PHOTO: House Sellers. Photo: RNZ / Claire Eastham-Farrelly
The Real Estate Industry and the Law Society are scrambling to find solutions for people whose house sales have been derailed by the Covid-19 lockdown.
In most deals, the seller of one house is the buyer of another, and that vendor is looking to buy another, so a last-minute failure of just one sale can trigger a chain reaction which affects large numbers of people.
In some cases, people will be unable to move into the houses they have bought and the vendors will be unable to move out, due to the lockdown and in others it will not be possible for anyone to do a pre-settlement inspection.
Some 6694 properties were bought or sold over four weeks in February.
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