Best time of year to buy

I have been thinking about this question for a while and was wonderibng what others thought. Clearly the effect of the general trend of the market impacts this. After talking to lots of locals in Cairns about buying several IPs there almost all said May-September have the highest prices with also a lot more properties on the market, otherwise known as tourist season. They said the cheapest time of year is in the wet season particularly at the time of year when trasferred/posted teachers etc have a short timeframe in which to sell in Cairns and buy in wherever they are going. This is also the time of year when the smallest number of properties are on the market. When would it be that teachers and other such trasnferees be selling? From my experience, teachers generally know where they are moving by early November and would then make the move between Xmas and school start end Jan. What are others theories on this?

In the current booming market it seems it's always better to buy last month then this month. The overall crazy price trends override any seasonal adjustments. Not sure how it is in Cairns though.

Hi all,
When ski-ing in Falls Creek in July, I checked out a unit that was selling for around 195k. It was expected to return 24k in rent, but there was 14k in expenses. That made the yield somewhere around 5 to 6%....likely capital growth was probably marginal...
But what got me was this - if we purchased it at that time, we would have settled in September and had no rent until next ski season - i.e May or June !!!!
So when you talk about buying out of season - I would also agree. In this case (in a Ski resort for example), you should purchase in Feb or March - it is cheaper to buy then, and you will take advantage of the higher rents when ski season comes around!!!!

Perky, did you find there were many of the properties you were interested in for sale in Feb/Mar ie the best time of year to buy?
I am interested to see how many people attempt selling out of selling season (assuming there is no recession, interest rates don't jump hugely etc). I bought the 6 postcodes home price guides covering cairns and there does seem to be a seasonal parttern of sales. Whether this is a result of less houses being on the market the data can't tell me.
Ammo

Hi,
The fellow who tried to sell me the unit said he sold 6 of them in Feb , but personally I did not look at that time (did not think of doing it).

Hi,

Similar to this is the student market, most of them are looking for somewhere to rent in about jan / feb. I'd assume this would be the same in tourist type towns. Who'd want to move to Cairns in the middle of rain season?

-Regards

Dave