Ready to find out what it’s worth?
Our partners can provide you with an online appraisal from photos and information you share online. So you get an objective, unbiased appraisal you can trust.
Find out how to arrive at an asking price, so you can have confidence when it counts.
Price it too low and you leave money on the table. Price it too high, and your property goes unsold.
Online property valuation tools can give you a useful starting point, but they shouldn’t be relied on to set your listing price.
You’ve probably come across online estimation tools (sometimes called Automated Valuation Models), like Trade Me Property’s HomesEstimate or QV.co.nz
Their algorithms tend to draw from:
The problems with AVMs (even when driven by AI), is that they’re only as good as the data that powers them.
They can’t account for renovations, a property’s condition, views or other features that would require an inspection. Where information is missing or inaccurate, the estimate can be off.
As at August 2026, 30% of Wellington City properties estimated via Trade Me’s HomeEstimate tool were off by more than 10% . On a home that sells for $1 million, that’s a difference of more than $100,000.
To get a more accurate sense of your property’s value, you can perform a manual search online.
Search on listing platforms for similar properties that match yours in size, condition and location. Compare the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, land and floor area, and anything else of significance.
Look at both properties currently for sale and those recently sold.
Remember, current listings show what sellers hope to achieve, while recent sales show what buyers are willing to pay.
Give more weight to recent sales, especially if the market is changing.
A useful tip: If an asking price isn’t shown, e.g. because it’s listed by negotiation, auction, tender or deadline sale, try lowering the maximum price in your search. When the property disappears from the results, you’ll have an indication of the price bracket it’s been placed in.
Once you have three to six properties that feel close to yours, consider where in that range your property might fall.
Our partners can provide you with an online appraisal from photos and information you share online. So you get an objective, unbiased appraisal you can trust.
Invite three local agents to appraise your property to get a feel for its likely price range.
Real estate agents are legally required to appraise your property in line with current market conditions, and they must support their appraisal by sharing comparable sales data with you.
If you’re interested in selling with them, ask what they charge for marketing as well as what percentage commission they’ll take. Around $4,000 as an upfront cost for marketing isn’t unusual. Commissions are around 3% on average, before GST.
To get a formal, independent valuation, you need to engage a registered valuer.
Whether you do your own research online or get a market appraisal from an agent, both approaches give the same outcome: an estimate of your home’s value based on comparable sales.
To get a formal, independent valuation, you need to engage a registered valuer.
This can give you more confidence around your asking price (particularly useful at negotiation time), but it does come at a cost, ~ $1,000 including GST for a standard residential registered valuation.
A new option offers the best of both worlds – the certainty that comes from working with a registered valuer, without the cost of a formal registered valuation.
With this option, a registered valuer looks specifically at your property based on information and photos you share online.
It isn’t a ‘bank-grade’ valuation (a buyer couldn’t use it to get a mortgage on a property), but it is objective, expert and more personalised than a market appraisal based on comparison sales. It’s also a lot more cost-effective (a few hundred dollars) vs a registered valuation. Get a valuer derived estimate here.