REINZ rejects call to eliminate CVs

He said buyers and sellers tended to think of it as the “official” valuation of a property, when it was not a reliable guide.

“You look overseas and find that in most every other country there is no such number for an individual property. You will get the local council rates assessment, the local government tax, the capital value of the land or the rentable estimation for the property, but never an estimation of valuation.”

Helm said CVs were unreliable as they were usually computer-generated, assessed infrequently and had no bearing on market value.

“Having a CV for a property becomes a crutch for the real estate industry that does nothing to add value to their services. Imagine for a minute if there was no CV. A real estate agent would use skill and local knowledge to assess recent sales, ensuring that local knowledge could ensure that truly comparable properties were evaluated in order to come up with an intelligent estimation of the true market price.”

Removing CVs might encourage more properties to be listed with a price indication, he said.

But Real Estate Institute chief executive Helen O’Sullivan said while CVs could not be considered a foolproof guide to a property’s value, they would at least give a buyer a general idea.

“If people are looking at a property online, they can see whether the CV is $1 million or $500,000 and that will give them a sense of what sort of ballpark figure they are looking at.”

She said CVs should be treated as just one tool of many for buyers to work out a property’s value.