[westi]

Hi there. We're making the move from Auckland to Christchurch soon and want to sell our house as quickly as possible.
There's such a huge difference in cost between selling your house yourself and paying many many thousands of hard earned $$$$$ to an estate agent, it's very tempting to put the house on Trade me with a sale sign outside the house and see what happens.
Has anyone else sold their house themselves ?

[Cardiff Irons]

Hi there. We're making the move from Auckland to Christchurch soon and want to sell our house as quickly as possible.
There's such a huge difference in cost between selling your house yourself and paying many many thousands of hard earned $$$$$ to an estate agent, it's very tempting to put the house on Trade me with a sale sign outside the house and see what happens.
Has anyone else sold their house themselves ?Got ours on HouseLadder and Netmovers as well as with two Estate Agents. No bites from the internet sites but, to be honest, I think they 're doing a better job than the Agents. In fact, come to think of it, I think my 8 year old daughter is doing a better job than the Agents.:mad:

[Cardiff Irons]

Ooops, sorry, just realised you're talking about moving WITHIN NZ :o.

Carry on, nothing to see here!

[Debbie]

Don't worry Cardiff, I can relate to you frustration.
Stuck in the UK club.
Debbie

[willsken]

Don't worry Cardiff, I can relate to you frustration.
Stuck in the UK club.
Debbie

Same here. We have had a house on the market since January. We gave the agent 28 days notice to stop using them on Saturday and after all that time with only 1 viewing this week somehow we have 2 booked! All crossed. :roll

Sorry this isn’t much help to the original post!

[westi]

Best of luck you guys. it's a frustrating business which ever end of the world you're living in !!

[Diny]

Yeah - just coming to the end of our latest house selling escapade so maybe I can help.

Hubby and I have a huge dislike for estate agents - whatever side of the world they're on. They all seem to promise the world and then fail to come up with the goods.

We put our house here in NZ on the market at the end of Feb. We decided to 'go it alone' (to a certain extent) and tried to sell through a company called Green Door. They are a marketing company. They provide the 'For Sale' boards, the flyers etc and will also advertise. There's several different packages you can 'buy' from them. We took the 'middle of the road' package which included 4 weeks advertising in the local newspaper.

We ran an open home every Sunday. We had alot of people visit but I think almost all of them told us that they had been visiting other open homes in the area and just happened to see ours so dropped in. We are a back section and not visible from the road, some of them felt committed once they were at the end of our drive and just came to look around for the sake of it. They either weren't interested or couldn't afford it. We were on the market 9 weeks with Green Door and during that time only 2 parties came to view as a direct result of the newspaper advertising.

Then - the local real estate agent (who lives in this village) called by to see us to offer his 'help'. At first we told him 'no way' but after abit of back and forth we decided to give him 4 weeks to list our property. We wouldn't agree to anything up front and told him that if he did get a sale then we wouldn't be paying any stupid % rate of the price, we told him what we were willing to pay him by the means of a flat fee. I have to admit he was taken aback by this, but we didn't really care. He had 2 choices - take it or leave it. We were in no hurry to sell.

Anyway - after 10 days and several viewings, he told us there was an offer on our house. The following Friday we went unconditional and we move on the 23rd June.

The price he got was several thousands more than we were asking through Green Door so we are 'quids in' (even after paying his flat fee).

Oh I forgot to say, the fee charges by G/Door was $2500 which sadly to have to pay whether you sell or not.

We still don't like estage agents - but we now look upon them as a necessary evil.

The house we have bought to move into is being sold privately. So far all has gone well. One thing that you need to bear in mind though is if you are buying a house which is being sold privately, your bank will need an up to date valuation (RVR)done on it. They won't be willing to just take the sellers word for it. RVR's can cost anything up to $400 (around here anyway).

Hope this helps.

Diny

[Moorf]

Our selling experience was pretty much as Diny's above.

