Lazy Days

Posted on Sunday 22 April 2007 at 07:42 - Post Comment

For us now, things are starting to settle down here in our city centre flat.  Toni is looking at starting up as a Tupperware Lady, and we had her 'I'm Into Tupperware!' party last Wednesday.  It went really well, with around 8 ladies along to check out the latest in plastic fantastic.  It was also a great way to have a bit of a flat warming, so all in all a great evening.

This weekend has been as lazy as can be, with Toni and I spending most of it either in bed, or tucked under duvet's in the lounge.  For a flat with no central heating, the Autumn weather is starting to bite and it's getting to be chilly in here all the time.  I don't know how the Kiwi's do it, but many say that they don't miss what they've never had - and Central Heating is certainly one of those things!  Even brand new houses only have a heat pump (reverse air-con unit) you can believe that we are putting in some real research into having Central Heating fitted to our new home regardless of how much it is.

Talking of houses, seeing as we are nosy people we went out to our estate in Rolleston to see a couple of open homes there.  Both houses we visited were slightly larger than ours in floor space, and on similar size or smaller sized sections.  They were both really nice - one of them was had a massive living area, and 3 of the bedrooms had doors opening onto the rear garden.  Nice!  Seemed almost like a motel though, it was that big.  The second was nice enough, but the finish wasn't that great, and the layout not to our taste.

However - the real reason for us taking a sneaky peek.  Well MONEY of course!  Both were up for sale for well over $600k, and we wanted to know why.  After all, it would have cost them a lot less than $500k to build either.  If we could pick up on any sneaky tips to build value into ours, then so much the better.

Well, you know what?  They both were either of a similar or lower spec than ours, and considering that if they sell within $20k of the asking price, then once finished ours will be in the same margin - and this can only be a good thing!!!  Whilst we were wandering the area, we also dropped into a random open home, and who should be running it but our Real Estate Agent Colin Lock.  It was great to catch up with him, and he told us that we had done great on our section already as the only other resale section on Kajens was a 2000 square metre one and it sold straight off for $195k.  Meaning we've got appx $20k equity in the land already.  YAY!   A great call from the Tonster in pushing forward the purchase, and not a bad investment at all with $10k a month return! 

On the way out to rolleston we stopped off at what is now 'our' butcher.   Cheaper by far then the supermarkets, in typical over the top Kiwi fashion it is called:

and anywhere that has a meat product for sale called:

Gets my vote! (This is especially for the Vann-Plapperts! The Plaps with the Flaps!)