Fully agree that the CV doesn’t mean anything but a lot of people seem to cling to it.

If I was looking at buying a house, I’d tell the agent “oh you’re expecting that much! But the CV is only XXX”, but when it came down to it, if the amount I was offering seemed too high then I’d just make a registered valuation a condition, it wouldn’t put me off.

We somehow managed to pick our place up at auction but it was a nightmare as we had to try and coordinate the KiwiSaver first home withdrawal and the home start grant from housing nz. We’re pretty much skipping anything that’s advertised for auction as you can burn through cash quickly trying to get building reports and valuations only to miss out on the day.

Exactly! Was talking to a friend who owns zero houses but has been looking for a while, and they were saying they had a company they normally use for building reports. I was a bit surprised they had got so many reports and not bought any houses, I’ve never got a building report done on a house we were looking at buying until after a conditional offer had been accepted, otherwise it’s an awful lot of money for nothing.