One way of saving thousands of dollars on your mortgage is by switching your payments from monthly to weekly or fortnightly.

Weekly or fortnightly mortgage payments have been growing in favour with home owners across Australia and many institutions now offer these payment options. The fascination with more frequent payment options is that if they are done correctly you can take several years off your mortgage amortization and thus own your home free and clear years ahead of paying on a monthly basis.

The conditioning process adopted by some agents is one reason for the bad reputation that real estate agents have in Australia. Conditioning has become part of the real estate market because many agents lie to property owners about the value of their property.

The Process

When valuing a property some real estate agents will quote a value in excess of the property's true value in the belief that the owners will list their property with the agent that gives them the highest valuation.

A WHOPPING 78 per cent of Australians believe houses are overvalued and many report their homes have fallen in value, according to a survey of NEWS.com.au readers. So far, 34 per cent of people reported the value of their property had decreased while two in 10 had either bought or sold properties at lower than expected prices. The survey of 1181 NEWS.com.au readers conducted from 31 August to 4 September found there is a much lower intention to buy or invest in residential property than in recent years. The survey of readers was conducted by polling firm Coredata. Given the downturn in the housing market, a large number of people (50 per cent) expected property prices to fall over the next quarter. Only 19 per cent of respondents expected house prices to improve over the next quarter. The majority of respondents said falling house prices did not harm them. "Comments from the majority of respondents show that these decreases are not having any real impact on their financial security," said Hendrik Vos, partner at Coredata. However, some people have been hurt by falling prices. "I overextended my financial resources to get into the property market and may end up in a 'negative equity' situation," said one respondent.