– NZ’s most stylish real estate agents: How they get their look<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cSo, it\u2019s like buying sight unseen. Some of the mortgagee ones that we sell you\u2019ve got no access, so you are really taking a punt on them, so they can be difficult to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s had tenants restrict access to once a week, demand to inspect all the listing photos before they go online, and refuse to remove their large dog during open homes. \u201cSo no one can look in the backyard, and it\u2019s covered in dog poo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, an unruly neighbour can ruin the quiet enjoyment of a person\u2019s home, and if the neighbour is affiliated with a gang, selling a property can be stressful, Rawson says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re doing viewings, and there\u2019s a party next door. Loud motorbikes or cars. I was selling a property, and I was doing a deal with an investor and there was a raid on the house next door. The [investor] was no longer interested in the property \u2013 fair enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Fire-damaged homes are hard to sell but not impossible. Rawson’s agent sold this one for over $400,000 in 2024. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Rawson once had to jump a fence in his suit to appraise a gang property that had been firebombed by another gang. \u201cWe sold it as a firebombed, ransacked, [marijuana] grow house.\u201d<\/p>\n
The curtains were shut and the windows boarded up with plywood. The property had free power because the gang had bypassed the power meter. \u201cIt was fully ransacked inside. The fridge was pulled from the wall, the oven was pulled from the wall, the bed was flipped over in the lounge … and there was still a recipe for how much fertiliser and sunlight and water and stuff for the plants to grow,” Rawson tells OneRoof.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sold it after one open home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The house was bought by an electrician and his wife, who renovated it and turned it into a rental. \u201cBut between unconditional and settlement, the house got firebombed again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giant power pylons also detract from a property, Rawson says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the national grid coming through South Auckland, and so people just don\u2019t want to live under a power line.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Gangs and drugs are two things that scare off most buyers. Photo \/ George Heard<\/p>\n
Neither do they show much interest in contaminated properties. \u201cIf the property was ever a meth property, or people do a test and it comes up positive for meth, then that\u2019s almost impossible to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, in many cases, contamination can be rectified by a deep clean or a renovation. \u201cI owned a house once that had meth from a tenant, and I had to strip all the wallboards \u2013 just basically fully refurbish the property. The only thing that stayed was the exterior cladding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately, Rawson had insurance, albeit with a $10,000 excess \u2013 but the work cost $150,000, he says.<\/p>\n
Leaky houses \u2013 many of them built in the late 1990s and early 2000s without eaves and with certain defective designs and materials \u2013 are still a selling headache, says the agent. \u201cThere\u2019s such a limited buyer pool for them, and they don\u2019t have any value in a non-competitive market.\u201d<\/p>\n
They are just as hard to sell as derelict or poorly maintained homes, although Rawson says the Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Regulations 2019 have largely improved the latter category, forcing slum landlords out of the market.<\/p>\n
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Rawson urges sellers to deal with any overpowering or unpleasant aromas in their properties before holding open homes. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Houses that have been reduced to ashes or even partially affected by fire also have limited appeal. \u201cThere was a spate in 2023 where we would have done 10 burnt down houses or semi-burnt down houses in a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Damage to a house can unearth expensive pitfalls such as asbestos \u2013 particularly in older homes, Rawson says. \u201cIt\u2019s not economically viable to do anything to it other than bowl it, but even when you bowl it, you\u2019ve got to do an asbestos demolition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even for homes that don\u2019t have the above problems, there are certain things sellers may do that can make an agent\u2019s life harder. One is failing to remove highly personal photographs and art, with Rawson telling OneRoof that he once inspected a house where the owner had a large semi-nude photograph of his wife displayed in the master bedroom.<\/p>\n
Religious and spiritual paraphernalia have the same effect. A client who\u2019d been trying to sell his house for three months with another agency enlisted Rawson\u2019s help. \u201cI had a look, and I was like \u2018You walk in your door, and you\u2019ve got a shrine\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he had some fake animals in his garden, like a fake cow. I said, \u2018I\u2019ll take on your property, but it will come with a bit of a ruthless list of things to do\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rawson explained to the vendor that while he personally enjoyed the smell of certain food spices, the buyer might not.<\/p>\n
The house was cleaned, the shrine removed, the fake animals put into storage, and the family was banned from cooking the night before an open home. \u201cWe sold it at the first viewing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Presentation also counts. Rawson once marketed a tenanted property with three dwellings where beds were left unmade on the day of the open home. \u201cI had to go through and make seven beds. It was disgusting. I actually picked up a bed bug from making some of those beds.\u201d<\/p>\n
The smell in a house is extremely important, Rawson says. \u201cIf you walk into a house and it stinks of cigarettes, or dogs or cats, that\u2019s just an instant no-no.\u201d<\/p>\n
If a person has died by suicide or murder in the property, agents should inform potential buyers during the open home. <\/p>\n
Some wouldn\u2019t consider a house where a death has happened, Rawson says, while certain cultures require a blessing of the property.<\/p>\n
And going to market the day before planned roadworks on the street is not ideal, but as Rawson says, being able to think on your feet helps. \u201cWe can sell anything and everything. You just have to be flexible with your approach to things,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
– Click here to find properties for sale<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"– Tom Rawson, of Ray White Manukau, highlights factors hindering property sales, including flooding, unconsented work, and defective…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,1258,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-200269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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