Best and worst real estate agencies in 2026

Selling a home can be one of the biggest transactions of your life. You want to go into it knowing you can trust the person you’ve handed over the process to. That’s why we asked more than 3,000 New Zealanders to tell us about their buying and selling experiences over the past three years.

The industry’s satisfaction rating – that’s how many people rated their experience 8–10 on a 0–10 scale – was 62%. The highest score achieved by an agency this year was 81% – well above average. The lowest was way down at 49%.

What makes a real estate company the best? The three agencies that are our People's Choice winners for 2026 performed strongly across most of the 10 key performance attributes we measured. These include professionalism, knowledge of the property and market, how well they explain the process and how transparent they are around fees and other charges.

Don’t rely on the shiny pamphlets that arrive in your mailbox to choose the person you trust with this huge decision – use the shared knowledge of thousands of New Zealanders instead.

The three People’s Choice real estate agencies

Which agencies are at the bottom of the table?

17 real estate agencies ranked best to worst

Problems aren’t rare when it comes to real estate

A whopping 43% of respondents to our survey said they’d had a problem during the buying and selling process. The most common problem, experienced by 28% of people, was feeling like they were under too much pressure or feeling coerced. A quarter of people told us they’d had poor communication from an agent.

Typically, the more experience people had with property, the fewer problems they reported.

Should you try to sell your home yourself?

About 6% of all the property transactions we were told about didn’t have a real estate agent involved. The most common reasons to avoid using an agent were wanting to avoid fees (61%) and already having a buyer (39%).

A third of people who had gone without an agent said they wouldn’t do it again.

The main problems experienced by sellers doing it alone were:

• setting the right price (32%)

• negotiating the deal (31%)

• understanding paper work and the next steps (30%)

• getting enough interest from buyers (27%).

A closer look at how each of the real estate agencies scored

About our real estate survey data

Our survey took place in March 2026. It was taken by 3,165 New Zealanders who had engaged in a real estate transaction in the past three years. We only report on agencies with more than 30 responses.

The satisfaction rating is the proportion of respondents who scored their agency 8, 9 or 10 on a scale from 0 (very dissatisfied) to 10 (very satisfied).

The agencies have been rated on these key measures:

• Overall satisfaction

• Professionalism

• Conduct – ethical, honest and open

• Timeliness of responses

• Knowledge of the property

• Market knowledge

• Explanation of the process

• Transparency of fees and charges

• Clarity and accuracy of marketing

• Ease of settlement process

• Managing expections

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