Imagine a loaf of bread for sale at your favourite bakery. Crusty and fresh, it is not long out of the oven after being created by skilled hands. You can almost taste it. On the shelf it rests on, a sign tells you: $9 or near offer. What the heck?
In a shop hangs a shirt that is just the right colour and shape for you in a style perfect for work. The label says: bids over $49. But what is meant by over? How much over: $1, $10 or $100?
Imagine the outrage, the confusion, the outpourings of upset over the inequity that such sales strategies for basic goods would incur. We would wonder if bartering in Bali had found a new Sunshine Coast base.
Surely, even in a competitive market, some things should be sure and some commodities must have certainty. But this is the way of things in real estate: numbers are nebulous and figures are figments.
Advertised prices on rentals are ballpark numbers, and when you rock up to inspect the premises, there is a good chance that others who also see themselves living there have already gone over and above, leaving the asking price in their dust. Too many people are being repeatedly beaten out and beaten down in pursuit of a place to call home.
Moving house is not something most people do regularly, and the rules of the bartering game are not laid out for the newbies. There is often no rulebook. It is a case of ‘if you know, you know’.
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Creativity is also required when wanting to buy a house. A mate, who was recently in urgent need of a home, put it this way; “count every available penny you have and put it all on black. Only then might you have a shot at coming up the winner of the residential prize”.
Having shelter is a basic human need and a foundational human right, just like food and clothing. The rules around access and the prices charged should be fair, clear and transparent.
There is unlikely to be a tighter housing market than the Sunshine Coast, and yet the silent auction practice on rentals and sales seems to have been perfected here, leaving the unaware or inexperienced lagging and still homeless.
Where housing is concerned, gamification has led to confusion and elitism. Securing a home should not be a matter of who dares wins.
Dr Jane Stephens is a UniSC journalism lecturer, media commentator and writer.
