Where to find previous sale price of property.

I cannot for the life of me work out why people believe that they will be in a better bargaining position if they know when the vendor purchased their property. It bears little relevance to today's market, the circumstances of their purchase, the extent of work which may have been undertaken or any windfall gains that they have made on the property.

You are far better off knowing what land is worth in the area and making an adjustment for the specifics of the property.

Actually it can make a difference. For example if the property was sold less than 5 years ago or if the owner overpaid you have little room to negotiate. If you know the owner has had it for 20 years they may not have a mortgage and have room to move. RP data can also tell you how long a property has been on the market and for what price. If a place has been marketed a few times with different agents over a period of time I know the person wants it sold so may be open to offers.

I saw a property advertised once. Looked it up and saw that they tried to sell it 3 months earlier at a lower price. Don't know what the deal was there.

So did you end up finding the property on RPdata?  Your friendly mortgage broker should have an RPdata licence and be able to provide you with the report  you require

I'll restate, the price that the owner paid has very little bearing on what they will accept – it is more important to know what everything else around it is selling for as well as the metrics for the current sale eg time on market which will have more concurrence to the current negotiation.

I don't think it's much use to know this. You can get the knowledge, but it won't have much bearing on your negotiation power IMO.

Our next door neighbour bought their 3bed/2bath home in 2003 for $555K. They are currently selling it at approx $950K. Knowing how much they paid for it is not relevant to the market today because the median for that type of home is now just under 1m. You can hardly come along and offer them $700K – they'll laugh at you.

I don't know that 'd ever take a $250k price drop even if I was desperate (maybe in USA!)

D

you can only ask & the agent doesn’t need to disclose the reason.

I have found that an alternative way of finding out the reason for the sale is by asking the agent if the vendor "has found elsewhere nice for themselves to live as yet", or simply ask "where the vendor is moving to" with a stupid grin on your face like the whole adventure must be terribly exciting and how wonderful that you are involved in it all.  This kind of forces the agent to say "yes they have already bought another PPOR" which tells you they need to sell this one.  Or they might say that the house is being offloaded in a divorce, or that someone elderly owns it and has indeed found a place in a nursing home and the sale is funding the move etc etc.  A great response is when they say that the vendors have decided to move interstate.  This is not a move that happens quickly, and in my opinion creates a wonderful opportunity to make an offer that involves a long settlement period, during which the vendor knows they've sold their house and can plan their next move with confidence, but at the same time, you don't have to cough up the cash for ages