If
you’re in the market for a new house, you might be wondering
what to offer on any you’re interested in.
Do you
offer the asking price? Try to cut 10 percent off? How hard
do you negotiate?
As new data from Realestate.co.nz
shows a 1.5 percent dip in average asking price in January,
Cotality has confirmed that the gap between what sellers are
asking and buyers
are willing
to pay appears to be shrinking.
Chief economist
Kelvin Davidson said, excluding auctions, the median
discount that buyers paid on the original list price of
properties sold in 2025 was 3.8 percent.
It was 4.2
percent in 2024, 4.6 percent in 2023, 5.1 percent in 2022
and 2.9 percent in 2021.
Gisborne had the biggest
discount, at 5.9 percent. That was followed by Northland at
5.5 percent and the West Coast at 5 percent. Taranaki had
the smallest, at 3.1 percent.
Davidson said that could
be affected by sellers in Taranaki setting more reasonable
asking prices to start with.
“In some ways it’s a
marketing tool. You’re never quite sure if someone is just
hoping for too much of whether they’re actually setting a
reasonable asking price or what their true motivations might
be.
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“Over time the availability of information to both
sellers and buyers has widened. Any time, anybody can look
up a free valuation estimate or you could come to Cotality,
for example, and pay for a higher grade one but either way
that information is widely available. It suggests that the
chances vendors can sneak an above-market asking price in
there have probably reduced because everybody’s got the same
information and they are going to know what’ s
unrealistic.
“I guess it applies to buyers as well
…the chances putting in a sneaky 10 percent under offer
and getting it accepted are also reduced because maybe
asking prices are more realistic to start with.
“The
scope for an excessive price is probably reduced but at the
same time the scope for buyers to get a sneaky deal is
probably reduced.”
The data does not include
properties that went to auction.
Property prices have
been broadly flat in recent years even as vendor discounts
have reduced, suggesting it is sellers who have shifted
their expectations.
“The longer the flat patch goes on
the more people are saying ‘I just want to get this done
I’ll set a more reasonable asking price’,” Davidson
said.
“I think if you’re a market watcher, maybe
you’ve been thinking about selling, maybe you held back
because you thought ‘oh the market might pick up I’ll wait’.
Now you might not necessarily be… you have to sell at some
point. I think in general the fact those discounts have been
slowly trending down suggests people are just being a bit
more realistic than they might have been a few years
ago.”
Realestate.co.nz said national stock levels rose
2.3 percent year-on-year in January, the first time the
number of available properties for sale hit more than 33,000
in January since 2014.
Gisborne led the pack, with a
15.1 percent increase in available
stock.
