How it works
What OurHouse actually does
OurHouse is a free research workspace for people buying a home in New Zealand. It doesn't list properties for sale itself — it's where you organise the properties you're already finding elsewhere, and keep everything you learn about each one in one place.
Watchlists
A watchlist is a running list of the properties you're seriously considering. Add a property, and it becomes a place for your own notes, photos, and status — rather than a browser tab or a screenshot you'll lose track of. You can keep more than one watchlist, which is useful if you're comparing areas or comparing "definitely" against "maybe" separately.
Side-by-side comparisons
Once you have more than one property on your watchlist, comparisons let you line them up against each other on the details that actually differ — price, size, commute, school zones — instead of flicking between separate tabs trying to remember which one had which trade-off.
Affordability calculator
A calculator against a specific property or watchlist item, to sanity-check what a mortgage on it would actually look like at a given deposit and interest rate. It's a planning tool, not a pre-approval — always confirm actual borrowing capacity with a bank or mortgage adviser.
School zones, commute times and points of interest
Each property page can show the school zones it sits in, and a commute or drive-time overlay against a location you care about — your work, a family member, whatever matters to you — next to nearby points of interest.
Saved searches and alerts
Save a search on your criteria and get notified when a new listing matches it, rather than re-running the same search manually every few days.
Sponsored
Open home calendar
Track open home times for the properties on your watchlist in one calendar, with a subscribable feed you can add to your own calendar app so open homes show up alongside everything else in your week.
Sharing a watchlist item
Buying a house is rarely a one-person decision. A watchlist item can be shared with a co-buyer, family member, or agent by link — they can see it without needing an OurHouse account of their own.
Agencies and agents
A directory of agencies and agents, alongside current mortgage rates, so the people and numbers relevant to your search are in the same place as everything else.
New to buying?
Read the step-by-step buying guide for how the whole process fits together, or browse the blog for deeper articles on specific topics like LIM reports and building inspections.