If you want the best chance of a good price, you need to market to the widest range of buyers possible, agents say.

It is now standard practice for New Zealand real estate agents to put their clients' properties on websites aimed at Chinese buyers.

The most popular site for New Zealand listings, Hougarden.com, says it gets more than 170,000 unique visits each month, about half of which are from people in mainland China.

Hougarden.com offers a direction translation all the listings that feature on Realestate.co.nz but vendors can pay more for an upgraded package. It pays a fee to Realestate.co.nz for the listings.

Real estate agent Antonia Baker, of The Property Market, said vendors needed to understand that they were operating in a global marketplace and their buyer could come from anywhere. Marketing properties to Chinese buyers was just part of that.

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"[The buyer could be from] the house next door or it could be the other side of the world. In order to sell a house it makes sense to cast the net wider and advertise to as many areas as possible."

She said she would list every property on an overseas portal, which she said was not an expensive marketing option."We translate every single listing to Mandarin and present everything on Hougarden in the same way as we put everything on TradeMe or Realestate.co.nz. You don't know where your buyer is coming from."

Vanessa Taylor, of Realestate.co.nz, agreed. She said Hougarden gave New Zealand vendors a way to market their property to a wider audience.

"At the end of the day we're about getting as many buyers to a property as possible. This is just another channel that helps get the full spectrum."

But Tony Tang, a salesperson at Lodge Real Estate in Hamilton, said it was important that people who used Hougarden did so properly.

"You've got to understand that the majority of people using Hougarden are Chinese-speaking. If you want to use it you need to make sure you can speak Chinese or your agent can because you don't want to have someone who is non-Chinese speaking getting interest from Chinese buyers, who are sending emails and calling in Chinese."

He said an effective listing should include more than a direct translation of the number of bedrooms a house had, or the size.

"It's the same as if you read an ad in English and there's no description or emotional thing involved you might not bother with it but if you say 'it has a wonderful kitchen, great flow' then you think you might have a look."