In 2024, 7.6 per cent of New Zealand homes that sold were sold privately: thousands of ordinary sales, done by their owners, no agent in sight (Cotality data, reported by RNZ, July 2025). If you’ve been searching for how to sell your house privately in NZ and mostly finding warnings, here’s the process itself, stage by stage, with real costs attached.
Selling your house privately in New Zealand works like this: you get the property and its paperwork ready, set a price from comparable settled sales, list it yourself (Trade Me accepts private sellers), run your own open homes, and have a conveyancing lawyer draft the sale and purchase agreement and hold the buyer’s deposit in their trust account. No licence is needed to sell your own home, and your legal obligations are the same ones you’d have with an agent.
The best free guidance at every stage lives at settled.govt.nz, which is run by the Real Estate Authority, the industry’s own regulator. It treats private selling as a normal, legitimate route, and we’ll lean on it throughout. If you’re still weighing agent against private, it has a page for that decision too; this guide assumes you’ve decided, or you’re close.
Is it legal to sell your house privately in NZ?
Yes, and it always has been. The Real Estate Agents Act 2008 defines real estate agency work as work done in trade “on behalf of another person”. You’re not acting on behalf of anyone; you own the place. The REA confirmed in a June 2024 media release that selling property you own directly to buyers doesn’t require a licence.
What every sale does need is a lawyer or conveyancer. They draft the agreement, hold the deposit in their trust account, discharge your mortgage and settle the transfer, exactly as they would in an agented sale. They’ll also verify your identity under anti-money-laundering law, which settled.govt.nz notes applies “even if you are selling privately”. Budget $1,500 to $2,500 for conveyancing on a straightforward residential sale (2026 market rates). Ring a lawyer early — the worst time to go looking for one is with an offer in your hand.
Get the house and the paperwork ready first
Two jobs run in parallel here, and both are easier before the listing goes live.
The house: fix the faults a builder would flag. Dripping taps, cracked panes, sticky doors, mouldy silicone, scuffed walls. Then the outside, because street appeal is also your hero photo: lawns, edges, a waterblasted path, a letterbox that doesn’t apologise for the place. settled.govt.nz’s preparation page covers repairs and presentation; our own prep guide goes room by room. A pre-sale building inspection costs $600 to $900 (2026) and buys you something worth having: you learn about problems while you can still fix them or disclose them with a repair quote attached, instead of watching them detonate inside a buyer’s builder’s-report condition.
The paperwork: ask your lawyer for a copy of the title now. Cross-lease and unit-title properties in particular can hide problems, like a flats plan that no longer matches the building, that take weeks to sort. A LIM report is usually ordered by the buyer, but you can pre-order one to speed serious buyers up: Auckland Council charges $375 standard or $506 urgent, Christchurch City Council $320 or $420 fast-track (Auckland as at July 2026; Christchurch 2026/27 fees).
Price it from settled sales, not your CV
Your council valuation exists to set your rates. It isn’t a market price, and buyers know it. settled.govt.nz’s pricing guidance points you at comparable sales instead, and the ones that count are settled sales (money that actually changed hands) for homes like yours, near yours, in roughly the last three months. homes.co.nz, OneRoof and QV all show sold prices free. If you want a number with professional weight behind it, a registered valuation is the paid option.
Getting the price right at launch is the single biggest lever you control. RNZ’s July 2025 reporting on the Cotality data describes the classic private-seller failure: an ambitious launch price, then weeks of public price drops as the listing stales. Price against the evidence from day one and that trap never opens.
You’ll also pick a method of sale: an advertised price, by negotiation, or a deadline sale. settled.govt.nz explains each one. Auctions are possible privately too, but you’d hire a registered auctioneer for the day under the Auctioneers Act 2013, and most private sellers don’t bother.
One tax check before you commit: the bright-line test now runs two years for property sold on or after 1 July 2024, and a main-home exclusion covers most owner-occupiers (IRD has the rules). If your place was ever a rental, or you’re selling soon after buying, talk to your accountant first.
Photos, the listing and Trade Me
Buyers meet your house on their phones before they meet it in person. The hero shot, usually the front exterior in low late-afternoon light, decides whether they tap; 15 to 25 good photos decide whether they stay. If you’d rather hire it out, NZ real estate photographers charge from about $180 to $235 for a standalone shoot, or roughly $195 to $389 with a floor plan (July 2026 rates). We’ve written an hour-by-hour photo-ready plan, and a separate guide to writing a listing description that gets read past the first line.
