Last year turned out out to be a pretty good one for real estate agents and salespeople, with the real estate industry estimated to have earned nearly $2 billion in residential sales commissions.
Interest.co.nz estimates New Zealand real estate agencies earned around $1.992 billion in gross residential sales commissions in 2025.
Commissions are generally split between the salesperson and their agency, but the respective percentages of the split can vary significantly.
Last year's total estimated commission for the whole of the country was up $220 million (12.4%) from 2024, and was the second highest amount in any year since interest.co.nz began collating the figures in 2017.
It was also the second year in a row that total commissions have been higher than the previous year.
The only year since 2017 that commissions have been higher than in 2025 was the boom year of 2021, when total estimated gross commissions hit $2.341 billion. See the graph below for the annual trend since 2017.
Auckland was the most lucrative market, with gross commissions in the region estimated to have hit $707 million last year, accounting for 35% of commissions nationally.
Canterbury had the second highest level of estimated commissions for the year at $319 million, followed by Waikato $197m, Wellington Region $184m, Bay of Plenty $130m and Otago $110m.
The above figures do not include commissions from rural sales such as farms and horticultural land, or from commercial properties such as offices, factories and shops.
The figures also exclude the fees agencies charge for services such as managing rental properties.
4 Comments
2b for ~15.000 agents = 133k each, not bad at all. With a lot of disparities I guess (20% of agents generating 80% of commissions?).
Remember that a large chunk of the commission will be kept by the agency. It doesn't all go to the salesperson.
Usually around half.
So basically there's a whole bunch of people doing it for a hobby.
Sure, that still puts them close to the median income. Looking at the sales figures from the different RE websites, a good 30% of them only sell a few homes a year, for the others that's good business.
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