Property Sale Results in newspaper arent accurate

[Smilla]

My partner and I bought a property on Thursday and it appeared in the sale results in the Herald Sun today. I noticed that they said it sold for 10,000 more than it did.

I've spent the last couple of years checking results in the paper during our searches for properties and always thought they were accurate.

Anyone have any explanation for this practice?

 

[Aimjoy]

Smilla,

Congrats on your purchase.

Sales results in the paper are very inaccurate - they are just reported by REA's - Now when has a REA ever been known to let the facts stand in the way of a good story? It is all marketing; Perception is reality stuff. Papers print it because REAs are a large source of their advertising revenue.

Results derived from settlements (while not always 100% accurate) are the way to go.

Aimjoy

 

[Kenster]

One practice is to put in a high Later Offer (LO) despite there is not a single bid nor bidder at auctions.

For example, a property is advertised with EPR 520-580.

At auction, the auctioneer starts the auction with the vendor bid of 550. The property is then passed in at 550 with no further bid. The next day auction result would say "PI 550 VB, LO 580".

Later on this property would be advertised for private sale at 595, with salesman refusing to take offers below 580.

Another practice is not showing the pass-in's in Auction Results at all. The property would quietly come back on market as a new listing Private Sale.

 

[Lake]

I take little notice of the cooked REA auction result numbers and the sale prices.

My own anecdotal observations give me a much better grip on the state of the market in the area that I am interested in.