Ben and Dileesha came to us after trying to find their first family home on their own. They had sold up on the Central Coast and moved back to Sydney for work, and they were juggling a genuinely tricky brief. The home had to work around four different points of contact: the city, Parramatta, their parents in the Hills District, and the Central Coast all had to stay within reach.
We searched across most of the Hills District and Parramatta before narrowing in on North Rocks and Winston Hills. Two weeks of inspections made the picture clear. North Rocks was pushing out of reach, while Winston Hills offered far better value. The same style of home that was slipping away in North Rocks was coming in around $100,000 to $150,000 cheaper just nearby in Winston Hills, so that is where we focused.
The catch was that everyone else could see the value too. There was no shortage of opportunities, but they were all selling well above their price guides. Inspections were drawing around 20 groups at a time, so we knew competition would be fierce, and the agents were not giving much away about where offers needed to land. We tested the water early with an offer that sat well below our limit. It did not move the vendor, and we did not chase it upward.
Later that week, the auction was brought forward by a week, pulled in by the level of competition. That raised the stakes, so Angus sat down with Ben and Dileesha ahead of the day to lock in a clear strategy, a hard limit we would not cross, and the appraised value we were working to.
On auction day, there were five registered bidders. Holding to the plan and the limit, and leaning on tactics built up over a lot of auctions, we secured the home for Ben and Dileesha at $25,000 below our maximum. With the NorthConnex only a few minutes from the property, the Central Coast sat just under an hour away, so this first family home kept every one of those four points of contact within reach. All of it bought with discipline in a hot room.
The property numbers
- Winston Hills value advantage: roughly $100,000 to $150,000 less than the equivalent home in North Rocks
- Secured under our hard limit: $25,000