How long does it take to sell a house in Auckland?

The four parts of the timeline

Selling is not one period. It is four, and the advertised campaign is only the second of them.

• Getting the house ready. Repairs, clearing out, tidying the garden, any trade work, then photography. This is the part most people underestimate.
• The marketing period. The weeks the property is publicly for sale and open for viewing, ending in an auction date, a deadline, or an accepted offer.
• The conditional period. If the buyer signs with conditions, they need time to satisfy them. If they buy unconditionally, this part disappears.
• The run to settlement. The agreed gap between the contract going unconditional and the day the money is paid and the keys change hands.

What stretches the preparation

Preparation stretches when trades are booked out, when one repair opens up a bigger one behind it, or when the decision about what to fix keeps being revisited. It also stretches when the family is still living normally in the house while it is being got ready.

Pulling this part in comes down to deciding early what will and will not be done, getting quotes before the decision rather than after, and booking trades and photography ahead of the dates you want them.

What stretches the rest

The marketing period is a choice made when you agree the campaign, and the method shapes it. An auction or a deadline gives the campaign a fixed end date. An asking price campaign runs until an offer is accepted, so it has no set finish.

The conditional period belongs to the buyer. Finance approval, a builder's report, a LIM, which is the land information memorandum the council produces about a property, a valuation the bank asks for, and the sale of the buyer's own house all take their own time. A buyer with a house to sell is the longest of them.

The gap to settlement is a negotiated term of the sale and purchase agreement, so it is as long as the two parties agreed it would be.

How to work out your own

Start at the date you need the money, then work backwards: settlement, the conditional period, the campaign, and the preparation. If that calculation lands before today, the part to shorten is usually the preparation, because the other three are largely set by the buyer, the method and the contract.