Number of private sales drops slightly: Trade Me

About 9% of the website's residential real estate listings are now private sales, down from just under 10% a year ago.

Brendan Skipper, Trade Me’s head of property, was unsure why that was.

He ssaid it had been noticeable for several years that a percentage of listings that started out as private sales tended to migrate to an agency listing over time.

Harveys Parnell owner Colin Varney said it was not a surprise.

He said while people with the right skills and information could succeed with a private sale, others would find it hard to price their properties correctly.

“If they have the time and skills, good luck to them.”

Varney said buyers would also often factor in what a private seller would save in fees when they were making an offer on a property and so people would not save the money they thought they would.

Skipper said statistics were not kept on the length of listings so it was hard to tell whether private sales were selling at the same rate asproperties listed with a real estate agent.

REINZ chief executive Helen O’Sullivan said no data was kept on private sales. “Similarly, the listings of properties for sale carried on our industry portal, realestate.co.nz, are all listed by licensed real estate agents - in our view it's an important protection for consumers that there be that mechanism for protection and problem resolutions provide by theframework of the Real Estate Agents Act.”

Auckland Property Investors Association president David Whitburn said it could be that people wanted to sell their house at an auction. “Good luck doing this as a private seller.  Also many poor performing agents (but certainly not all) have been driven out with increased regulation with the REAA, higher licensing fees and in particular tough market conditions since late 2007.  The good agents are not merely deal processors but deal makers who are able to justify the higher cost of using them because they can get more than 5% more than what a private seller could.”