PHOTO: Agents are reportedly delivering Uber Eats, working concierge jobs, cutting hair, booking flights and selling personal possessions while trying to keep their real estate careers alive.
Uber Eats, concierge shifts, hairdressing and selling personal possessions — behind the polished listings and smiling SOLD photos, parts of New Zealand’s real estate industry are doing it seriously tough.
For years, real estate has been sold as a career where ambition, personality and hard work can produce eye-watering incomes.
But in 2026, the reality for some agents looks very different.
A new OneRoof report has revealed real estate agents taking on second jobs, delivering food and selling possessions simply to keep themselves afloat as New Zealand’s prolonged property downturn puts commission incomes under enormous pressure.
And it raises an uncomfortable question for the industry:
Does New Zealand simply have too many real estate agents chasing too few sales?
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From selling houses to delivering Uber Eats
The stories reported by OneRoof are striking.
Agents are reportedly delivering Uber Eats, working concierge jobs, cutting hair, booking flights and selling personal possessions while trying to keep their real estate careers alive.
One Auckland agent told OneRoof she had enjoyed her best year in the 12 months to June.
Since then?
Not a single sale.
Ray White Glenfield agent Kristina Walsh summed up the situation simply:
“It’s really, really tough.”
Walsh said she was struggling to pay her mortgage and had considered taking a part-time job if another sale didn’t arrive soon.
She’s not alone.
One agent interviewed by OneRoof had reportedly gone 12 months without selling a property and was delivering Uber Eats to help pay for petrol while continuing to prospect for business.
Another newer agent was working around 20 hours a week as a concierge while trying to establish his real estate career.
This isn’t quite the glamorous real estate lifestyle often portrayed on social media.
12,850 salespeople — but how much business is there to go around?
Here’s where the story gets particularly interesting.
According to figures reported by OneRoof, New Zealand now has 12,850 licensed real estate salespeople.
That’s 425 more than a year ago and 723 more than two years ago.
Yet 3,012 salesperson licences are inactive. OneRoof calculates that those still working are averaging roughly five residential sales each per year, although sales are obviously distributed very unevenly — established high performers can sell vastly more than newcomers or struggling agents.
That begs a fairly obvious question.
Are there simply too many agents?
Five sales a year doesn’t leave much room once commission is split between the salesperson and agency and business expenses start coming out.
Agents can face marketing and prospecting costs, vehicle expenses, photography and personal branding, subscriptions, licensing and training costs — all while generally having no guaranteed salary arriving every fortnight.
Real estate can be lucrative.
But only when you’re selling houses.
The market isn’t dead — but it is painfully slow
It’s important not to exaggerate what is happening.
People are still buying and selling houses.
In fact, REINZ says July’s sales volumes were around the historical midpoint for the month when viewed across its 35 years of records.
But compared with July 2025, the numbers demonstrate why agents are feeling pressure.
There were 6,090 residential sales nationwide in July 2026 — down 10% year-on-year.
The national median price was $760,000, down 0.7%, while inventory had climbed 9.3% to 33,252 properties.
Properties were also taking a median 50 days to sell, two days longer than a year earlier.
That’s a difficult combination for an industry dependent on completed transactions.
More stock.
Cautious buyers.
Longer campaigns.
Fewer completed sales.
And thousands of salespeople competing for the commission.
The brutal economics of commission-only real estate
This is something consumers sometimes forget.
An agent can spend weeks working on a property and earn nothing if it doesn’t sell.
They can prospect for months without securing a listing.
They can hold open homes every weekend, answer calls at night, negotiate with buyers, prepare appraisals and follow up hundreds of leads.
No sale can mean no commission.
One Agency Auckland Central owner Moritz Muck told OneRoof that conditions currently felt worse than during the Global Financial Crisis. He recalled top salespeople taking taxi-driving work during that downturn to survive.
Wellington agency owner Alman Avallone described another consequence: principals increasingly finding themselves acting as motivators and counsellors for agents worried about where their next transaction will come from.
Has real estate been oversold as a career?
Perhaps this is the more uncomfortable conversation the industry needs to have.
Real estate has relatively low barriers to entry compared with many professions.
The public sees successful agents driving expensive cars, winning awards, posting SOLD stickers and appearing on billboards.
What they don’t necessarily see are the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of agents who aren’t making serious money at all.
The top performers can dominate their local markets.
Established agents benefit from years of referrals, databases, repeat vendors and personal brand recognition.
A new salesperson starts with almost none of that.
They aren’t simply competing against other rookies.
They’re competing against agents who may have spent 10, 20 or 30 years building a database and reputation.
And right now they’re doing it in a market where buyers have plenty of choice.
Maybe the downturn is forcing a reset
There is another way of looking at it.
Real estate has always been cyclical.
Boom markets attract agents.
Tough markets remove them.
The people who survive this period may emerge with stronger databases, better prospecting habits and considerably more experience when transaction volumes eventually strengthen.
But surviving long enough to see that recovery is the problem.
There is already evidence of people stepping away: 3,012 salesperson licences are currently inactive, according to the figures reported by OneRoof.
For some, taking a second job may therefore be less a sign of failure than a practical way of staying in the industry long enough for conditions to improve.
The Property Noise take
It’s easy to poke fun at a real estate agent delivering Uber Eats after spending the day trying to sell million-dollar houses.
But there’s a serious story underneath it.
Real estate is a business with no guarantee of income.
And New Zealand appears to have a large number of people competing for a limited number of transactions.
The market will eventually change.
The bigger question is how many agents will still be around when it does?
And perhaps an even more uncomfortable question for the industry:
Does New Zealand really need 12,850 licensed real estate salespeople — or has the promise of big commissions attracted far more people than the market can realistically support?
That debate might only just be beginning.
Source: OneRoof – “Desperate agents turn to side hustles to pay the bills”; market statistics cross-checked against REINZ July 2026 Property Report.
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