Kotare

:-) :-)

Bo-Jangles

Because Auckland is NOTHING like London in any way shape or form, we don't have rental properties of the ilk of Kensington, Belgrave Square or Chelsea that will wildly skew the average costs of rents. We don't have eleven million people, higher end supermarkets like Waitrose, or Bond Street shops, or Harrods or any multitudes of fancy pants shops or restaurants either that all go a long way to make average prices in London a whole lot of schmaverage that in no way reflect the living expenses or cost of living for the masses of working class, normal everyday folks of the type that emigrate to NZ.

You know like everyday ordinary folks that go to work and don't have mummy and daddy give them an allowance, we don't have Michelin starred restaurants, multitudes of City bankers, or billionaires or super rich folks that hang out in the West End, Park Lane and Mayfair and of course you won't see too many of the UKs upper crust and rich folks making a beeline to here either.

The best we can manage is to have Kim.Dotcom resting here for a while but even he has limited access to his funds but still manages to rent the most expensive house in the country, there's not really a great deal for them here to buy other than farm land and beachfront properties to buy. LOL

Kotare

Depends if you are talking City of London (which you appear to be) or Greater London which has some of the most deprived areas in UK.

garethwm

The thing about Auckland is that while houses are expensive to buy, they are not expensive to rent, by international standards and in comparison to their value. And that goes for commercial property as well.

fourseasons

Agree Bo-Jangles Auckland is nothing like London and anyone who has lived in/been to both cities knows this. It's not just about big houses, city bankers etc either. It's about normal people who have jumped through hoops to get to NZ and are not expecting their standard of living to fall.

The facts are that there is little choice in Auckland, the shopping is very limited, boring and overpriced. If you have loads of money you'll be ok - you can fly to Australia.

Food is not only more expensive but generally of much poorer quality. I don't want to drive to another suburb to find onions at 99c a kilo, I want decent quality and reasonable prices in one place. Cheese is a good example of the quality issue - poor quality unless you spend big on the boutique brands and even those aren't much cop compared to what is available in Europe.

I'm going to sound like a broken record here but the majority of people arriving from the UK come from good jobs, nice homes and are used to a decent lifestyle. They don't come from deprived areas. The standard of housing is a shock, renting may be cheaper than London but who cares when you're wiping mould off the walls and walking around with a blanket around you in the middle of the day.

Hazelnut

I guess this ties in a little with what FourSeasons says. We're relatively well off at the moment in the UK so tend to buy specialty cheese like good quality Edam, Red Leicester, mature proper cheddar (not plastic cheddar). One of our favourite places we stayed was a B&B where the householder had a jersey cow and made her own, specialty cheeses. We were in heaven with a smörgåsbord of crackers and cheese types but I doubt it's something we could afford in NZ in the same volume as we eat in the UK.

On the whole we did some sample shops when over and I've done some since. We couldn't eat the same in NZ as we do here but that's part of wanting a change. If we slightly alter what we eat and how we prepare it we reckon food bills could be equivalent with only a small drop in standard but we don't have children to feed and, apart from discussions over amount of meat, we aren't that fussy. That makes a big difference.

I've just done a quick comparison on numbeo for the city we live close to now (quite economically deprived in UK terms and with half the population of Auckland but treble that of where we're hopefully moving to) and the city where MrH has been offered a job. It reckons we need roughly 10% more income in NZ than in the UK.

Parnell

Commercial property I have found more expensive than Melbourne & Sydney

Nurse_Abi

Talking of cheese... when I was last there I managed to spend $140 on 5 small cheeses and a few chutneys! I nearly fainted but being Bristish was too embarrassed to ask them to put it back! This was a deli in Posonby though so I should have known better!