Pricing your home properly is the number one thing that you can do to help it sell. At least, that is my opinion. That is why I was surprised to find that in New Zealand, where I am visiting right now, many homes are listed for sale with no price attached to them at all. When you look at the ads of homes for sale, there seem to be three main ways they are listed. One of the most popular is to auction the property off. That takes a lot of marketing to get the word out about the auction. Typically, in addition to what the Seller pays the agent for selling the home, they also pay about 1% of the selling price upfront for marketing expenses. A second way is to list the way we sell homes in the US, with a suggested price and potential Buyers making offers until a price is negotiated and agreed upon. A third way is with no price listed at all and potential Buyers making a "tender" which is a blind offer. All tenders are opened on the same day the the highest one gets the property. How does one know what to offer when there is no price listed? I have seen some listings were the "certified valuation" or appraisal is listed, but others where you have no idea at all what a property might list for. In fact, the house we are renting for the month is for sale, and it does not have a price listed either. I suspect it is $1-1.2M, based on other list prices in the area.
Real estate in New Zealand is expensive. The average family income here is about $68,000 and I have seen few homes priced under $400,000. It really seems to be very similar to Summit County, with many second homes near the beaches. We are staying at a small beach area with about 50 homes and only 5 of them are occupied full time. The rest are second homes. We have decided that it must be the land that costs so much money as the homes would not be expensive to build. Most are built on pilings or cinderblock foundations. The windows are all single panes of glass, and there are lots of them, which is really nice! Walls are 2x4s studs and roofs are not required to bear any snow load, so don't need to be as strong. There is little, if any, insulation in the walls and not many electric outlets. Bathrooms in this home, which is not old, have no outlets. The outlets are all switched though, so you can turn each one off individually. Most newer homes are very contemporary looking, with the kitchens and baths seeming rather sparse by American standards. In the rural areas, water is collected from the roof and gutters all drain into a tank. It supplies all the water used in the home. The drinking water is filtered, but the pollution levels here are low and the water is clean and usable. Few homes have wells. It rains often enough that the tank seldom needs to be filled by a commercial water hauler.
This photograph was taken from the deck, overlooking the ocean at Buckleton Beach.
All in all, New Zealand is a wonderful place to live. I was born here, so am a bit biased, but the weather is wonderful, it rains often enough that everything is green and the wildlife is fabulous. We are really enjoying ourselves, even though there is no skiing!
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