Stephen Knight

Now, what about a story where it doesn't go quite so well?

I saw another example in Royal Oak.

This is again in Auckland.

And this couple bought the property for $510,000 and then they were trying to sell it for about $1.4 million.

That was the CV.

And they did five open homes across four different weekends, had quite a few people through, right?

Like 15 people through in the first weekend, 11 in the next weekend.

They come to auction and there's a good crowd in the auction room, but no bids.

Ah, nobody bid on it.

Then they said, okay, well, we'll set an asking price.

We'll make the asking price $1.6 million.

Ah, nobody bought.

They ended up selling it seven months later for $1.5 million.

Now, that might have happened if they did have a real estate agent, right?

Like the same thing could have happened.

But it's interesting to be like, oh, wow, seven months with no sales, actually quite a long time.

So there are some people who this will work for.

There are some people who this won't work for, right?

But from your experience, Andrew, 20 odd years in the property industry,

When do private sales tend to work?