BY JEM ANSHAW
If you feel like sold stickers have been going up on real estate for sale signs as soon as the pole is in the ground, you would be right.
That is the state of the market according to JTS Realty licensee Jay Shepherdson (pictured) who has recently been recognised for his sales success on the realestate.com.au top 100 list.
“There are 22,000 agents in New South Wales, licenced real estate agents, and I ran 56th in the state out of all of them,” he said, coming up around 30 places from his 2020 placing.
“Muswellbrook did 241 sales for the year and think I did 166 of them.”
When delving deeper into what is driving sales at the moment, Jay shared he was surprised at how the last two years have unfolded.
“When covid first started I thought everything would crash and burn and we’d have a world of pain until all this disappeared, but it has been the complete opposite,” he explained.
“I think it’s been because people couldn’t go overseas, so they have just been spending money reinvesting their money, buying bricks and mortar.”
The Upper Hunter market has also felt the flow on effects from property prices skyrocketing in metropolitan areas.
“Because Sydney has been so ballistic and Newcastle and the Central Coast, it has pushed people further out and because we are such a strong economic area and our rents are so good there’s lots and lots of investors and they drive the market,” Jay told The Hunter River Times.
“We did the figures the other day for 2021 and 30 per cent of our clients were investors and the other 70 per cent were owner occupiers, that is a bit of a shift from previous years.”
“The big family homes, the four and five bedders with a pool and a shed, particularly up in the north side, wine estate, they are very popular – they don’t even hit the market before they are sold..”
When speaking with Jay last week JTS Realty had already settled 38 sales for the year, indicating the market is showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.
