A Herald analysis goes inside $60 million of property trader sales to reveal the buy and sell prices from each of the 71 deals and the traders’ investment philosophy.
House hunter Sarah’s phone beeped every morning with a list of the latest South Auckland homes that had just gone on sale.
But in January four Hills Real Estate-listed homes looked strangely familiar.
“Didn’t they just sell at auction – we were there for it,” she said to herself.
Sarah
rewatched the January 29 auction on YouTube, and, sure enough, the Hills Real Estate team had bought and put the homes back on sale all within two days.
She soon found Hills-linked property traders had bought and sold dozens of South Auckland homes in 2024 that she had also been interested in.
The traders’ goal is to buy and on-sell the homes as quickly as possible at prices tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars higher.
Sarah fears it artificially drives house prices up.
She’s not alone. Two South Auckland first-home buyers told the Herald in 2021 it had been “heartbreaking” to watch a Hills Real Estate-linked trader relist homes they tried to buy for prices up to $100,000 higher.
Rickhil Prakash, director of Hills Real Estate and previously named as one of New Zealand’s biggest property traders, replied that his team were not pushing prices up.
He said trading was a risky business and his team ran a constant danger of making a loss if they couldn’t resell the homes for higher prices.
Hills’ customers have also told the Herald they bought flipped homes from the agency and are happy with the service it gave them.
Many smaller property investors also view traders positively, believing them to be among the industry’s elite deal makers with a wealth of knowledge that can be shared.
The differing opinions led the Herald to peer behind the curtain of 71 deals done by Hills Real Estate-linked property traders in recent years.
We used public records and a list of sold homes from the agency’s website to estimate the gains or losses on each deal.
Millions in flipped capital gains
Hills-linked property traders made an estimated $5.4 million capital gain buying and selling 71 homes in recent years at an average of $76,242 per property, the Herald’s analysis has found.
The homes were mostly bought and sold in 2021 and 2024.
That indicates the traders were active during the booming Covid-housing market, before they stepped away in 2022 and 2023, and then jumped back into the market last year.
In total across the 71 deals, the traders bought homes for an estimated $54m and resold them for just under $60m.
They successfully resold 61 of the homes for a capital gain, while making losses on 10.
The biggest estimated capital gain was $307,174 in 2021 on a Randwick Park home at 78 Hyperion Drive, while the biggest loss was $66,087 on 12 Pesaro Pl in Clover Park also in 2021.
The 71 deals include an estimated $1.7m capital gain in 2024 after the traders bought just over $20m worth of homes and resold them for about $22m.
The deals also reveal a changing trading pattern.
Homes flipped in 2021 mostly passed through the ownership of one trading company called Akrish Properties Limited.
Prakash was listed as that company’s director. It has since been placed into liquidation, with Inland Revenue claiming the company owes $1.8m in taxes.
Prakash told the Herald the liquidation was caused by a change in the market and there was no risk of this happening with his other companies.
Homes flipped in 2024, however, have typically been bought by a network of traders working together to put up the purchase costs and share in the profits.
The capital gains are estimates only
It is important to note the Herald’s analysis is a best estimate based on public records.
It is not intended as a definitive statement on the traders’ total gains, profits or financial position.
These 71 properties were chosen because it’s been possible to confirm they were flipped by Hills-linked traders.
Each has previously been listed for sale on the Hills Real Estate website and each has passed through ownership of a company with a Hills real estate agent as its director.
However, these 71 properties are not a complete list – the Hills’ traders have also been involved in other deals.
The public records also might not capture the full information or rationale behind every deal.
The homes could have been sold as part of a larger deal involving multiple properties, while off-market prices paid to developers for newbuilds might not be included.
The estimated gains also do not include all the taxes and costs incurred, nor do they show how profits are divided between investors.
Hills’ trading philosophy
Prakash told the Herald property trading is a “very risky” business he doesn’t readily recommend to others.
Knowledge of the South Auckland market, relationships with real estate agents to help identify home sellers and buyers, and moving fast are all keys to successful deals.
The aim is to buy the right homes – typically at prices under $1m – and then quickly find a new buyer for them before the settlement date arrives.
