As the New Zealand Property Market has gone through a huge growth over the past three years, people are wondering what's next?...

As with international trends, the rest of the world has also seen what the property market in New Zealand seems to be experiencing at the moment. The huge growth, and steep increase in property prices eventually level off and begin to increase again, this time more steadily. People are under the impression that with the steep increase that we have seen, there is only one way that the market can go, and expect a `crash`. World markets have however, shown that this is not the case but will still increase although not as drastically as before.

One trend that has however shown a constant worldwide is the market changes from a `sellers market` to a `buyers market`. The most important difference here is that once the Sellers could name their price, due to the constant increase in price over a period of time and the lack of properties to meet the market demands, in other words, a shortage of affordable residential properties. Now that the market has corrected itself, this leads to an influx of properties onto the market place with buyers being able to negotiate market related property prices, thereby influencing the buyers market. The flooded market is such, that buyers have a larger choice than before, thereby enabling them to negotiate better deals on the purchase price of the property they want. With the abundance of properties on the market, buyers are no longer forced to pay premium prices, and they can afford to shop around, giving them the time to research and make informed decisions before committing to invest.

One of the most common trends worldwide is the commission price that Real Estate Agents (Realtors) are charging. Whilst the average agent's commission seems to have remained constant at approximately 4.5% plus GST, agents are seeing a huge increase in their income, as their commission is directly related to the price they achieve on each property. Three years ago, a house selling for $700,000 would have earned the agent, $31,500 excluding GST. Today, the same house selling for $900,000 will earn the agent $40,500 - giving real estate agents a `salary increase` of approximately 25%!! Not bad.. while other industries are fighting for marginal salary increases.