So do you think that they will have the confidence to use that newly found buying power?

Mate, I'll answer that very honestly and I think that a lot of buyers just won't.

But in saying that, I think that the buyers that can scrape it together and pull the trigger on something will be very happy that they did two or three months from now.

I think it's really simple.

Everyone likes when there's a big red 20% or 30% off sticker when they walk past a store, but we don't put them on our for sale signs.

So, astute buyers will know when there's a deal out there to be snapped up, but also, more importantly...

I'll grab the point you said about negotiating.

And is that kind of the number one thing you're hearing on the street at the moment or is it something else?

It's, you know, more people looking to buy a home and live in it.

Mate, that is exactly right.

I love my numbers, as you're aware.

Murrumbateman's a 93% owner-occupier suburb, and I think that that's 7% of homes that have tenants in there are largely driven by people that have put a tenant in there so they can come back and live there in 12 months later anyway.

So it's definitely a market that's sort of insular, but it feeds from Canberra and the confidence in the Canberra market, the money in Canberra market, and obviously public service jobs.

Yeah.

Yeah, look, we're lucky where we are, and I haven't really seen the same decline across our sales.

So yes to your clients, but what about with other real estate agents? And as I said, I bump into people all the time and they're saying, yes, the media is saying this and the numbers are saying that, but actually on the ground, we're moving properties and we are listing.

What else sort of popped out for you this month round?

Um, Cam, well, I think, like, th- the numbers are what I'm there to look at, but the thing that pops out at me is the maybe conflation between what you hear on the street, quote, and what's actually represented in the numbers.

Um, people are talking about the bottom falling out of the market, and, you know, a, a crash or impending or current, but, you know, 1.6% across quarter is, um, it's, it's pretty negligible when it comes down to it.

So the thing that jumps out at me is the fact that, you know, the, the bottom really isn't falling out of the market like people would like to think that it is.

Right.

I think that that's probably...

Like, it's a bit reading tea leaves to say this, of course, but, uh, uh, the conversations that I'm having on the street with these buyers really is that they're going, "Well, the market's definitely not going up at the moment.

Um, and, uh, the, the, the way that we're reading the stars at the moment, there's a lot of things that are causing prices to come down, which means it's probably not a bad time to buy.

Is that what you're experiencing? Yeah,

I'd say, yes, that's what I'm experiencing across the board, all the things you just said.

So the bracket thing is really important, as in up to a million bucks, still moving very well.

It's traditionally first home buyer territory, but what I would say is the edge has probably come off a bit between maybe $950 and a million because...

And movement in interest rates has meant that borrowing capacity is a bit limited for those buyers.

In that sort of middle bracket, it's a really interesting market.

We're meeting a lot of people that are out buying houses sort of in that $1 to $2 million, you know, $1.5-ish.

okay and so are people like a prospective buyers coming to you and having these conversations with you about you know what should i do