Off-market garden apartment secured in South Coogee for $1.47M

The brief

Our clients were a young family buying their first home in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. They wanted somewhere good to live that would also hold its value. Finding an apartment was the easy part. They wanted one that felt like a home.

Their brief included:

• Two bedrooms
• Secure parking
• Private outdoor space
• A practical floorplan suitable for family life
• Excellent natural light
• A tightly held Eastern Suburbs location
• Strong long-term capital growth potential

Above all they wanted a place that suited the family now and would still be a good asset in fifteen years.

How we met

We first met this young family in December. Like many first-home buyers, they had already been actively searching on their own and had found a property they genuinely loved. Although they hadn’t formally engaged us, they asked if we’d be happy to give them our opinion.

Of course we did.

We looked at the property, went through the comparable sales and read the campaign. Our advice was blunt: the price guide sat well under where it would actually sell, and on the evidence we expected the result to land past their budget.

They were not our clients and there was nothing in it for us. We just did not want them going in blind.

Before leaving that meeting they said something we still remember: “If we don’t buy this one, we’d love to work with you.”

A few days later it sold exactly where we said it would, well above their budget. Not long after that they engaged us.

The strategy: knowing when not to buy

One of the first things we do with any client is line expectations up with reality. We do not push people to spend more. We work out what the best available buy is at the budget they already have.

So we narrowed the search. Instead of chasing a semi or a freestanding house, we pointed them at good garden apartments and townhouses, which gave them most of what they wanted for far better value at that price.

Over the next few weeks we inspected together. One apartment stood out, and they loved it. On the agent’s early guide it looked like good buying inside their budget.

Then demand picked up through the campaign and the guide moved a long way. Before making a call we finished the due diligence, went back over the comparable sales and reassessed.

They still loved the apartment. Our advice was clear: at the price it was heading for, it was no longer the best thing they could buy.

Walking away was hard. They were disappointed, and for a while they wondered whether they had let their chance go. We told them what we genuinely believed, which was that on the budget they had we could find them something better to live in with stronger growth behind it.

They stuck with us.

The opportunity they never expected

Just a few weeks later, the phone rang. A local agent had just secured a listing.

It had not gone online. No advertising, no open homes, nobody else in the running.

We have worked with these local agents for years, which is the only reason we got in before the public did. We walked through the front gate and knew this was it.

• A garden apartment with light coming in all day
• Enough outdoor space for their young child to play safely
• A floorplan that suits ordinary family life
• A building that had been looked after
• A stronger suburb than the one they had nearly bought in weeks earlier

And the price was genuinely fair.

A better property for the same budget

The interesting part is not that we bought it off market. It is that they paid roughly what they had been ready to spend on an apartment that offered considerably less.

Instead of a standard two-bedroom apartment they ended up with a two-bedroom garden apartment in a better location, one that more owner-occupiers want and that should hold up better over time.

When we called to tell them the property was theirs, they couldn’t believe it.

Why buying off market mattered here

Buying off market is not about picking up what nobody else wanted. It is usually the reverse: getting to a good property before the rest of the market can bid on it.

Because this apartment never went public, our clients could inspect it, think about it and buy it without a queue of other buyers or an auction pulling them along.

People assume a buyers agent earns their fee on the negotiation. Sometimes they do. Knowing when not to buy matters just as much: spotting the point where a price has run past the value, being willing to say so, and having the relationships to find the homes nobody else sees.

Buying well has very little to do with buying quickly. It is about the right property at a price that makes sense.