An Australian property guru has revealed the simple tricks he uses to find out the asking price of a house without using an agent.
Davey Hamilton, from popular podcast All Property, shared tips for Australians looking to enter the country’s competitive market. However, these tips will only work on a laptop or desktop computer.
“Here’s a trick I bet you didn’t know: If you’re tired of real estate agents filling out ‘contact agent’ and all you want is the price, do this,” Hamilton said in a video.
‘Go to realestate.com, right click and click ‘inspect’, search for ‘value’ and then scroll down until you see the price.’
While this trick works in NSW, Davey says buyers in Queensland may run into issues with their “relaxed laws” around pricing, while VIC already requires prices to be stated in advertisements.
But the following trick works in any state, and even on Domain: Davey said buyers can also download the property seeker extension available on Chrome.
Once the extension is installed in your browser, the price will automatically appear in your search when you click on a property listing: ‘Thanks later.’
Although the property expert said the price the agent enters for a property can be lower than the actual market value, Australians loved these ‘genius’ tricks.
Australians call Davey Hamilton a ‘property god’ for his amazing tricks to find out the asking price of a house without talking to an agent
“Wow, this really works, thanks so much man,” said one potential buyer.
“I’m going to thank you now,” agreed another.
“You had me when I said, ‘When you’re tired of cops,’” said a third.
Others were inspired and shared their own creative tips for finding out the asking price without having to call first.
“In the app I use the map view and filter the price down incrementally until the property is no longer shown (so I know at what price it is filtered out and therefore what the estimated price is that the agent has listed the property for),” said one man.
Davey Hamilton and Travis Fernandez are the gurus behind Australia’s number one podcast Everything Property
“My trick is to look at the mortgage calculator and that usually gives me an idea of how much they want,” added another.
Frustrated home buyers have said there needs to be more transparency in Australian property advertising and less reliance on agents to obtain information.
“In Denmark the price must be stated and a record kept of all changes, ie every price stated, every time it was increased/decreased, what price it was stated at before it was taken off the market and what price it was sold at,” someone said.
One man claimed that the tips only showed the number that an agent had entered and that it did not necessarily reflect the actual price. However, many agreed that knowing the agent’s number was a good indication of affordability for most Australians.
One house hunter didn’t think it was such a bad idea to have to ask the agent for the price: ‘Make it a habit to call agents at 3 a.m. to wake them up.’
Another felt that Davey’s ploy would do nothing to help the country’s current housing affordability crisis.
“Spoiler alert. This is Australia, the price is already in or around a million,” he said.