Then the listing itself. Trade Me Property takes private listings directly and publishes its fees: from $599 in the lowest rating-valuation band, and from $999 for a home in the national-median band, paid once, with no success fee, up to 56 days on site, and free relisting on the basic tier if it doesn’t sell in that window (fees as at July 2026; Trade Me price-tests, so check the live table). MoneyHub’s private-selling guide makes the point that matters here: agents don’t hold exclusive buyer lists, and buyers hunt on Trade Me, where private sales are familiar.
Run your own open homes
Advertise weekend slots of 30 to 45 minutes, put out directional arrows, and spend the last hour on light, air and hiding the valuables. Greet every buyer at the door and take names and contact details, both for follow-up and for basic security. Run it as a pair if you can, and lock the small valuables away first. Buyers turned up to private sales in numbers in 2024: private listings sold in a median of 71 days against 75 for agent listings that year (Cotality via RNZ, July 2025).
Answer questions about the property honestly. Your disclosure duties, covering things like weathertightness, unconsented work and boundary issues, exist whether or not an agent is involved, and settled.govt.nz is blunt about the consequences: knowingly fail to disclose and you may be in breach of your agreement with the buyer. What you never volunteer is different in kind: your bottom line and your timeframe are negotiating positions, not disclosures. Our open-home guide covers the full routine, including the follow-up within 24 hours that most sellers skip.
What happens with offers, conditions and settlement?
Nothing is a real offer until it’s in writing. In practice that means the ADLS/REINZ Agreement for Sale and Purchase, the standard form used across the country, and in a private sale your lawyer drafts and finalises it. Buyers deal with you directly on price and terms, then everything formal goes lawyer to lawyer.
Most offers arrive with conditions, and the standard three are finance, a LIM and a builder’s report. A conditional agreement is still binding once signed; the buyer works through their conditions by the agreed dates, and when the last one is confirmed the sale goes unconditional. The deposit is paid into a lawyer’s trust account, never into your own (settled.govt.nz). The agreement also lists the chattels staying with the house (stove, fixed floor coverings, curtains and the like), and you’re warranting they’ll be in reasonable working order at settlement; Citizens Advice Bureau has a plain-English rundown. Counter-offers are a normal part of the dance, and settled.govt.nz has a page on how they work.
One timing note that trips people up: a buyer using a KiwiSaver first-home withdrawal needs their solicitor to lodge it, and that takes ten-plus working days. Set the settlement date with room for it.
On settlement day the lawyers exchange money and title, your mortgage is discharged, and the keys change hands. settled.govt.nz has a checklist for the day itself. Then you’re done.
So why do most people still pay an agent? Habit, mostly, and fear of the list above. It’s worth weighing what that fear costs: at Barfoot & Thompson’s published rates, commission on the July 2026 national median of $760,000 comes to roughly $26,450 including GST, before the $2,000 to $5,000 marketing campaign most agencies charge on top. To be fair to the other side, the NZ evidence on whether agents achieve higher prices is mixed and muddied by property mix, and we’ve written about it honestly elsewhere. The saving is certain, the premium is unproven, and preparation closes the gap.
Celby exists for people who want the preparation handled without the commission: professional photography, the Trade Me listing, a conveyancing lawyer who drafts the agreement from a plain-English questionnaire you fill in, and a dashboard that tells you what to do next, for a flat $8,000. But every step above works with or without us. settled.govt.nz will keep you informed for free, and your lawyer will keep you safe.
Celby is not a licensed real estate agent. You’re selling your property privately, and all decisions about your sale are your own.
Sources
- settled.govt.nz — Selling privately
- settled.govt.nz — Preparing your property for sale
- settled.govt.nz — Understanding the methods of sale
- settled.govt.nz — The sale and purchase agreement when selling
- RNZ / Cotality — Is it worth paying a real estate agent to sell your house? (July 2025)
- REA media release, 4 June 2024 — unlicensed agency work
- Trade Me Property fees (fetched July 2026)
- REINZ July 2026 market data
- Auckland Council — LIM fees · Christchurch City Council — fees
- Cost of selling a house in NZ 2026 (Leanne Stewart, Harcourts) — conveyancing, inspection and marketing ranges
- MoneyHub — How to sell your house privately
- Barfoot & Thompson — commission rates
- IRD — the bright-line test
- Citizens Advice Bureau — legal obligations when selling
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