We had already offered on our current house and a condition of contract was that we sell ours in 4 weeks. We put it on TradeMe and had lots of hits, a few viewings, but no real interest. We, as Diny, don't like estate agents and even more so we didn't like the hefty fees. BUT.. because we needed to get a sale through we ended up, in week 2, getting an agent in and we had offers through the first week. She upped our selling price too which covered her fees AND gave us the profit we wanted. So, yes, a necessary evil.

So, whilst I'd love to have sold it ourselves, time was against us. If you have the luxury of time it's worth the $50 test onTradeMe - we bought our current house via TradeMe and they'd had it on for about a month/6 weeks.

Moorf

[westi]

Hi, Thanks for the feedback - we don't realy have the luxury of time so I can see us advertising it ourselves for the 1st month and then panicking, going with an agent, selling it straight away and end up hating ourselves and them !!

[Karen and Rich Matthews]

If it helps we have just BOUGHT our house on Trade Me. Won't waffle too long as it may be irrelevant. Found it all so easy, were able to negotiate directly with the vendor and everything was up front. It will certainly be a path we look at if we come to sell. Strangely, it only got complicated once the solicitors became involved.

[Avalon]

Then - the local real estate agent (who lives in this village) called by to see us to offer his 'help'. At first we told him 'no way' but after abit of back and forth we decided to give him 4 weeks to list our property. We wouldn't agree to anything up front and told him that if he did get a sale then we wouldn't be paying any stupid % rate of the price, we told him what we were willing to pay him by the means of a flat fee. I have to admit he was taken aback by this, but we didn't really care. He had 2 choices - take it or leave it. We were in no hurry to sell.



Way to go :clap :clap :clap

Gotta love your negotiating skills!

[Diny]

Strangely, it only got complicated once the solicitors became involved.


I know what you mean. We did all the negotiating with the vendor of our new place, we sat down on a Saturday evening over a beer and chatted about what both of us wanted. We decided on mutual moving dates, decided when to go unconditional, decided what deposit to pay - it was all very easy and civilised. Then the lawyers got involved and everything became so stiff and regimented. I guess it had to be that way to make everything legal and watertight, but the first bit of the deal was very relaxing.

By the way - I call her the lawyer because the other day she pulled me up about referring to her as a solicitor. She said 'Mrs Norrie - I trained and qualified in New Zealand - I am a lawyer'. Oops - how to make friends and influence people eh.

Diny

[Oregonkiwi]

She said 'Mrs Norrie - I trained and qualified in New Zealand - I am a lawyer'.
Diny

:confused: I trained and qualified in NZ, and when I was admitted to the Bar the official wording was "A Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand". I certainly don't see anything wrong with calling a lawyer a solicitor. And rude of her to correct you like that anyhow, especially given how much you're probably paying her.

[MB]

While I am all for people analyzing what an agent actually does (or doesn't do) in the whole process -- and having a go themselves if the results of this analysis are encouraging -- we did use an agent to sell our Te Kuiti house.

Our situation was fairly unusual in that we only lived there for 1-2 months before a few factors -- not least finding our lovely little current cottage 45 mins. closer to Auckland -- prompted us to move.

For us, speed of sale was quite a priority although we did have a contingency plan if interest was sluggish. Anyway, we went to the agent who sold us the house, and she had a buyer for it within a week or so. Price suited us, too... although as you can imagine, after agent and solicitor fees we were hardly left rolling in cash. :laugh

A key factor for us, in deciding to use agent and solicitor, was that we did not at the time have the inclination to juggle doing it ourselves -- and doing it correctly so as to avoid big costs or hassles further down the track -- with our other daily commitments.

(That last point might be worth reflecting on for a moment for some folks, especially if time, energy or other commodities are a bit marginal for you right now. E.g., it might be worth 'losing' a few $K in agent fees if in your precise situation the quick sale that an agent provides will thereby avoid your having to take on two sizeable mortgages. Going the DIY-sale route might have worked glowingly for a neighbour... who was not having to cope with being a newcomer to the country or did not have your particular circumstances.)

