RealYeti to boost DIY home sales
Technology company RealYeti has quietly launched, and its founders hope it can unleash a new wave of do-it-yourself house sales. RealYeti is the brainchild of mortgage broker Sue Mihakis-Tierney and entrepreneur Andrew Harris.
It works on a fixed fee model, which is far cheaper than using a real estate agent, assuming private sellers using RealYeti’s services achieve comparable prices to professionally-run sales.
Already somewhere in the region of 8 per cent to 10 per cent of house sales are private, not including ‘‘sales’’ into family trusts, or by one family member to another.
Trade Me figures indicate the popularity of private sales.
‘‘As of yesterday, 8 per cent of all properties listed on Trade Me for sale were listed privately,’’ said Millie Silvester from Trade Me.
‘‘The heavy lifting formerly associated with selling a home privately has been removed.’’
Sue Mihakis-Tierney of RealYeti
RealYeti’s cloud-based virtual service helps vendors list and market their homes (including getting signs delivered, and Trade Me and RealYeti listings with drone footage and 360 degree virtual tours of homes) for a price of $3990.
It’s called RealYeti because real estate had the biggest ‘‘footprint’’ of any industry in New Zealand.
Mihakis-Tierney had recently completed a climb to Everest’s base camp, and had seen the ‘‘real’’ Yeti scalp at Khumjung Monastery in Nepal.
An increasing number of people had the confidence to sell their own homes, MihakisTierney believed.
‘‘Given the fabric of Kiwi culture is entwined in DIY, with mega brands like Mitre 10, it’s no surprise selling a home privately is on the up.
‘‘New Zealanders are a proud nation of getting on with it, and not giving someone an inch, if they don’t deserve it.
‘‘Yet, when it comes to selling property, the majority to date have used an agent.’’
Private sales were rising as technology brought homeowners and buyers together, MihakisTierney said.
Some of the growth would be driven by people aiming to save on real estate commission.
‘‘We anticipate steady growth in all centres including metro, given agents gain twice as much commission as they did 10 years ago yet do the same amount of work.
‘‘Selling a home privately decades ago was doable. However, in 2018 browsing for a property on a device is third only to banking and news, signalling a massive shift in consumer behaviour,’’ Mihakis-Tierney said.
‘‘The reality, the heavy lifting formerly associated with selling a home privately has been removed, while security and transparency has increased.’’
RealYeti will be going head to head with Homesell, a business founded in 2002.
Morgan Blok, a nurse, and her partner Siedse, an electrician, have just sold their home in Pokeno using one of the marketing packs from Homesell.
It didn’t take any special knowledge, though the couple are close watchers of property prices in their area, one of Auckland’s fastest-growing satellite suburbs.
‘‘We’ve used real estate agents before, and we felt if somebody liked the house, they would buy it regardless of who was selling it,’’ Blok said.
A $700,000 house sale would result in a commission of $20,746 at Mike Pero, its online calculator shows, which was less than at rivals Harcourts, and Bayleys.
Having an accurate idea of the value of their home, and the price they wanted, are key for DIY sellers.
Holding the open homes, and showing people round by appointment, was actually rather fun, Blok found, and not in the least stressful, though she believed that was what put many people off doing a DIY sale.
‘‘It was straightforward. I don’t understand why more people don’t do it,’’ she said.
There was something a little special about their sale too. The Bloks had subdivided, and were keeping an adjoining section to build a new home on. They were looking for a new neighbour as well as a sale.
Not everyone has Blok’s confidence, and to attract more customers, Homesell managing director Chris Caldwell has just put in place a ‘‘negotiation’’ service, which provides customers with an expert to do any negotiating necessary with potential buyers.
Agents will point to expert negotiating skills as being among the chief drawcards of using their services, leading to higher sales prices.
Agents can also advise on how to best market a property, and ready it for sale. They also say some buyers simply won’t deal with private sellers.
Colin Wilson from Mike Pero Real Estate said DIY sales as a proportion of the market had not changed in the 30 years he had been in the industry.
Part of the reason, he said, was that the Consumer Guarantees Act and the Fair Trading Act covered real estate agents, but not private sellers.