Real estate agencies had a reasonably buoyant start to 2026, with residential sales commissions in the first quarter (Q1) at a five year high for the quarter.
Interest.co.nz estimates real estate agencies earned around $474 million in gross residential sales commissions in Q1.
That was up 4% compared to Q1 last year, and up 19% compared to Q1 2024. It was the highest level of commissions earned in Q1 since the boom year of 2021.
The Auckland Region accounted for the biggest chunk of the total commission pie at an estimated $169m (36%) of the total, followed by Canterbury at $75m (16%), Waikato $47m (10%) and Wellington Region $40m (8%).
The all time high for residential commissions was the estimated $693 million earned in Q4 2020.
Although total commission revenue has come down from the peaks of the 2020/21 housing market boom, total quarterly commission levels remain higher than they were in the pre-boom market - see the graph below for the quarterly trends.
Interest.co.nz estimates that in the 12 months to the end of March this year, real estate agencies earned a just over $2 billion in gross residential sales commission, up 10% compared to the 12 months to March 2025.
The improvement in commission revenue was mainly driven by higher sales volumes, with little movement in average commission's charged.
The estimated national average commission is just over $25,000 (including GST), but in Auckland it's up around $30,000.
That would generally exclude add-on expenses such as auction fees and house dressing charges, and of course legal fees would be on top of that.
So all in all, selling a home is not a cheap exercise.
However the Q1 commission figures give little indication as to how the housing market and the commissions it generates will fare over the winter.
The current dark clouds of economic uncertainty were only just beginning to appear on the horizon at the end of Q1 and we still don't know how the property market could be affected in the medium to longer term.
But the outlook is probably less optimistic than it was at the start of the year.
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