Selling before settlement means traders typically only put up a deposit, without also paying so-called holding costs, such as interest rates on a mortgage.
Back in 2021, it was easier to use this technique to net a profit because Auckland house prices were skyrocketing.
However, making a profit in 2024 and early 2025, when prices have been growing much slower or have remained flat, has been much harder, Prakash said.
Prakash and fellow Hills Real Estate agents Artika Prakash and Vashneel Prasad subsequently changed their trading philosophy in 2024.
That involved teaming up with other investors in a type of trading ecosystem.
The other investors typically put up the initial investment costs, such as deposits for purchases, Prakash said.
In return, the Hills team identifies which properties to buy and then pays the investors a guaranteed return or margin based on the capital gains, he said.
“We give them good margins, and we have agreements so it’s no risk for our investors,” he said.
Sometimes, it’s not possible to on-sell the homes before the settlement date – which is often about three months long – arrives.
That typically leads the traders to pass ownership of the home to another investor, who takes out a mortgage on the property.
That investor then holds the home until the Hills traders can find an end buyer.
The Hills team has to in turn pay a substantial fee to the investor for this service, Prakash said.
“Once that happens, it’s a big loss, they will say: ‘Hey, give us $10,000-$20,000 a month just for holding,” Prakash said.
The deals can also become complicated.
Some of the flipped homes analysed by the Herald involved trading companies selling the same property to each other up to nine times in quick succession – sometimes on the same day.
Prakash said the rapid sales and change of ownership was a way to divide the gains between the investors.
Overall, trading in 2024 had proven difficult and a trader “should be happy” if they make $10,000 or $20,000 after all the costs, he said.
“Rewards are small after [the] agents’ fee, legal fee and after tax,” he said.
“You can lose lots of money if you don’t know the market and network.”
While he didn’t recommend trading’s high stakes, he was willing to work with and pass on his knowledge to others, he said.
“Sharing is caring,” he said.
Happy customers?
Prakash disputed claims his team pushed house prices up.
Successful flipping required that he find bargains at the “right price” and then sell them at “market price”, he said.
“We only sell what it’s worth, we can’t sell higher than market price,” he said.
Those that buy from Hills know they are buying at market price because their banks make them get independent valuations before granting them a mortgage, he said.
His team always tell – both those they buy from and those they sell to – that their aim is to onsell or flip the homes, he said.
Hills’ traders also often take on the most risk in a flip, he claimed.
That’s because they regularly buy unconditionally at auction.
Yet when they on-sell, the next buyer nearly always signs a conditional purchase agreement that is dependent on the home being given a green light from pre-purchase building and toxicology reports.
He pointed to one recent purchase where a home was only found to be contaminated and have building issues as a result of the next buyer’s pre-purchase reports.
Both the seller and the buyer were the winners from that transaction, Prakash said.
“Losing side here is us because we have to clean someone else’s mess” before selling it, he said.
Some families who bought flipped homes from the Hills Real Estate team also told the Herald they were happy.
Some had sold older homes to Hills in return for getting a “good” price to buy a newbuild from the company’s trading team.
Others said Hills’ access to a wide variety of homes and network of real estate agents helped them find the perfect property.
They also said Hills openly told them that its team had recently bought the home and what price they paid for it.
Regulator’s response
Real Estate Authority chief executive Belinda Moffat said there was nothing preventing a real estate agent from acting as a property investor or trader, as long as they met certain conditions.
“While on-selling of properties within a short timeframe is not inherently unlawful … [the] REA may have an interest in whether any licensed real estate professionals (licensees) involved in such transactions are meeting their regulatory conduct obligations,” Moffat said.
“Such obligations may include disclosure of information about the property that should in fairness be disclosed to the parties, and disclosure of any defects in the property.
She said other issues could also arise, “including compliance with tax legislation and fair trading requirements, which may be addressed by the Inland Revenue Department, and Commerce Commission respectively”.
However, home buyer Sarah remains unconvinced about the traders’ actions.
She said she’d spent four months hunting for a house and she believed the volume of flipped house deals was messing with prices.
“It’s difficult to trust real estate agents anyway,” she said.
“And this is just adding to the stress of buying a property.”
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