matches perfectly. One has a larger block, another a renovated kitchen, another a better aspect. Good valuation isn't about pretending those differences don't exist. It's about naming each one, land, condition, position, extras, and reasoning about its direction and rough weight, instead of waving it away because you like the kitchen. That's where judgement matters.

The mistakes that cost real money

Most buyers don't overpay because they lack information. They overpay because emotion quietly replaces discipline. The common failures:

• Anchoring on the asking price and negotiating a discount from a number that was never real
• Using listings instead of settled sales
• Ignoring land content: two properties at the same price with very different land values are not the same asset
• Falling in love with the property before deciding what it's worth

That last one catches more people than they'd like to admit. Decide what it's worth before you decide how much you want it. The order is the discipline.

Then pressure-test your conclusion

However careful your analysis, it is one analysis. Before offering, cross-check it against methods that don't share your assumptions: an independent desktop valuation arranged through your broker, and an independent data-provider estimate. When both support your number, offer with confidence. When one doesn't, that's not a problem, it's a signal, and it deserves a closer look before you commit. We've written a companion piece on exactly this: Three Price Checks Before You Offer.

Our philosophy

Valuing property isn't about predicting the future. It's about making sure today's price is supported by today's evidence. That's why every property we assess is backed by ten price-indexed comparable sales, independently cross-checked, and challenged before we ever recommend a client make an offer. Because confidence doesn't come from paying less. It comes from knowing why you're paying what you are.