Hazelnut

Over here I can type postcodes into a couple of web sites and see what has been sold in that area and for how much, going back quite a few years now. Is there an equivalent for NZ?

I don't want to compare to UK at all but I'm trying to gain an idea of how much houses actually sell for compared to what they were advertised for, especially when so many are now, 'Price by how much we think you look able and gullible enough to pay'.

Did see my dream home on Trademe today, it's only 30% more than our maximum, potential budget

Catchafire

http://www.qv.co.nz/

MrsFychan

mosts of the adverts on trademe have recent sold houses in the area down the bottom of the page when you click on houses you want to view.
QV site you have to pay.
Our estate agent did a print out for us on houses sold in the area we were looking so maybe ask them for one

jjg

http://www.infolink.harcourts.net

Shows Harcourt sales.

Mark Smith

Cheers, jjg a great link. Very useful to have a snoop around the neighbourhood.

bearskin

I was just looking at the Property Press for the North Shore (Auckland) and I was surprised at how many places there were for sale just now - the Winter drought seems to be over... But, hardly an actual price to be seen on any of them. Looks like everything is just going to auction now.
Discussions with friends recently also revealed that the house in front of them was up for auction, but they got an acceptable pre-auction offer of $695K, so the auction was brought forward, and 'other interested parties invited'. It then sold under the hammer. (for $790K lol)

BEVS

Gazumping.

bearskin

I do agree with you there, but the way it works is that the seller has an acceptable offer, yet has to, by law, have an auction anyway. If there are other people want to buy as much as Buyer 1, then it's game on. Have seen some emotions riding high at auctions...

Hazelnut

Thanks for the links. Im gaining the impressiong that, twelve months ago, our absolute maximum $600k would have bought us four hectares and left us the money to build a modern, single storey home for two adults and pony facilities. Even then it was only in certain areas. I'm now not sure that we can afford that anywhere other than very remote places where there's no work

We're still coming over fact finding but we only have four years before we're too old and I don't think the housing bubble will burst and reduce in that timescale. Need to have some detailed conversations with estate agents when we're over and go to a couple of auctions I think.

Catchafire

Plenty of scope in the top of the South Island with that budget. We are on the look out as well, seen some 6+ hectare blocks 15mins from Blenheim. Wife is horse mad as well.

Bellasmum

Try this link

https://www.reinz.co.nz/reinz/public...stics_home.cfm

Search function for GV, rates etc of properties in the Greater Auckland area
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/E...tesSearch.aspx

Justcol

kind of irrelevant I think as unlike the uk you wont find two houses the same on a nz street so a bit like comparing apples with oranges

j19fmm

Which part of NZ are you heading to? I could have the house of my dreams up here for that amount!

scrubbedexpat094

But great for those of us who are just plain nosy

Hazelnut

Anywhere we can gain work, afford the house and land we want, is not regularly under 2ft of snow and has more then three frost free months a year.

Unsurprisingly 80% of the work for both husband and I is in Auckland and there's no way we want to move there as the only housing we could afford would be smaller than our first ever fixer upper that we bought in our early 20s and probably small apartment rather than detached.

Other areas seem to be Hamilton and Christchurch. I've looked at the Richmond area and the scenery looks great, the housing would be affordable and there's off road riding opportunities but we've never seen a job advertised in husbands area (high level, electronic design and project management work) at a professional level, only at baseline level. That would bore him to tears and would mean a big drop in lifestyle below what we have now and that's not terribly exotic.

The far north or north island seems affordable but I've never seen work for either of us advertised up there. We have thrown the idea of running a B&B around for a years now and we've been and helped out friends with theirs so we have realistic expectations of the workload and how tying it can be but we hadn't thought of relying on that for sole income whilst settling into a new country. It was more something I might do while he still worked.

I look on the UK sites regularly to see what housing around me is going for. I'm dead nosey and it gives me an idea of what ours might fetch on the open market.