My agent and I are no longer talking. The problem with selling a house in these crazy times

July 7, 2026 — 3:30pm

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With the housing market becoming more unpredictable as house values fall and auction clearance rates tank, buying and selling feels like more of a gamble than ever – and punters like me become all too aware that they are at the mercy of a godless industry.

As I write this, I am fashioning a Groucho Marx moustache to wear to my local shops in case I bump into the real estate agent I recently fell out with. Business is business, you’d think. But if you let someone into your home, give them your keys, trust them to set boundaries for the strangers opening and closing your toilet lid and peeking into your clothes drawers, you feel rather vulnerable when things turn sour.

And, in the current market, things can easily turn sour. I found this out when I decided to question my ex-agent’s confident assertions about how the market is so terminal that I will never get an offer better than the one I have just gotten, and how it is in my best interests to trust them completely because they know what is about to happen.

If there’s one thing we can be certain of, it’s that absolutely no one knows what is about to happen. That includes my ex-agent, whose basis for predictive capacities, in the absence of any advertising campaign, was the lone man they lured from their database who they took through my property........

© The Age