Selling Privately vs Using an Agent in New Zealand

A disclosure first, because it is relevant to how you read this. Online Appraisal is paid by real estate agents. If you use an agent we found for you, we get paid; if you sell privately, we do not. We have written this as even-handedly as we can, and that interest is worth knowing about while you read it. If a page like this only ever concluded "use an agent", it would not be worth reading.

What selling privately involves

Private sale — sometimes called for-sale-by-owner — means you handle the sale yourself and pay no agency commission. Several New Zealand services will list a private sale on the major property portals for a fixed fee, since those portals do not generally accept listings directly from owners.

What falls to you: pricing the property, photography and copy, listing and paying for the advertising, fielding enquiries, running open homes and private viewings, qualifying whether a buyer can actually fund a purchase, negotiating, and managing the process through to unconditional.

You still need a lawyer either way. Conveyancing is not something either route avoids.

What the commission buys

At the structures common in Auckland, commission on a typical suburban sale runs to tens of thousands of dollars. That is a real amount of money and it is fair to ask what it is for.

Broadly: the buyer database and the enquiry flow an established agency generates, marketing that is paid for and produced, the time of running viewings, experience of what comparable properties actually sold for rather than what they were listed at, negotiating on your behalf, and a professional obligation under the Real Estate Agents Act 2008 with a complaints process behind it if things go wrong.

Whether that is worth the fee depends heavily on the property and on you.

Where each tends to suit

Private sale tends to be considered where the seller has time and is comfortable with negotiation, where the property is straightforward and easy to value from comparable sales, where a buyer may already be known — a neighbour, a tenant, a family member — or where the numbers are tight enough that commission materially changes the outcome.

Using an agent tends to be considered where the value is uncertain and needs a competitive process to establish, where the property is unusual, where the seller has no time, where a deadline matters, or where the seller would rather not negotiate directly with someone standing in their kitchen.

The trade-off people underestimate

It is not the work. It is that negotiating on your own behalf, about your own home, with someone who wants to pay less, is harder than it sounds. Buyers also tend to negotiate differently with an owner than with an agent — they know the commission is not being paid and often expect that saving to come to them.

The other one is pricing. Without access to sold data and recent comparable evidence, private sellers are working from asking prices, which are not the same thing.

If you are weighing it up

An appraisal is free and carries no obligation, including no obligation to list. Some people get one specifically to have a realistic number before selling privately, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and no agent worth their licence will mind.

We would rather you made the decision with a real figure in front of you than without one — and yes, we would prefer you used an agent. Now you know both things.