Genesis

I never thought of it but the way your house is positioned will make a BIG impact on your life. Fortunately I bought a house that was facing the 'right' way and it gets all day sun on the living areas. Alas the downstairs is quite cold in the winter as the bedroom area (all downstairs) gets little or no sun..a boon in the heat of the summer however. I have a mate whos domicile is the wrong way round..way too hot bedrooms and cold living area. His house was moved there and little thought given to the north/south aspect..here in NZ its all best to be north facing whereas in the Uk everyone wants south facing aspects.

I just fell in love with the place and thought little of practicalities. This can have dire consequences. I wish someone had tapped me on the shoulder and sugget I think about things. Anyways we have sorted all the issues that needed addressing and fortunately they were all 'dooable'. Moving your house round the right way is not!!

Think of the street. Whats the traffic like at different times of the day. What with all the hoons in NZ I would STRONGLY recommend you find your new home to buy or rent in a cul de sac. We live off 3 of them, deep in an established estate. Bloody marvellous as the only people who drive here live here. The latter is worth its weight in gold and provides us a safe and quiet neighbourhood. Cul de sacs are also apparently LESS likely to be burgled as theres only one way in and one way out. However burglaries still occur but less of them..way less. Car crime is also lessened. There are no people just passing thru' either which cuts down on opportunist crime. One hopes those that you live amongst will not be turning your motor over..but that happens too!!!

Anyone got any other ideas about what to think about when buying or renting??

Browner_

Not just IN a cul-de-sac, you have to be right down the end.

NZ's have an incredible,and apparently insatiable desire,to drive vehicles which to European ears have no exhaust pipe.

I live in a cul-de-sac but all too frequently am buzzed by our neighbours and their ridiculously noisy cars. If you did that in England, your car wouldnt be there in the morning, not in one piece anyway.

P2L

If in a rental, make sure that the rent includes rates and water.

Also VERY IMPORTANT that you ensure you do a thorough check of the property when you get the keys and write even the smallest fault on your inventory, give a copy to the property manager and keep a copy for you If necessary take photos as back up, saves lots of problems further down the line

P2L

Another valuable piece of advise for those with kids; choose the school first and then find the house. Lots of schools require you to be 'in the zone' in order for your kids to enrol.

This applies to buyers and rentals

steelblue

Hi Genesis, You mention 'hoons' .....? What are these weird creatures??

Kimi-Deacon

They are the wallys that drive round Norwich doing circuits in a Vauxhall Corsa.

Genesis

Uk version of 'twat' or 'tosser' methinks. Think of nothing but the size of their waste gates that make the car go 'whoosh' everytime the knobs change gear. Very noisy and drink too much, set fire to sofas in the street (when not in said vehicles going 'whoosh') and occasionaly riot with boys in blue if terribly bored. Motor cars optional whilst rioting. Fortunately I live up a sodding big hill, off three cul de sacs. They would not have suffecient cerebral power to extracate themselves from the depth of my neighbourhood.


Which is nice.

Jokerman

Don't buy a house for the first 6-12 months. Kiwis have an amazing knack of seperating a cashed-up Brit from his hard-earned.

Renting : try and rent in Winter if you can, then you will see the shed in all it's glory.

Basically, there are some dodgy landlords around. Be careful about the inventory, if possible take a video of the house before you sign anything so that when you move out the landlord won't say "That mark on the carpet wasn't there when you moved in".

Gill and Rob

Great advice.
We have been in our home over 5 years. Bought it within a week of arriving and fortunately it has made great capital gains. However next time we move... thinking about next year......... I have a great list of wants. One of the priorities in buying this house (and we only looked at 5 houses) was plenty of bedrooms, second lounge and a big garden. We have made improvements in decorating and heating the house. While I loved open plan originally it has its own problems, heating, keeping kitchen tidy etc. so hopefully open plan will be out next time. And the biggy..... A SMALLER GARDEN... everything here grows twice as big twice and twice as fast and keeping up with the gardening is like trying to paint the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Next house...... small garden. The joys of a garden were short lived
Cheers Gill

mickey_d

Find out if the Landlord has any plans to do any major work to the property while you are a Tenant, i.e. Sub-Division, new roof etc. Whatever the answer, yes or no, get it put down in writing. We had major grief when we rented with our Landlord deciding to Sub-Divide halfway through our year

thesixss

For us there are two things critical. Do not buy in your first year and make sure you rent a sunny house with some heating. Will be well worth it!

Genesis

We bought ours within 4 days of arriving...it was a moment of madness coupled with the place being my dream home. We have not made ANY capital gain, I would say the house owes us money..lots of it. We have done endless upgrades BUT we are so happy here..home ownership to me is not about its value ( I care not of the value of my house as I don't want to sell it..the day I do then I'll worry about it !!). But even if I had to sell tomorrow and take a loss I have had 3.5 WONDERFUL years in a place that no other house ever has given me sooooooooooooooo much happiness!!!

And how lucky was it that it was facing the right way?? I didn't have a clue. I just wanted the keys..I get VERY emotional about houses..VERY!!!!!!! And I still am about this one..even though its build quality is nothing like that of Victorian stock which was what we are used to.

Am Loolah

We bought in 6 weeks - something to bear in mind if you are arriving with pets - renting can be tricky. With 4 kids and 2 dobermans we wanted a place to call our own as soon as feasible.

We bought in a cul de sac - which we didn't think about at the time, but is fantastic as the kids can play out with 40 other kids safely - so that is a good point.

With the property downturn ours is probably not worth what we paid for it now either - but like Genesis this is irrelevant to us as we don't intend to sell in this market.

And do doubt this home will be like the one we sold in the UK - gorgeous when we moved in, trashed whilst we lived in it - never looked better than when we left it and it was on the market! That's life with little ones! Home sweet home ...

Kiwiprincess

Don't buy a house with a swimming pool until you know the work that goes into cleaning and maintaining it.

Then, if you still want a swimming pool - go ahead.

lardyl

Better idea is to rent next door to someone with a pool and be very nice to them - we gave our new neighbours a home-made cake and some wine when they moved in - got some awesome party invites afterwards....not that we were fisihing for that when they arrived but it was nice to be in an indoor pool with beer and food laid on by a professional Kiwi grocer on Boxing Day

Might be an idea to use the Google Maps feature to check out the potential properties from the air to see how many pools are around, I know several Kiwis I worked with who did this when they were looking to move house.......not my idea, theirs......