Well, Newshub has accepted the challenge and, sorry first-home buyers, it's not great reading.

If you search property under $500,000 on Trade Me you get 1253 listings.

But let's break that down. If you only search for properties with some sort of building -- townhouses, apartments, houses and units, there are 873 listings. Just houses? There are 345. But a lot of them aren't fit to move into.

Of the houses, one fifth of them are for relocation/removal, and 23 of them actually have an asking price over $500,000. One of them is even listed as asking price over $975,000.