Advice before signing the rental contract from overseas.

[nms.sun3]

all -

we had applied for a property @ Wellington via real estate agent and had a friend view the property & take pictures.

We are happy to move forward and landlord is also considering our application & expecting a positive outcome. Only caveat is that they want to sign the agreement while we are overseas and make the payment (security deposit/2 weeks adv rental/letting fee+gst) approx 4K NZD.

Is this is a common practice @ NZ for folks coming from overseas. We are just worried whether we may lose out as we are paying them without verifying any proof etc.

[RedVee]

Verifying any proof of what? Whether the real estate agent is legitimate? Real estate agents are regulated in NZ, so the agent should have a licence number. You can search the register here if you have the licence number: https://portal.reaa.govt.nz/public/register-search/. Otherwise, can you find the company and the agent on google? For example, there is a property on TradeMe on Totara that the contact details are "prs.limited" and just mobile number - googling prs does not return a real estate company. However, anyone can set themselves up as a property manager, and you would have less comeback as they are unregulated. And landlords can directly let their own property, but in that case there shouldn't be a letting fee.

The signing of the agreement, upfront rent and bond are entirely normal. Unfortunately so are letting fees, although not all agents charge the tenant. Bonds are lodged securely in a special govt agency, the landlord doesn't keep it.

You take a risk signing any agreement for a property sight unseen, depends on how much faith you have in your friend's opinion of the property. The counter risk is that in the current Wellington market it's unlikely the landlord will wait for you to get here before signing.

[nms.sun3]

Verifying any proof of what? Whether the real estate agent is legitimate? Real estate agents are regulated in NZ, so the agent should have a licence number. You can search the register here if you have the licence number: https://portal.reaa.govt.nz/public/register-search/. Otherwise, can you find the company and the agent on google? For example, there is a property on TradeMe on Totara that the contact details are "prs.limited" and just mobile number - googling prs does not return a real estate company. However, anyone can set themselves up as a property manager, and you would have less comeback as they are unregulated. And landlords can directly let their own property, but in that case there shouldn't be a letting fee.

The signing of the agreement, upfront rent and bond are entirely normal. Unfortunately so are letting fees, although not all agents charge the tenant. Bonds are lodged securely in a special govt agency, the landlord doesn't keep it.

You take a risk signing any agreement for a property sight unseen, depends on how much faith you have in your friend's opinion of the property. The counter risk is that in the current Wellington market it's unlikely the landlord will wait for you to get here before signing.

Yes, i did manage to do some background check on the rental agency & the agent. We are a bit confident now to move forward. We have to take the risk of not seeing the property in person as am pressed for time to finalize the rental before we land in Wellington. Agent went beyond his means to convince the landlord to rent the property to us.

For now we are going ahead with the agreement and see what happens after we arrive.