House hunters out to net a bargain

This house on Aberdeen Rd in Gisborne is up for grabs. Photo / Supplied

The words "urgent sale" are setting a new trend on Trade Me as desperate house sellers link up with thousands of would-be buyers looking for a bargain.

In January, Trade Me had its highest amount of traffic on properties - 120,000 inquiries recorded for 93,000 listings - many of them listed under headings such as "urgent sale", "motivated seller" and "price reduced".

This week the Herald on Sunday counted 562 property listings under "urgent sale", including 367 properties in Auckland, 47 in the Waikato, 17 in Wellington and 24 in Canterbury.

Trade Me head of property Brendon Skipper said website staff had noted a huge increase in people listing properties under those headings in an effort to attract buyers.

And Skipper said house-hunters were also searching on these words in record numbers. Other top search words included "mortgagee", "investment" and "auction".

"So people are looking for a bargain," said Skipper.

Property consultant and investor Olly Newland warned that real estate agents could use "urgent sale" tags as a trick to sell by drawing attention to the property. But there were also a lot of people who did urgently want to sell, he said.

Many people were holding on to their homes "by their fingertips" and wanted to sell urgently before the banks forced mortgagee sales, Newland said.

He believed most houses were selling below their CVs and on average for about 8 to 10 per cent below asking prices.

Real estate agents gave various reasons for urgent sales, including vendors moving overseas, financial and business pressures and vendors having gone unconditional on other properties. Some owners wanted to sell so they could buy again and make the most of the low interest rates and bargain buys.

Barfoot and Thompson agent Terry Costello said he knew of many people who were "trying to beat the banks with mortgagee sales" and selling urgently. "The situation is quite dire for a lot of people," he said.

Bayleys Waiheke Island agent Daniel Burrill has two properties for urgent sale, one on Belle Tce where the owners want to sell to take up a business opportunity. The architecturally designed house with wide sea views (with a CV of $1.05 million) would have sold for about $1.4m at the peak of market two years ago.

However, the owners were realistic and hoping for expressions of interest around the million dollar $1m mark.

Ray White agent Heather Obern said she knew of five "urgent" sales where people "were heading towards financial pressure" and urgently needed to sell. Many of these sellers had dropped their asking prices by roughly 15 per cent from their original expectations, she said.

Obern has listed a four-bedroom house in Redoubt Rd, Manukau, as an urgent sale. It's on the market for $949,000 or near offer.

Ray White Gisborne-based agent Christine Gunness said the company had handled several urgent sales for vendors moving to Australia.

She is marketing an urgent-sale property owned by a man moving to Tauranga for a job. His three-bedroom house has a rateable value of $386,000 and features a swimming pool and views over Nelson Park.