Homes selling for less than asking price - but only just, Realestate.co.nz says

Houses are selling near the price vendors are asking, Realestate.co.nz says, but in some parts of the country, the method of sale may be affecting the calculation.

Realestate.co.nz has compared the average selling prices over the year, using Real Estate Institute data with the site's average asking prices.

Over the year, the average asking price of $830,022 was 0.6 percent above the average selling price of $824,698.

Coromandel had the biggest gap, with properties selling for 4.5 percent below asking price.

"Even in the region with the biggest gap, there was less than a 5 percent difference between average asking prices and average selling prices," said spokesperson Vanessa Williams. "That's a surprisingly small difference and a useful reminder that asking prices remain a credible starting point for negotiations."

Wairarapa was 3.4 percent below asking price, Auckland and Bay of Plenty 2.1 percent, and Northland 2 percent.

Canterbury was 1.8 percent above, Southland 1.6 percent above and Central Otago/Lakes had homes going for 2.1 percent more.

Wellington properties sold for 0.9 percent more than asking price, but Williams said many were being sold by tender.

"There are quite a lot of tenders and auctions in that market, so I wonder if, as an example, people are going, 'It's quite a suppressed market. Your house could go for $750,000 to $800,000... let's put it into realestate.co.nz at $750,000, because we want to make sure we're collecting all that demand'.

"Then people put a tender in at $775,000."

She had expected the gap could be larger nationally, but buyers may initially make lower offers and negotiating closer to what vendors wanted by the time the deal was done.

"I think there's still people who are trying to get a bargain, but the reality of it is they still want to do a deal, so they're stoked if they can be cheeky. The reality of it is they're actually coming up to meet the market.

"If they're coming in at $600,000, the market's at $800,000, they're getting to $750,000 anyway."

She said the gap was probably a lot smaller than it had been, "because of how stable the market is, because it's just been here for so long".

"I would anticipate we are not going to see the gap widen, until we see some real stimulation in the market. We've still got over 37,000 homes for sale at the moment... sellers are quite motivated.

"Buyers are holding off, i would say, because of the election, so the sell-through rate has dropped off quite considerably."

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