Most Kiwis who sold their homes recently wanted to upgrade to a better property, while others simply wanted to get away from their neighbours and Auckland's traffic, a new survey has found.
The 2018 Perceptions of Real Estate Agents Report also found four in every five sellers said their agent had given them a positive service.
Overall, 22.8 per cent of the 912 survey respondents said they wanted to upgrade - the top reason given for selling.
Another 20.1 per cent said they sold for family reasons, while 12.4 per cent sold to invest, 11.9 per cent downsized and 10.5 per cent moved for work.
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A further 16.6 per cent sold for "other" reasons, including divorce, retirement, moving overseas and getting away from either the neighbours, Auckland's traffic or earthquake prone areas.
Surprisingly, just 5.8 per cent put their home on the market to make "the most of strong prices in my area".
Other results from the survey found that almost 50 per cent of sellers got a price for their home close to what they expected, while 22.2 per cent got a better price than they expected.
Sixty-nine per cent of homes sold within 45 days while just 4.9 per cent didn't sell at all.
Sixty-four per cent of respondents also said they had a positive experience of the selling process and dealing with their real estate agent.
However, 34 per cent were "underwhelmed or even angered" by the service they received.
"Real estate is a high-churn business because buying and selling homes is an infrequent activity for most people," CoreLogic sales and marketing general manager Peter Bromley said.
"But the 2018 Perceptions of Real Estate Agents Report highlights that some agents are throwing away more leads than they need to - leading to low referrals and even lower repeat business".
Overall, 91,176 homes were sold across New Zealand in the 12 months to the end of June at a gross value of $58.3 billion.
But with 18 per cent of sellers experiencing "poor or disastrous service" from their agent, this equated to 16,412 sales or a $10.5b annual share of the market, Bromley said.
For agents earning a 2 per cent commission, it represented just under $210 million of potentially lost income.
That was a market share "any market disruptor would be pleased to secure a slice of", Bromley said.
"When you're supporting transactions daily, it can be easy to forget that the experience of
selling a home is often a high stress point, normally only faced once every 7-10 years," he said.
"As all high performing agents know, making that experience as favourable as possible is good business."
He said this was because while clients may be selling "today", they can morph into a renter in the short term and then owner-occupier buyers and even investors into the future.
"They can also strongly influence other people's listing decisions too - in fact, 43 per cent of vendors selected their agent upon recommendations from friends," he said.
"Vendors offer very valuable future business".
