How Long Does It Take to Sell a House in Wellington?
Prices soft, sales slow. That is the Wellington market right now, and no amount of talking around it changes the shape of it.
REINZ has the Wellington region median at $725,000 for July, down 4% on a year ago. Nationally the median is $760,000, off just 0.7%, so we are wearing a bit more of it than most. But nobody's prices are collapsing, whatever the doom merchants are telling you over the fence.
What has actually moved is time.
Wellington is running at 55 median days to sell. The ten year July average is 42. That is nearly two extra weeks of your life, your open homes and your mortgage payments, on the same house.
The rate cut everyone is waiting for is not coming
The Reserve Bank has gone again, up to 2.75%. That is the second hike since July. Westpac and Kiwibank are picking 3% by Christmas, ASB reckons 3.25%, and BNZ is out at 4% by May 2027.
The cheap money has gone, and buyers know it. That is a fair chunk of why they are taking their time. They are not panicking, they are shopping.
Here is the bit that gets lost in the averages
We just sold a Wellington property with 43 groups through the door and a deal done in 21 days. In a 55 day market. Less than half.
Was that luck? No. Realistic vendor, prep done properly, marketing done right, and someone who has done this 500 times handling the negotiation instead of a junior learning on the job at your expense.
But if we stopped the story there we would be selling you a line, and there are plenty of agents happy to do that.
Some houses take longer. That is not a failure
Leonie's very first listing, years ago now, was in Crofton Downs with a power pylon planted in the front yard. One of those steel lattice towers, right there, unmissable from the street.
Three months, that one. It still sold, and the vendor was happy with the price.
Then there was a place in Khandallah that looked, and there is no kind way to say this, like a concrete bunker. Ninety days. Also sold. Also a happy vendor.
Neither of those was a slow campaign because nobody cared. They were slow because the house needed the right buyer, and the right buyer takes longer to find when the front yard has a pylon in it.
What made them sell was not patience. It was changing the marketing. New photos, different angle, different words, a fresh look at who we were actually talking to, and then doing it again when that did not land either.
What you do not want
The one that has been sitting since autumn with nobody doing anything about it. Same photos in September as it had in April. Same price. Same tired listing text. Same silence from the agent.
That is not the house's fault. That is a campaign nobody is running.
If your house has been on the market a while and nothing has changed about how it is being sold, that is the conversation to have, and you should be the one starting it if your agent will not.
So what should you actually do
If you are in Khandallah, Johnsonville, Karori, Churton Park, Crofton Downs and everywhere in between, and you are thinking about selling, two things.
Price it for today, not for 2021. The peak was October 2021. It is not coming back this spring, and a price anchored to what your neighbour got four years ago will cost you far more in time than it ever wins you in dollars.
Get the prep and the marketing right, and be prepared to change them. In a market like this that is the whole difference between a campaign that works and one that just drifts.
Some sell in 21 days. Some take 90. Both of them sold.
No fuss, no sales pitch, no juniors, just service! Leonie & Steve
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