Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Hi All

I have just joined on here, I have put my EOI in hopeful it should be fine as I have a job offer in Windy Welly, such a long process isnt it and not sure do I wait to sell/rent houses until I receive visa but if I do that may delay the process in me going.....so mnay questions on so many different topics, houses in new zealand, children and schools and settling in, furniture to ship over or not , what to do for first few months with no furniture can I hire in welly dosent seem much available any help really welcome

melamb

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Welcome to our wee NZ forum . As you will see I've moved your post out of the July leavers thread into a thread of it's own.

Hopefully a few folk will be along shortly to help with your queries.

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Shouldn't be a problem, we rented a whole heap of furniture and bits when we first arrived from DTR (www.dtr.co.nz/) and there is also Mr Rental (www.mrrental.co.nz/), you'll also be able to buy stuff from TradeMe as we did to see us through... There is a bit of difference in the areas in and around Wellington, so depends on what's important to you as to where you may want to base yourself...

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Ah thanks Simon, love your quote re taking a risk. I am a single mum with a seven year old boy so lots of criteria to consider. I have been looking to see what is available to rent furnished in Khandallah and some reports say Tawa has a good family community feel. My main priority will be for us to settle in and get my son settled at school with after care and for him to get some friends and try as quickly as poss to settle into a community, any thoughts re my suggestions re location ??? Any help would be really appreciated. When did you move over how do you find please tell all, many thanks Mel

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Hi Bev

There was a lady on here who was a fellow single mum who was looking to move to wellington this year i think, i was hoping to email her for a chat however apparently I cannot email individuals until I have had a certain amount of threads is that right? Thanks for your help

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

e moved over end of August 2007, and have to say we love it here... never been back, no current plans to go back. We've found the schools to be terrific in support of our son whom has aspergers and as such feel he has flourished, something we just couldn't see nor did see happening when in the UK. We live up the road in Whitby, but my son goes to college in Tawa. It's nice though there are some apparently areas to avoid as some areas apparently suffer a lot with dampness in the homes, so might be worth investigating/asking before renting. Rob Clubley if he gets on here will know better than me... But good schools in Tawa, don't know much about Khandallah, though i do know people who live there and they have no complaints...

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Yep we're in Tawa and we really like it. We've been in our house six years now :)
There are good schools. The area is nice and people are generally friendly, say hello in the street etc.
There are loads of houses to rent but be careful on location - for example there's one opposite us that's in a dip between two hills and hardly gets any sun, so I bet it's cold and damp and has high heating bills. It's amazing how much the amount of sun you get contributes to the comfort level of a wooden house!
Feel free to ask any questions or PM me. Happy to help. There's so much stuff that you need to learn quickly once you land here - where to get the stuff you need, which shops etc.
All we had sorted when we landed was a couple of nights booked in a hotel.

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Welcome to the forum Melamb! :D

We moved over here in January this year. A lot of where you live will depend on where you work and how far/long you want to commute to work. My husband works in the city and gets a 10 minute bus ride to work. We're renting and really struggled to find a property that would allow pets but it's much easier without pets. We also found that some places were recommended to us (by kiwis in the UK!) and when we viewed them they were on a steep hill or you had to walk up stairs to get in the front door - not ideal when you're pushing a buggy - generally it's wise to work out where the sun will come up/go down - it pays to have a bit of sun in your windows during the day in the winter to help warm it up. The hill opposite us doesn't get any sun ALL day even on a sunny day.

It pays to keep an eye on the website trademe for properties. In our experience (and we arrived at completely the wrong time because NZ pretty much closed down for our first 2 weeks here!) the letting agents have open days so you call to arrange a viewing and they tell you when they will be there so you just turn up - along with 20 other people. We didn't realise that we would then have to go through an application process. I don't know if it's the same for all letting agents but certainly the houses that we liked we applied for and they all had it. They'll give you an application when you've finished viewing, fill it in and hand it back. They'll ask for two references too - we had never rented a house before so ended up having to give employer references and the name of our letting agent in the UK who was renting out our house for us.

We also shipped ALL our belongings and I'm thankful that we did. I was tempted to sell everything before leaving the UK, including the house, but I'm so pleased that we didn't now.

Our container was delayed by a month so we ended up renting from Mr Rental (a sofa, a bed, a microwave and a tv - life's essentials! :rofl:). It was all delivered the next day and was in good condition. The service from them was great too. They are based in Wellington - we just called them and told them what we wanted instead of going in to the store. There is a shop called The Warehouse that we got ourselves some cheap kitchen utensils and bedding to keep us going until our container arrived.

Unfortunately I can't help with schools as our daughter is too young.

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Speak of the devil!!!

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

You can email via BE. No problemo. The private message facility is available after 3 legit posts are made.

Who is/was the user? It would be great if you two got to chat on the forum. :)

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Hi,
Just joined this forum myself. Been on the international forum for a while. Didn't know there was a dedicated British Ex Pat forum :D
Took a long time for us to get the PR visa's then just booked the flights to come regardless that I didn't have a job at the time.
Luckily I landed my perfect choice job 3 months before we were due to come out.
Moved to windy Welly in March but its not that windy. I think the name just comes from the fact there is always a breeze, not that you get blown about all the time.
Lived in Woburn, Lower Hutt for 8 weeks after we arrived in a holiday cottage - fully furnished. It was a bit dated and cold but after we bought a few cheap heaters off TradeMe we were fine as a temporary measure.
Shipped all our worldly goods over apart from cars and glad we did. Expensive process but luckily my new employer paid a lot towards our moving costs.
Furniture and white goods fairly expensive here, and bedding, curtains, ornaments etc for the house.
It took 12 weeks for the shipping container to arrive so a few weeks before we looked around for another longer term rental and secured a house in Churton Park which is a new sub-division between Tawa and Johnsonville.
Great place. Its one big new estate really with a new shopping centre (although not much there yet!!!) a brand new primary school which I have heard is good etc.
I'd recommend it as a place to live as well as Khandallah, Johnsonville or Tawa. Also Woburn in Lower Hutt was great.
All have easy access to trains for Wellington and Woburn had the advantage that we could walk 10 mins into the centre of Lower Hutt city which has a great shopping centre "Westfield Queensgate".

We rent our house out in the UK as the market was rubbish for selling and we are going to rent long term for a couple of years here then see how the UK market is at that time.
Want to buy here but need the capital out of the UK house for that.

I'd recommend renting fully furnished when you arrive until your stuff comes but if not you can rent furniture but I'd expect it to be expensive depending on the amount of furniture you need.

We are 13km from Wellingtom CBD and it takes me 15 mins in the car without any traffic on the state highway but regular trains from Johnsonville or Tawa straight into the thick of it.

We came here to find a better life for us and the toddler in the future and to have adventure in our lives plus the bonus was we left behind a load of bad memories over the last few years in the UK.

Good luck and ask any questions you like. Will try answer them.

Cheers

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Hi Melamb, I'm also in Welly, been here 6 years & love it :)

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

That gives it away that you have no idea. How long have you been here, 2 weeks?

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

It's not that windy!

Re: Moving to Welly - advice please.
 

Thank you all for your responses, I too have seen on here quite negative comments about people not being able to make friends thats easily etc, which wobbled me a little , hence why I feel its important to try to find an area with a nice community and schools. I have been looking at furnished houses as I dont think it will do much for my stress levels arriving in welly and having to rent somewhere with no creature comforts until our things arrive , not sure my 7 year old will be impressed either. Any help is appreciated so many thanks and look forward to receiving more!!!!