Also, I think it's worth remembering the value of making a good, clear decision about which way to jump, then going for it wholeheartedly. We decided on an agent, got our sale, and did not then really regret the few $K the agent got. Ditto money spent on our good solicitor. Perhaps the biggest danger is in not quite being convinced that the way one has chosen is effective, and thus either going into it half-ar$ed and making costly mistakes or kicking oneself for having paid agent-and-legal fees when, in fact, the sale went through cleanly and one is now in or out of the desired property.
We tried to "choose our weapons" carefully to begin with, but then we went with it and, above all, got out of and into the properties we wanted. :nice1

As a final word, I hope the above does not sound overly neat or self-congratulatory. We do NOT discount the roles that factors such as luck and timing might have played, very significantly, for us. :)

[Diny]

:confused: And rude of her to correct you like that anyhow, especially given how much you're probably paying her.


You're not wrong there, at Christmas I was given a gold pen, thanks for our custom kind of thing.

I was thrilled and said to hubby - look, they've given me this (really flash) free pen. He just laughed and said 'believe me, that pen was NOT free'.

Diny

[Singel]

(That last point might be worth reflecting on for a moment for some folks, especially if time, energy or other commodities are a bit marginal for you right now. E.g., it might be worth 'losing' a few $K in agent fees if in your precise situation the quick sale that an agent provides will thereby avoid your having to take on two sizeable mortgages. Going the DIY-sale route might have worked glowingly for a neighbour... who was not having to cope with being a newcomer to the country or did not have your particular circumstances.)

Good point, MB :nice1

One of our neighbour do the DIY sale and his house was on the market for more 4 months. When his next-door neighbour use an agent, it was sold in 2 weeks. Frustrated with the situation, the DIY sale neighbour quickly switch to the same agent who sold the next-door house, and guess what ? His house was sold within 2 weeks.

[westi]

Really good points raised. It's a hard decision because we could end up spending a bit on advertising our selves,then if it doesn't sell, going with an agent and then it would have cost us even MORE !!

Decisions decisions.......

[MB]

Good point, MB :nice1

One of our neighbour do the DIY sale and his house was on the market for more 4 months. When his next-door neighbour use an agent, it was sold in 2 weeks. Frustrated with the situation, the DIY sale neighbour quickly switch to the same agent who sold the next-door house, and guess what ? His house was sold within 2 weeks.

Yes. I suspect that for some people the aim is (or should be?) not to get what is objectively the maximum financial return, but to get the max. financial return given their own other pressures and circumstances.

It reminds me of when we sold our modest townhouse near Seattle. We had been in it 2 years and got a huge amount of interest as soon as it was online, and sold it within a couple of days to a really solid, worthy buyer who offered a very competitive price and went the extra mile of always being available to deal with, etc. (BTW, don't get me wrong: we did not by any means make anything more than a respectable but modest profit (this wasn't a detached house in a now-slick suburb)).
Thing is, we could have held out for longer, maybe getting seduced by one of the wilder other offers. But what if those turned out to be not as solid and serious as her offer, and fell through after offerer's reflection? Or what if interest died down alarmingly and we were left wondering why we didn't take one of the early, perfectly healthy offers (we did get the advantage of a little competitive bidding in those first few days, incidentally)? Or what if the objective valuation was way below any unrealistically high offers?
Remember, we had NZ deadlines and costs to juggle and a lot depended on the sale going through quite quickly.
So we made our choice, our buyer was happy, we were happy. We maybe could have got more money, but all our own other logistics simply made this possibility not worth the gamble.

IMHO, in that situation getting too rabidly starry-eyed about money, to the exclusion of all else, might well have left us in the position of one of those slapstick scenes where a driver revs his one engine to the max and then speeds away, all right...but leaving 90% of his load sitting in the driveway. :laugh

[westi]

Well - we signed with an agent today !!

We decided that it would be a lot more convenient, as we have 2 dogs so we can just take them out for walks during open homes and visits. Also we're going to be away a far bit over the next couple of months so we can just hand over a key and relax ( sort of ! )
She was negotiable with her commision and came down a bit so.... pretty sure we made the right decision, all we have to do now os keep the house clean and tidy always. OMG......

Thanks for your input guys