jojobooster

It has been a rollercoaster of a month.
We are in Titirangi in West Auckland. It seems to be raining constantly. The house we are renting is cold and damp. The kids are ill after one week in school ( with tonsillitis). We have had one house sale fall through because the roof was about to cave in and now another offer is looking dicey because the estate agent has been lying to us to get her fee increased and now that other people know that the house is on the market, the vendor is thinking of accepting another offer instead of ours!!


Aargghhhhhhhhhh!:curse:

Please someone, tell me it gets better. I am stuck at home with ailing children who just want to be at school and an absent OH who is usually either en route to Albany or back home from it.

Is it possible to actually buy a decent house here, do all estate agents lie, is it always this cold and wet????

On the plus point Laingholm school really is the best little school in the universe.

Am Loolah

No.

Sorry to hear it's been a bit of a struggle thus far. Bummer when the kids get sick but on the plus side you've obviously found a great school, that's half the battle won!

I'm nowhere near you but the weather has been pretty up and down here and we are meant to have sub-tropical? Tropical rain forest more like, well tonight anyway!

I'm sure things will get better for you, with the right attitude and the Kiwi can do thing you'll be sweet as before you know it!

Four weeks is nothing and it can be tough in the beginning. Karma for good luck to come your way!

TeamEmbo

What a miserable start to your new life, I'm sorry I don't live anywhere near you but if I did I'd pop round with tea/coffee and big wodges of chockie cake and sympathy!

Not all real estate agents lie. A lot 'bend the truth' and then a lot are genuine and helpful and do their best. Ours even lent us her washing machine, bed and lounge furniture as we moved in weeks before our container was due.

I was warned that October is a wet month - a bit like April showers? But we've had such a mild winter and some fantastic hot sunny days already here in Rangiora and, as Aucklanders keep telling everyone, Auckland has the best hot, sunny, tropical weather in the whole of NZ! So I'm sure it won't be long before you see long hot sunny days.

The houses can come as a bit of a shock but you do get used to it. We found a great house in the first week we arrived and moved in at the end of the second week. It was winter and the house has a log burner which is great but not quite as good as central heating! We couldn't/didn't use the rooms upstairs for ages as they were so cold. Then we had heat pumps put in and its been great since then.

Amazingly the kids never complained about being cold once - the joy of youth!

Hope your kids are soon on the mend and back at school and that all goes well with your house hunting.

Best wishes, Mandie xx

Avid

Probably not unless you have plenty of cash to spend , no....but they are commission driven, depends on where you've arrived from and what you are used to.

Hope that helps.


The first few weeks are meant to be the honeymoon phase, by the way...

whitesand

Why the rush to buy a place? Take your time - the place you like today might be the place you can't stand tomorrow! Have you travelled around Auckland yet, or have you settled on the first place to take your fancy?

Estate Agents here are under the impression that the Brits who come out are loaded with cash and will pay high prices. You must convince them otherwise. Yes, most of the houses are cold and damp and it rains a lot here. But, by living in Titirangi, you've also chosen one of the dampess places to live in Auckland. But, things have got to get better as you've found many of the negatives early on.

Good luck.

jojobooster

Thanks for all the replies; feeling abit better today after some sleep.

We did look at many areas in Auckland before we decided on Titirangi. OH had been out here before and preferred here to anywhere. We tried to like the North Shore but just couldn't. Titirangi just feels right ( and it's not raining today either) and more like the NZ we were expecting.

We must have seen about 50 houses, starting with the awful and slowly getting better. The one we have offered on is beautiful, neighbours a reserve and has room for visitors. I guess Iam being cynical about estate agents, it's just I have been told some cock and bull stories over the past few weeks. In fact I have found the British estate agents here to be much more ethical...must just know how we feel!

Hopefully things will look up.
I have found some positives too...school, bowls of coffee, friendly doctors, the peace, the library, car salesmen(!?), thermal spas, ease of getting a mortgage, free parking, the lovely lady we are staying with/renting from, the beaches. So it's not all bad!

jojobooster

Thanks for all the replies; feeling abit better today after some sleep.

We did look at many areas in Auckland before we decided on Titirangi. OH had been out here before and preferred here to anywhere. We tried to like the North Shore but just couldn't. Titirangi just feels right ( and it's not raining today either) and more like the NZ we were expecting.

We must have seen about 50 houses, starting with the awful and slowly getting better. The one we have offered on is beautiful, neighbours a reserve and has room for visitors. I guess Iam being cynical about estate agents, it's just I have been told some cock and bull stories over the past few weeks. In fact I have found the British estate agents here to be much more ethical...must just know how we feel!

Hopefully things will look up.
I have found some positives too...school, bowls of coffee, friendly doctors, the peace, the library, car salesmen(!?), thermal spas, ease of getting a mortgage, free parking, the lovely lady we are staying with/renting from, the beaches. So it's not all bad!

hubbard

Not always cold but Auckalnd is known as a location of heavy rainfall - has higher rainfall than London. Did you not look at some of the weather stats before moving there. It is definitely not a dry hot climate.

sarahw

I'd suggest renting for a bit longer to get a feel for what you want in a property but having said that a lot of rentals are really poorly maintained (even worse than the houses for sale!!).

If you can find an agent you trust (or something approximating that!) you can ask them to show you properties that someone else is listing and often they hear of properties before they come on the market. I've PM'd you the name of the agent we used in Mission Bay in case that's helpful.

Good luck.

Hoyo

If anyone wants a good, honest (as far as I can tell) agent in welly pm me. I will also tell you who to avoid!!

mickey_d

Well, it was last year until the New Year, but might be different this year

Batty

Hi. Sorry to hear you're having such a wet/cold time - it colours everything.

If you haven't got one (or two) already, get a dehumidifier. Unless you end up in a house with central heating you will need at least one anyway. If you run it even in the summer your house will never feel so cold - it's the damp air that makes it worse. We run two and I can't see that it makes much difference at all in the electricity costs - I only need to run a heater in our bedroom for an hour or so at night during the winter because the air is not damp. So, it's swings and roundabouts. The Warehouse sells them.

sarahlou2411

We arrived fours months ago and moved into a rented which was freezing cold all the time, the weather was pretty shocking and we were all fed up. Now in a cosy (if a little too big) rental, keeps warm okay and the weather is about to pick up any day soon!

Its easy to think what am I doing here??:curse:

Stick at it, its worth it and once yhe first few months have gone by you will be fine. Try and find someone on the forum local to you, for a coffee and a moan. Boopy was my angel and things very quickly got much better