West Footscray: bought before auction at $935,000, with the kitchen renegotiated

They could not see it, and photographs flatter

Our clients are both doctors, living in Townsville and relocating to Melbourne. They needed to be near the hospital they would be working at, because getting there quickly is not optional in their line of work.

They knew what they wanted. What they could not do was stand in it. A home can photograph beautifully and feel wrong the moment you walk through the door, and the reverse is just as true. Buying interstate on photographs alone is not thrift, it is risk.

So they wanted someone here who could inspect properly, run the due diligence, and handle the negotiation on their behalf.

Why we bought before the auction

The property was scheduled for auction and quoted between $900,000 and $990,000.

Not every property should be taken before auction. Our Footscray case study on this site is the opposite decision, made for the opposite reasons, in a softer market. Here the assessment was that the home would attract genuine competition, and that securing it beforehand and inside the quoted range was the better outcome for buyers who could not attend on the day and would otherwise have been bidding by phone from Queensland.

We purchased it at $935,000, mid-range, before it reached the auction floor.

We didn’t just negotiate the price. We negotiated the kitchen.

The second negotiation most buyers never think to ask for

Because it was a new build, the builder was still involved. That opens a negotiation almost no buyer realises exists.

Alongside the price, we negotiated additional inclusions and changes at no extra cost: a kitchen island bench and several other tweaks, so the house was finished the way our clients actually wanted rather than the way it happened to be built.

For buyers relocating interstate, that matters more than usual. They were not going to be here to organise trades, get quotes and manage changes in the weeks after settlement, on top of starting new jobs in a new city. Getting it right before handover was worth considerably more than the same work done later, and it cost them nothing.

The result

Secured at $935,000, inside the quoted range and before the auction, with additional inclusions on top at no additional cost. Two doctors arrived in Melbourne to a home ready to move into and close enough to work.

What this means if you are relocating interstate

Relocating means doing two hard things at once: starting a new job, and buying in a market you do not know. Most people underestimate the second, because listings look the same from anywhere.

They are not the same. You cannot read a street from a photograph, you cannot feel the light in a room, and you cannot tell how a floorplan actually lives. Melbourne’s major hospitals also sit in a tight cluster, and which one you are rostered at genuinely narrows where it makes sense to live, in ways that are invisible from another state.

Buyer advocacy by LP Advisory, Melbourne. Suburb-level detail only. Prices are indicative and shared with permission; some details withheld for privacy.