Sell houses privately NZ: Private sales: ‘We got $1.3 million for our home, and saved $25,000’
An article published by Janika ter Ellen in Stuff on May 10, 2026
This article came across my table this weekend published in Stuff by Janika ter Ellen. Janika is an excellent journo I noticed her when she worked at Newshub for Channel 3, she’s a true breath of fresh air and I would like to see more of her in coming time.
It starts with Haydn Miller and his beautiful wife Caitlin how they sold their house in a private sale and that would’ve saved them a fair bit of money. The house was a 4 bedroom 175m2 home on a 504m2 section in Milldale. Milldale is a brand new suburb in north of Auckland, on the other side of motorway across Silverdale. They owned the house for 5 years, they would’ve bought it brand new, I don’t think there’s anything older than 5 years in Milldale.
They said ‘we had a figure in mind that was $1.3M and above’. It’s not hard to establish how much your house is worth in Milldale. You bought 5 years ago, you know how much you’d paid for it, you know approx. how the market is moving these days, you do a little research online to find out what houses sold in the last 6 to 12 months in Milldale, those houses are very similar if not identical, you can ask your neighbours how much they sold for, everyone knows everyone in Milldale. It’s a very easy task, a 5-year old should be able to do that.
They sold for $1.3M in March this year and they said ‘the buyer hit the nail with the 1st offer’. They reckon they would’ve saved around $30,000 in agency fees and after what they spent on sale they would’ve saved probably $20k-to $25k at least. I’m not entirely sure what agency they meant. In Auckland on a $1.3M sale you pay $40,000 in commission and this is how you work it out. You pay 4% on the 1st $500,000 which is $20,000 and you pay 2.5% on the remainder, in this case 2.5% off $800,000 is again $20,000. If you add these 2 numbers you’ll get $40,000 in total commission.
They used company called HomeSell and based on the sale sign in front of their house they opted for a variant HomeSellGo. I had a look online what HomeSellGo covers. It is photography and a listing on their website HomeSell and it all amounts to $1,199. Not a lot but from those numbers they had stated they would’ve spent 5–10K on something, possibly marketing. I’m not here to badmouth HomeSell, I’m a huge fan of people who sell their houses as a private sale thus they maximise the profit and don’t give money away to someone who has zero relation to their property such as real estate agents. The problem I’ve got with HomeSell it’s run by a real estate agent who cunningly tells you ‘yes you can do it all by yourself if you want to’ but then ‘you can also opt for my assistance’ and that’s going to be a completely different ballpark. The HomeSellGo has 3 variants from $1,200 to $3,800 and it doesn’t even cover Trademe listing. It says basic listing on Trademe. A platinum listing on Trademe cost $1,000 and it’s a must to have that listing. With all respect to HomeSell how many people go to look at their website when someone wants to buy? We have traditionally 3-4 portals in this country with Trademe property being the most popular, it follows by realestate.co.nz and OneRoof property. I believe Chinese like also Hougarden but this is a property portal for people of Republic of China, no one else would go there. In New Zealand it is these 3 above mentioned websites.
Back to our couple Haydn and Caitlin, they sold for $1.3M, go them. They said it was the 1st offer from this buyer, in my view from my desktop I feel there was still a bit room to go up but if they happy that’s all that counts. They said ‘the big scary stuff is done by lawyers’ and they hit the nail with this one again. You need a lawyer for any real estate transaction, if you buy or sell, you can’t do without a lawyer. They receive the deposit, they do the settlement, they transfer the title, they are in charge so everything complies legally. The real estate agents are like a bad flu, they hanging there like hyenas trying to get their portion, all they do is they present the offers they receive from someone who comes to Open Home, something you can easily do by yourself, is this really something you can’t do? and then pass the whole thing onto the lawyers. Your lawyer as a vendor and the buyer’s lawyer and they do the transaction.
As Haydn and Caitlin said, ‘as long as you can hold a little bit of conversation, it’s not that scary really’.
On the other hand who’s trying to scare you are our Real Estate Agents friends. It starts with Belinda Moffat who is the CEO of The Real Estate Authority which regulates the whole industry. They are in charge of licensing and overseeing. And she says ‘Private sellers have a legal obligation to share all the relevant information about their property with prospective buyers, such as any issues with the boundary or title, any unconsented building work or alterations, any known weathertightness issues and whether there are any proposed developments that could have an impact on a buyer’s access, views or enjoyment. Failure to do that could put the sale in jeopardy or expose the seller to claims for breach of warranty under the sale agreement’.
Seriously Belinda? Are you telling us that the real estate agents do not have these obligations? It’s just private sellers? How would a poor real estate agent know if there are any issues with the property such as weathertightness, boundary or title, any unconsented building or proposed developments? If you have any of these issues or anything else with the property, you don’t want to do the sale by yourself. You contact a real estate business, they sell it for you, they only way they would know if you tell them. If the buyer comes back after the sale all you do is to refer them to the agents who sold the property, ‘I’m sorry guys it wasn’t me selling this, it was these real estate agents’.
Craig Wilson who is AREINZ and Eve on Cameron branch manager in Tauranga (I had to Google what AREINZ means and what is Eve on Cameron), says licensed agencies provide a safety net private sales lack. Really Craig?, like what?
‘If something goes wrong (with a private sale) you haven’t really got too many places to go back to. Whereas, if it’s a real estate company, a licensed real estate company or sales person then you’ve got quite a lot of protections and provisions that look after you’.
Craig like what? What protections and provisions have you got in place? Are you telling us if we buy a house through your real estate company Eve on Cameron and we later find out that the house was no good such as weathertightness or neighbours, or planned development or whatever issue, you going to give us the money back and serve as guarantor? You will vouch for the whole transaction if anything goes wrong? Craig is there for you and he’s the safety net. If needed he would go back to vendors and will ask to reverse the business he’d previously taken commission from. Are we all eating hay? First thing Craig would do is to remind you that it is your responsibility as a buyer to do due diligence.
Does using an agent get you a higher price?
Craig Wilson believes there is a misconception about private sales saving a commission; ‘What more often happens is the vendor allows for the commission in their price, and then the buyer comes along and they allow for another commission that they perceive the vendor is saving, and so the vendor ends up under selling. People are concerned about paying a fee of 20 grand, 25 grand, but quite often they undersell to the tune of 50 or 100 grand. So it’s kind of a false economy’.
Look I’m really tired to comment on gibberish like this. First of all there is a misconception about ‘real estate agents get you more than when you do it yourself’. The real estate agent isn’t motivated by the highest sale price but by the speed of sale. Please refer to my previous blogs. Yes they want you to get the highest possible price, what they really want is to sell as fast as possible, put that Sold sticker on the Sale sign, take the commission and move onto another property, do it again. They not interested in having properties advertised and do Open Homes. And what is Craig talking about ‘vendor allows for the commission and then buyer comes along and they allow for another commission’ and the vendor ends up underselling to the extent of $100K? And he calls it a false economy? The economy here is you not allowing for anything. You want to get the full price and not to share your profit with anyone else and that is the economy when you do it yourself.
The article finishes with some unimportant statistics such as how much was the median price for agent led sale and how much for a private sale. Private sales quite often include family sales such as parents to kids or siblings among each other. You’d have to be really dumb to include a real estate agent in a family transactions.
Here’s the link form the article by Janika ter Ellen published in Stuff on May 10, 2026 Private sales: ‘We got $1.3 million for our home, and saved $25,000’ | Stuff