Seller Offer Comparison Calculator NZ

Updated  The probabilities are your own judgement. There is no New Zealand data on how often conditions fail.
Quick answer Of three offers, the best is Offer B at $850,000.00, worth $799,181.25 once its 75% chance of completing and its 60 days settlement are priced. It beats the next best offer at $840,000.00 by $8,336.25, and it beats the unconditional offer too, so certainty is not worth the price gap here.

Vendors are handed several offers and asked to compare them on the one dimension that is easy to see. Price is printed at the top of each one, and everything that makes the offers genuinely different sits further down in language nobody enjoys reading. Yet a finance condition, a fortnight of extra settlement and a buyer whose own house has not sold are all worth real money, and once they are priced the ranking frequently changes. The useful thing to understand is that this cuts both ways. Certainty is worth paying for, and it is not worth paying any amount for. A conditional offer far enough above an unconditional one is genuinely the better bet, and a conditional offer barely above it is not, and the line between those two positions is a number rather than an instinct.

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The offers
OfferPriceChance it completes, per centDays to settlementDays until conditions are satisfied
A
unconditional
B
finance and report
C
sale of their house
Your costs, the same for every offer
Offer B is worth the most, by $8,336.25 over the next best.
Best offer
Offer B
worth $799,181.25
Highest price
Offer B
at $850,000.00
Margin over the next best
$8,336.25
the highest price also wins here

Every offer on the same scale

OfferPriceNet if it completesHolding costChanceExpected value
A$830,000.00$794,035.00$3,900.00100%$790,135.00
B$850,000.00$813,575.00$7,800.0075%$799,181.25
C$840,000.00$803,805.00$5,850.0060%$790,845.00

Expected value combines what you get if the offer completes with what you get if it does not, weighted by the chance of each. It is the only figure on this table that can be compared directly between offers.

What price would change the answer

Best offer on expected valueOffer B at $850,000.00
Next bestOffer C at $840,000.00
Margin between them$8,336.25

The next best offer would have to rise by around $8,336.25 in expected value to overtake the winner. Because a conditional offer only delivers its price some of the time, the price rise needed is larger than the margin.

If an offer fails

What you would net selling again$790,000.00
Less the cost of relisting$8,000.00
Less holding through the conditional period, Offer B$2,600.00
Where a failed Offer B leaves you$779,400.00

This is the downside that the probability is weighted against. If you think a failed campaign would cost you more than this, lower the net figure and the conditional offers will fall accordingly.

The probabilities are your own judgement and no New Zealand data exists to inform them. The calculator provides the structure, not the inputs, and the ranking it produces is only as good as the chances you assign. Expected value describes an average across many transactions and you are making one, so an offer that wins narrowly on expected value while carrying a much larger chance of failing may not be the one you want. Where multiple offers are being presented, an agent has obligations about how the process is run and how buyers are informed, and your agent should explain what those require. This page ignores tax on the sale and any mortgage break fee, both of which apply equally to every offer and so do not change the ranking.

Three things separate offers, and only one is visible

Price is on the front page and the other two are not. The conditions determine whether the offer turns into a sale at all, and the settlement date determines how long you keep paying for a house you have already agreed to sell. Both have a dollar value, and on ordinary New Zealand numbers they are large enough to reorder a set of offers that looked settled on price. Pricing them does not make the decision for you, but it does prevent the specific mistake of treating a twenty thousand dollar price difference as decisive when the risk attached to it is worth more than that.

Certainty has a price, and it is not infinite

The instinct to take the unconditional offer is sound and frequently wrong. It is sound because a failed sale is genuinely costly, in relisting, in time, and in the way a property looks when it comes back on the market. It is wrong when applied without measuring, because a conditional offer can be far enough ahead on price to more than cover its risk. The question is never whether the conditional offer might fail. It is whether the extra price is worth more than the chance it does, and that is arithmetic.

Conditions are not all the same risk

Treating every conditional offer as equally risky loses most of the information. A finance condition on a buyer who already holds a pre-approval is close to a formality. A building report condition is a moderate risk that depends on the house rather than the buyer. A condition on the sale of the buyer's own property is the largest risk in residential conveyancing, because it makes your sale dependent on a transaction you cannot see, cannot influence, and which has its own conditions inside it. Reflecting that in the probabilities is where most of the value of this exercise comes from.

Worked example

A vendor holds three offers. Offer A is unconditional at $830,000.00 settling in 30 days. Offer B is $850,000.00 subject to finance and a building report, settling in 60 days, with conditions due in 20. Offer C is $840,000.00 conditional on the sale of the buyer's own house, settling in 45 days with conditions due in 14.

They judge the chances of completing at 100%, 75% and 60%. Holding the property costs $130.00 a day, relisting would cost $8,000.00, and selling again afterwards would realistically net $790,000.00.

On expected value Offer A is worth $790,135.00, Offer B $799,181.25 and Offer C $790,845.00. Offer B wins by $8,336.25 over the next best, so the extra $20,000.00 of price is worth more than the risk that comes with it.

How this is calculated

For each offer, the net proceeds if it completes are the price less the tiered commission on that price, less the administration fee, less GST on both, less marketing and legal costs. From that is subtracted the holding cost, being the daily figure multiplied by the days to settlement. That gives the outcome if the offer completes. The outcome if it fails is the amount you would net selling again, less the cost of relisting, less the holding cost over the days until the conditions would have been satisfied, since you carry the property for that period either way. The expected value is the completing outcome multiplied by the probability plus the failing outcome multiplied by one minus the probability. The offer with the highest expected value is the winner, and the margin is the gap to the next highest.

Official sources

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Frequently asked questions

Should I always take the highest offer?

No, and equally you should not automatically prefer an unconditional one. A higher conditional offer can genuinely be worth more than a lower unconditional one, because the price difference can exceed what the risk is worth. The only way to know is to put both onto the same scale, which means pricing the chance of failure, the holding cost of a longer settlement and what a relisting would cost you.

How do I estimate the chance an offer completes?

By judgement, informed by what the conditions actually are. An unconditional offer completes unless the buyer defaults. A finance condition on a buyer with a pre-approval is a lower risk than one on a buyer who has not spoken to a bank. A condition on the sale of the buyer's own house is the highest risk of all, because it puts your sale at the mercy of a transaction you cannot see. Your agent can tell you what they know about each buyer, and that information is worth asking for specifically.

Why does the settlement date matter to the comparison?

Because you keep paying for the property until it settles. Mortgage interest, rates and insurance run the whole time, so an offer settling sixty days out costs you more to reach than one settling in thirty. On an ordinary mortgage that difference runs to a few thousand dollars, which is enough to reverse the ranking of two offers that looked close on price.

What does it actually cost me if an offer falls over?

More than the delay. You have carried the property through the conditional period, you have to relist and often run a second campaign, and the property returns to the market visibly having been under offer and come back, which buyers read as a signal. That last effect is the reason the figure you would realistically net on a later sale is usually below what you would have got first time, and it is a field on this page rather than an assumption.

Is a multi-offer situation different?

The comparison is the same, but the process is regulated. Where more than one offer is being presented, an agent has obligations about how buyers are informed and treated, and the multi-offer process must be handled fairly. That does not change how you value the offers in front of you, which is what this page is for, and your agent should explain the process they are required to follow.