Hometopia for Kiwi Home Buyers and Sellers (Read Time 1:49)

As Murphy’s Law would have it, within days of having published my new eBook, Buying a House Using Apps, Maps and Location Based Services, a new web site was launched in New Zealand, called Hometopia.

A precursor to this website was the book Where to Live in Auckland, The Essential Home Buyer’s Guide. This did get a mention in my eBook. I really enjoyed getting some insight into the character of various suburbs around Auckland.

The website has a wealth of information for home buyers and sellers. It includes a variety of tools including mortgage calculators, links to councils allowing you to search for valuations, LIM reports and other information, and also links to many of the real estate agent sites you can visit or their apps.

There are page views for the various chapters of the book Streetwise Home Buying. I haven’t read the book, but they show enough of it for you to decide whether you should pick up a copy, which you can do on their web site.

Their Suburb Sleuth for Auckland is very nicely and intuitively crafted to help you find the type of suburb you might like to live in, as opposed to looking at properties within them. Once you have selected a suburb, you can read content similar to the ‘Where to Live in Auckland’ book, in fact you can buy a digital copy of the chapter of the book for that suburb.

You will find a wealth of New Zealand information on this site, with links to every sort of professional you might need from money lenders to building inspectors, from leaky home information to lawyers.

A page I really liked in the Help Me Sell section was How’s My Suburb Performing?

This section should be read by buyers as well. It could be extremely valuable when you are looking at auctions or considering a negotiation. In the Devonport example, you will see it tells you it currently takes an average of 34 days for a house to sell. It also shows that houses in Devonport are currently selling at a premium of 14% to the CV.

Of course ultimately a house is worth what people are prepared to pay for it, but as I pointed out in my book, the more due diligence you do, the less likely you are to regret your decisions later.

You won’t find listings on Hometopia and that’s one of the things I like about it. You will however find useful links to local real estate agencies once you know where you are interested in looking. Whilst there is more focus on this site currently for Auckland properties, there is growing information on other cities and it is a good visit for anyone looking to buy or sell real estate in New Zealand.

Btw, I am starting a couple of infrequent subscription email newsletters specifically around real estate. One is for those with an interest in buying and the other for those with an interest in selling. There will be additional information for subscribers including special offers, such as free copies of my eBooks from time to time.