By ANNE GIBSON
Spring is traditionally a busy time for real estate, but the pace of the frenetic market this year has led to some new problems.
Buyers are complaining to the Real Estate Institute about missing out on viewing properties, saying Auckland houses are being sold before they can get to see them.
Properties are being sold in hours and then 24 hours later being resold for between $30,000 and $40,000 more - in one case, resold by a conditional purchaser.
Other complaints handled this year include:
* Buyers finding their offer has not been presented to the vendor because the agent waited for other offers to come in, or that they chose one out of several offers to present to a vendor.
* Buyers not being told of other interest in a property for sale, or not being given proper advice on the need to make their best offer.
* Offers being presented and accepted by vendors within hours of a property being listed, even though other buyers had expressed an interest through another salesperson.
Deals are being done so fast that there is often not time to get the offer on paper before the property is sold.
Gordon Meyer, professional standards manager for the institute, says complaints are being made about many issues, but the hot housing market has bred an entirely new type of complaint.
Agents, desperate to win listings, are using increasingly bizarre tactics to catch the eye of homeowners.
They are using recipes, seeds, memo pads, chocolates, letter openers and even cakes of soap, as soldiers in the battle of self-promotion.
The median length of time it takes to sell an Auckland house is 29 days. In the Canterbury/Westland area and in Otago, the median is 34 days.
Auckland house prices are going through the roof, the price of some properties doubling in a year.
One five-bedroom Grey Lynn house, sold last year for $438,000, sold again this month for $745,000, which agents say is not that unusual.
Real estate agent Angela Olsen, at The Professionals in Ponsonby, says she has seen spectacular gains around the Grey Lynn/Ponsonby area.
"It's common to see properties double in price in a year, particularly in the Westmere, Grey Lynn, Cox Bay areas.
"These are usually character properties on a full site and generally those with the potential to be done up."
She has been working in the area for two years and says many vendors are "simply stunned" by the appraisals on properties: "They have to lift their jaw back up again after they've met me."
But she says the tax-free gains come at a cost because those selling often want to remain with the area and then face having to find a new place.
The proximity of these suburbs to the city makes them particularly popular, as Aucklanders experience motorway fright.
Interactive Property Management of Auckland said this month that the traditional suburbs where our forefathers settled would remain popular and for a good reason.
"An old rule of thumb is to buy in the locations of a city where the settlers went," said Leonie Freeman, managing director of Interactive Property Management.
Real Estate Institute past president Rex Hadley has predicted that a record 90,000 homes will be sold this year.
The sales volume is already running well ahead of last year's levels.
In 2000, agents sold 65,000 homes, last year they sold 76,000 while 60,000 had been sold by July this year.
Mr Hadley said that the country's 12,000 real estate agents could easily sell 90,000 residential properties this year.
New Zealanders have $420 billion invested in property and $229 billion in the housing market, according to statistics from the Property Institute.
Housing remains a mainstay of our individual wealth and home owners are greeting with glee the strength of the market.
But if you want entrepreneur Eric Watson's luxury pad on Takapuna beach, you are a little too late.
Tenders for that high-tech property closed this week and Brian Guy's exclusive agency, Premium Real Estate, hopes to be able to present the winning offer to the boxing businessman next week.
Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/property
On your marks, get set: too late to see the house
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