Thanks for your comment and the insight into your experience with Green Door.

To be clear the statement I made was “These companies operate outside of the law regarding the legal requirements of real estate agents and cannot act in the transaction, facilitation or negotiation of a sale without becoming a licensed agent”

In this regard I was referring to the fact that at present Green Door is not a licensed real estate company / licensee and as such is not bound to the legal requirements of the Real Estate Agents Act 2008. This is not to say or make any implication that their operate operates outside the ‘law’ – that would be inappropriate.

Green Door are very clear in that they provide a marketing service for a fee and through this assist private sellers with the marketing of their property, however they cannot operate to facilitate the sale of the property as to do so would legally contract them to be bound by the real estate agents act.

I am pleased that you have had success in selling your property satisfactorily.

Thanks for leaving this comment / question. I am not a real estate agent – I am responsible for this website, but I guess in my role I get a view of the industry. Others may like add their thoughts. But anyway here are mine.

Let me lay them out pros and cons:

Pros
1. This is an industry where anyone can be successful if you have the right approach, skills and capabilities

2. You are effectively your own boss – self employed is the status. The more you put in the more you get out

3. It is an industry that effects many many people’s lives – great if you are social and a good networker

Cons
1. You start with nothing – it is hard for the first year to get established

2. The market is constantly changing and the market does in many ways dictate your success – when the market is booming more people try and sell, so it is competitive. When the market is low – everyone is fighting for business – it is never easy

3. It is (or can be) a 7 day a week business

4. You need to be thick skinned – you have to be nice – even when you don’t feel like it

So my advice is go and talk to a manager of a couple of local offices – they are always on the look out for smart people who would like to join their team.

Best of luck.

Do you think it is worth to start a career in real estate?

It is a good question however whilst the scale of “non real estate transacted sales” could be ascertained through the data from land registry as compared to REINZ stats. The fact is that a title transfer / ownership change would not stipulate as you say the difference between a private sale and a sideways transfer. Would certainly be interesting to know.

All we do know is that it is harder in a buyers market to sell privately and the sellers out there recognise it. The research from May of this year from the Nielsen Online survey showed a fall in the % of people who would definitely sell privately from 17% in 2007 to 14% in 2008.

One thing that no-one who quotes this statistic seems to (be able to) qualify is how many of these transactions are actually owners “selling” their properties sideways – eg into a Trust or LAQC – which are recorded as genuine sales & title transfers and account for a heck of a lot of property transfers every year.

It would be interesting to see these ‘claytons’ sales split out – have a feeling the genuine private sales figure (ie owners marketing and selling their home privately to an unrelated 3rd party) could in fact be far lower than recorded. Anyone have the means to do this?

Yep, I hear B&B are dead meat. But thats hardly new news.

The real issue for NZ is how much further does the downturn in Aotearoa have to play out.

Probably through into 2009 I’d guess if as I suspect the current spring/summer sales season delivers more falls off the back of high listings and low buying demand.

What you reckon guys/girls?

Your comment interests me and I am sure others will equally comment, possibly more from personal experience (which I cannot do – neither having been a buyer nor a seller for a few year; and not being an agent).

The point I would make is that an agent does need to make a sale to earn a living and it is tough and to a certain extent they will focus on properties that they have a chance of selling. but ask yourself this question before you make that change to agents:

- who sets the asking price of the property? – do you think a vendor just leaves this to the agent? – of course not, so if the vendor has unrealistic expectations and despite this the agent takes the listing, you can begin to see how potentially an agent could actually loose credibility trying to market an overpriced property.

As this industry rapidly changes I suspect we will begin to see a scenario where vendors will be calling around agents saying “please sell my house” because after being politely turned down by a few smart agents who say “why should I spend my time (which had opportunity cost for which i don’t think I will get paid) when I could be better using my time to sell something that is marketed to meet the market – emphasis here on “marketed” as opposed to just priced! A key component to this future scenario is better informed buyers and sellers.