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A common refrain - real estate agent commissions are too high.If you’ve just sold a median-priced home, you may well be handing over $20,000 to a traditional real estate agent. Ouch. People complain, yet do it every day, almost without thinking. Why are they so high and how do agents get away with it? It’s not realTraditional real estate agents can charge these eyebrow-raising figures because the amount doesn’t seem real to the home owner who is paying the bill.The agent’s commission usually...

When selling your home it must look good online. The super vast majority of buyers look online first, find the properties they are interested online, and evaluate what to investigate further online. Before they even speak to an agent.Your property’s online profile is key. So what matters?

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We launched Watch My Street (www.watchmystreet.co.nz) this last week and it has been fascinating to ‘watch’ the reaction from traditional data suppliers, the real estate industry, and consumers.

Bottom line - we’re pretty pleased with what’s happened.

One of the fun things we saw during the week was the interaction between ratepayers and Wellington City Council (WCC), enabled by Watch My Street. Enabled, because we have taken data/information that has traditionally been difficult or expensive...

As part of our ongoing effort to change the real estate industry in New Zealand we today launched a new website featuring some very cool tools. It's called www.watchmystreet.co.nz

We are committed to providing as much useful information and analysis to owners as we can - an informed owner is a smart owner.

At this stage it is restricted to Wellington properties - thanks to Wellington City Council (and others) for the data. If you would like to see Watch My Street for your town or city let us...

You have just 10 seconds to sell your home.  Seriously!  Just like a job interview, the first 10 seconds are crucial for making an excellent first impression when selling your home. You have just that short snipet of time to impress a buyer and encourage them to look further. If not you risk losing their interest before they’ve even glanced at your Victorian mantelpieces or state-of-the-art chef’s kitchen.  Making the most of your home's street appeal will pay dividends, making...

Rhonda asked a great question on Facebook recently (and won some movie tickets for doing so). Her question?

“When is the best time of year to put a house on the market and why? I ask because most people wait for spring, but wonder if winter is better as the market is not so flooded”.

Let's look at some market specifics. The graphs below are statistics from the last few years via REINZ. The first shows unconditional sales volumes.  

The sale and purchase agreement is normally entered into...

Let’s face it - we all know real estate advertising is about the agency brand as much as it is about the property.But, has one of the real estate regulatory bodies (Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal) fired the first salvo on behalf of owners?The useful weekly update to members from REINZ highlighted a recent Tribunal decision where they noted some concern about a situation where the agency did not follow an owner's instructions on advertising because it interfered with the franchise's...

Are you a real estate expert, a negotiator, a passionate service provider forced into a door-to-door salespersons cloak? Want to escape? The world has changed astronomically since the 1970’s, but real estate selling hasn’t. We’re changing an industry that basically still works the way it did before cell phones, the internet, or laptops! And we need great people to be a part of forcing that change. We need qualified real estate licensee salespeople or agents with at least 3 years experience....

Ok, you want to get sold. Now. Immediately. Without delay.Here’s what you do.Make sure the property is ready for sale.  Get it ship shape before you go to market.  The more work a purchaser perceives they have to do the longer it will take them to make a decision and the less of them there are. It can be hard for a buyer to connect the dots between what they are seeing in front of them and what it could be. Expecting them to guess what a property will look like after you have...