Or not nearly enough.

Things that worried me most about Canada (when I lived there) was that a house is not a prticularly good investment. For 200k Sterling you will get a house made of
wood and plastic. You are lucky if you have a copncrete basement.What are houses like in NZ and Australia?

We lived in Melbourne from July 1997 to January 2000. We rented in a suburb that was 9 km from the centre of the city. In a city of 3.5 million people, it was considered to be quite a close-in suburb. The vast majority of the houses in the neighbourhood, including ours, were made of brick. We noticed that new houses that were being constructed on the far outer edges of Melbourne were being made of wood.

I suppose that our Melbourne house, being made of brick, might have been more durable than a wooden house. It had its own problems, however. Its insulation must have been somewhere between poor and non-existent. It got uncomfortably hot in summer and cold in winter. The house nominally had both air conditioning and forced air central heating systems, but neither of them was up to the task. Even when they were turned up full blast, the interior of the house did not reach comfortable temperatures on colder winter days and hotter summer days.

When I say the house didn't reach comfortable temperatures, I mean that we would dress in Canadian autumn outdoor gear while we were inside our Melbourne house in winter. And that was during the day. And it was in a location in which the outdoor temperature never dropped to freezing (although it did drop into the low single digits Celsius).

That said, I loved Melbourne. It was a wonderful place in which to live from social, cultural and many other points of view.

If you have family members in the UK, the one disadvantage of living in the southern hemisphere is that your seasons, and hence your children's school holidays, are out of synch with those of your UK family members. Most of my husband's and my families are in South Africa, so we have experienced decades of being out of synch. It is an inconvenience. It's not an insurmountable problem, and on its own I don't consider it to be a deal-breaker. If it were a deal-breaker we wouldn't have lived in Canada for most of the time since 1977.

The other disadvantage of Australia / New Zealand is that the distance from there to the UK is greater than the distance from Canada to the UK. Hence air travel takes longer and is more expensive. That also has been a challenge for us with respect to South Africa. But I'm sure you know about the distance / cost thing already.

Anyway, if you are toying with the idea of Australia, my opinion is that the place has a great deal to commend it, and it's certainly worth further research. I have not been to New Zealand. I have heard some very good things about it, and also a couple of negatives. I would say it too merits research.

Back to your question about houses in Australia and New Zealand, I imagine you would find more posters who were knowledgeable about that topic on the Oz and Kiwi forums.

Good luck with your decision.

So if it is made of brick it is a better investment. How?

You spend 200k sterling in the UK and get a house made of clay, cement and plastic. And for the most part you don't even get a basement concrete or not.

It is all in how you look at it.

It sounds more like you never made the adjustment to Canadian thinking.

You buy a property then you sell it for a profit good investment. Yes?
Paid 107k Canadian for mine it's currently worth 250k not a bad return if I were to sell.

That seems to be the way things go here in Canada just as it does anywhere else.

I've put a lot of thought into this same subject, and done a lot of research. Frankly, both countries offer a similar financial advantage relative to the UK, so the only real differences are things like climate and leisure time. Unless you own your own company you'll more than likely get twice as much annual leave in Australia than Canada, but the weather there can get a little repetitive.

Your choice.

Personally, I'd go where the best employment chances are within your field. Nothing as important as a good job.

T.

Are you trying to cause trouble again!

Are you talking to me Miss Sandy Buckets?

Hi there

I was born in the UK, left in 1967 for Johannesburg, South Africa. Lived there for +30 years. Chose Calgary, Alberta, Canada 6 years ago as our FINAL destination country to live in.

As you can see, I am a seasoned immigrant!

Why Calgary? - Alberta is BOOMING! Unemployment is at rock bottom percentage. People are ultra friendly. It's cosmopolitan and relatively small as some cities go with 1 million people.

Negatives - all depends on attitudes. If you're generally happy with your decision to immigrate at all then you'll settle anywhere. Nowhere on this earth will you find utopia, it just does not exist...

The only thing that I can think of that could be a negative issue in Calgary is our harsh, long winters BUT life is what you make of it. There are so many winter sports to get involved in and it really is unnecessary to become a couch potato. Many Calgarians holiday during winter time in warmer climes.

Sorry haven't been to Oz, so can't comment.

Good luck in your decision. Hope I've been at least a little helpful.

If bears bother you, have you not thought of the fact that Oz has more deadly snake and insect species than anywhere else on the planet???
Here here...i would rather be face to face with a grizzly bear anyday

And regarding employment chances, the anecdotal experience of UK migrants has been that it's easier (not always easy) to get British qualifications and work experience accepted in Australia compared to Canada.



Jeremy

Snakes in OZ only kill 2 or 3 people a year compared to 15 people a year in the USA and Spiders have only killed 3 people in OZ's 200 year history. Snakes only bite in self defence, almost all the people bitten by them were bitten because they either stepped on them, tried to pick them up or kill them.
Most people bitten by snakes survive, If your bitten by a snake you usually have enough time to go to hospital for a shot of anti-venom and your as good as new, if a bear bites your arm off or tears your stomach open your dead in 5 minutes.
Dangerous animals are no reason not to immigrate to either Canada or OZ your more likely to be hit by a bus crossing to road in either country.

Absolutely right! When I lived in Canada I found it amazing that one needs to take exams and training at huge expense even to a Nanny or work in a library.
The emphasis is definitely to fleece immigrants of their money before letting them do any medium level job.I am an engineer and found a job in Calgary through some luck but my British qualifications weren't even looked at. I knew some British immigrants who had considerable experience in accountancy who also found it difficult to find a job in Western Canada. When they did eventually they told me that Canadian Accountancy practice lagged behind Britain some 3-4 years. But the most astonishing example of this was a fella from Manchester who had been a British born and qualified Teacher of English with 8 years experience in U.K. who for many years could not find a job in Vancouver even though the schools around him had vacancies. Because his qualifications were deemed not Canadian enough. This I found surprising because in general level of teaching of English in Western Canada did not seem to me any higher than in England. Eventually this guy had to settle for a job as a PE teacher because they told him he had to start from the bottom and work his way up.
Whilst at the same time English in many schools out there could be taught by foreign nationals who spoke English as second language.

Do you have a Washington or Sydney Accord accredited degree? If so then the Canadian engineering authorities are *obliged* to consider it and if they don't you can report them to the Engineering Council UK as a breach of the Accords.


Jeremy

One of the biggest problems in Alberta and probably the rest of Canada is that engineering jobs for the more senior positions in which you have a supervisory role require you to have PE status otherwise you cannot legally sign off documents, etc. The acceptablity of your Engineering qualifications from my perspective appears to then only impact on how long it is going to get the PE status.

The problem with many engineering jobs is that they are "Needed Now". So the main downer for an engineer seeking a job is that you are probably going to need to get an entry level position to begin with, since your employers can't wait for you to get the PE status. At that level you are competing with all the new graduates, etc. Unless you have very specific skills that a company sees a long term requirement for, it's going to be tough.

However, it's not all bad news for engineers. Once you get a job, as long as you came here with good experience you only need about a year under the supervision of a local PE before you can apply for the status yourself. The only hurdle is a professional work practice and ethics exam. Compared to the problems other professions have, engineers get off very lightly

What a house is made of doesn't determine it's investment potential.

The house we bought in Calgary (made of concrete and wood) last August has just been valued at about 25% more than we paid for it. And we paid quite a bit for it.

Meanwhile the house we sold in the UK (made of brick) in June 2004 has reduced in value by about 12% according to land registry records.