A SENIOR Albury real estate agent believes the NSW Coalition is “shooting itself in the foot” over a plan to put free property sales data on government websites.
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Real Estate Institute of NSW Albury division chairman Greg Wood, of Wood Real Estate, said it would be far better to cut stamp duty.
“They’d kick over so much more property and create some more revenue for themselves,” he said.
“All that data is available anyway on a few places like Allhomes, they put a fair bit of stuff out.”
Mr Wood said most property sales data in the market was about two months behind.
“Our source RP Data is starting to get live streams from the agents, they’re committed to paying staff to ring the agencies for the sales when they exchange.”
Mr Wood said the government’s election promise was far more relevant to Sydney, which, unlike Albury, was a fluctuating market.
“We haven’t got the hills and troughs like Sydney so our valuations creep up, flatten out and then creep up a bit,” he said.
Finance and Services Minister Dominic Perrottet said the government’s intention to have the data on all government websites by October was about giving people “the right information at their fingertips”.
“More than 860,000 real estate transactions were undertaken in NSW in 2013-14 and more than four million requests to the government for land and property information are made each year,” he said.
“Right now you have to pay the government or a third party provider to access some of this data.
“If elected, our commitment is to make it available for free and make the process of buying a house or land much easier and more efficient.”
But Mr Wood questioned the value of the plan.
“With the internet nowadays, a potential buyer has got 10, 20-fold as much information online now than they ever used to do over the past 100 years when buying or selling real estate,” he said.
“It’s not like they’re getting ripped off.”
Mr Wood said a buyer could act as an agent or valuer to determine how much a property was worth.
“Buyers are so much smarter with technology now that I don’t see the reason why the government needs to spend a power of money trying to do this,” Mr Wood said.
“I’d rather see them lower stamp duty, which is ridiculously high.
“That’s where they should hone their interest.”