Expat Kiwi

I agree with you, renting has to be the better option, especially during the present financial climate. That ability to just walk away from a property at the end of a lease, or at a few weeks notice, is very convenient. If for instance you loose your job or have to move to take up a new position there's no months of torture waiting for the house to sell and then for less than you'd hoped for.

My other concern is that the property market is very dependent on immigration creating demand, and with no end in sight to falling immigration numbers house prices are likely to keep on falling as demand decreases. People may not remember how difficult the property market was years ago when houses took years and not months to sell, I fear it is returning to that state now.

Immigration also has implications for the wider economy too, it has always been buoyant during periods of high immigration as the country cannot only rely on tourism and dairy exports. It becomes a vicious circle as more and more NZ'ers and immigrants sell up and leave for Australia, Europe and elsewhere.

In summary, it's not a good time to be buying property.

Genesis

Can I say though on the plus side that we bought what was/is a classic leaky home. But it does not leak. Some don't, fortunately this is one of the 20 out of every 100 that is dry. I had it inspected when I bought it but it was a very cursory inspection and the inspector turned out to be very, very tame and was looking after the realtor infact. Anyways I have worried for many a year about this place and have had the odd leak due to guttering issues and downpipes (all easily sorted and no furtehr issues). I finally decided a few months ago to do invasive testing at key high risk leaky points in the house and have found all the areas (about 20 of them) to be bone dry rot free and like new.

The home was comissioned by a woman in 1990 and her brother was the builder..one imagines it would have been well done eh? So while all that glitters ain't gold by the same token not all classic leaky homes leak. I have done huge research on this issue and accept that as far as selling the place goes that will always be a big headache as 'if it looks like a leaker it will be a leaker!!'

That said one imagines that come 35 years when we are ready to move on or have gone to the big upstairs there will be some confidence in the home given that we lived in in for 35 years and after 50 odd years it is still dry and upright it may have earned its right to be considered 'unleaky'. either way chez Genesis is not a bad place to be stuck

pricklykina

We bought last year and tbh doesn't worry us that we bought on a downward trend. This was the time that we would be able to buy. We had a deposit and were ready to go. I want to have this beast paid off before we retire so we figured that we better get onto it soon.

So we did

For us, buying at the bottom of the market we figure "how far could it really drop'. Maybe naive but for us it's the right thing to do. We don't plan to sell or remortgage. Well saying that we're not in the college zone that we'd like to be in so will consider moving in four years but it's not essential. Worst case scenario we could pay for a private education.

We had put it off for so long that sure we may have paid a bit more than we could have but we're happy and we can afford it with the low rates

Our house was 360k in Auckland city which is a steal really

zaras dad

Not on North Shore Auckland.

DennisBergkamp

What is a Leaky home?
I always hear about these. Have they got dodgy roofs?

Bo-Jangles

Mostly due to dodgy walls! Google 'leaky homes Auckland' and you will get a million responses.

The Barfoot and Thompson sales report out today says the Auckland property market for July 10 was 'stuck in neutral' and is not painting a picture of the doom and gloom mentioned in this thread.

They say however that rental prices are increasing and have reached an all time high, $20 per week more than this time last year.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10663519

pricklykina

If barfoot & thompson say that we're in neutral then we're definitely in trouble. They have managed to talk up the market all through the recession. This is the first that I have heard them not be positive...eek

Mrs Pointer

This thread has cheered me up. We have just found out the value of our UK house

Way they describe it over here, remember that you are selling low but also buying low - it's all relative.

My fear was that wouldn't translate to NZ, but maybe it will.

Only the small issue of selling our house and finding jobs.

whitesand

Estate agents may be pushing up rental prices but these over-priced rentals are still on the market weeks after they are advertised. Folks know when a rental is not worth the money. It's a myth that folks will rent anything when they can't afford to buy. Instead, they become even more selective and will think of alternatives like moving back with parents or doubling up. Where we live on the North Shore there are masses of properties still unsold after months, and many rentals still untaken.

Expat Kiwi

I agree with you, people will go live back home. I think there's definitely an oversupply of rentals on the market - rental demand in NZ is also driven by immigration.

I googled leaky homes auckland but found a better link through leaky homes zealand - NZ now has its own wikipedia page for this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_homes_crisis

squarepants

Some short term rentals include power and internet, but the weekly rate is more expensive. We're in an unfurnished 4 bed brick and tile, the L/L pays the rates and we pay the water rates, usually about $15 per month.

Someone on here said that all that glitters isn't gold with regard to the houses - this is very true. Our biggest financial drain in the winter has been the cost of heating water (because the tank is over 20 years old and inefficient) and the cost of heating the house. Although the house looks new by UK standards, the build quality is shocking and there is no insulation at all, we've purchased lagging for pipes and the hot water tank - although there's a govt grant to contribute toward insulating and low cost heating - a lot of landlords out here have no interest in spending money on a property that they can't recover through rent.

We're staying put because we like the area and the cost of moving would negate any future savings (we've unloaded a 40ft container into this house), but if we were forced to move and looking again - we'd be grilling the agent about the insulation and heating.

If this house was insulated and had a wet back (pretty common over here) it would have saved us over $1000 so far this winter.

It's been a very valuable experience and totally challenged what we thought we wanted.

Toon_Nut

Eh?

Genesis

A wet back refers to your log burner. This article is most important to many kiwis as it is the single source of their heat within their shed. Some have heat transfer kits that takes the heat from the log burner that will be in the lounge and moves it to the icy cold parts of said shed. A wet back is a log burner that has piping circulating water to the rear of the log burner which is heated and then moved to a hot water tank. Hence the term 'wet back'. Our shed was very, very cold and damp when we moved in..alas dampness is omnipresent in many houses in NZ, not because they all leak (some do aswell which adds to the problem) but because of a number of varying factors. In the main dampness will come from within rather than coming from the outside.

Thus we embarked upon euro C/H and a bank of dehumidifiers to take the damp out of the interior. Did you know the average home will spew 30 litres of water into the home from cooking, washing and the worst one us breathing? Add that to NZ's fairly moist air and you have one damp mother. Unless you take proactive measures (like proper heating and dehumidification measures) your house will be cold and damp. We also added double glazing and that foul condensation thing is now a thing of the past. Which is nice.

danjones1

The houses only go up comment was somewhat tinged with sarcasm.

Anyway what people tend to overlook is that over 25 years you will pay somewhere around 80k in interest (dead money) on a 100k mortgage.

Yes you have a house at the end but you will also have 25 years of fees, maintenance, mobility issues, insurance etc etc

That extra 80k interest that you have to pay could be saved if renting and invested and you'd be better off at the end renting.

This is the modern day reality, house prices are never going to surge like they did in the last decade in our lifetimes in UK, NZ or OZ so the argument about increased equity is dead in the water, if you plan to buy from now on....

whitesand

Well said!