We’re getting back into the property game now. When we got here we were looking to buy a house and went to a few open houses. But when we looked into getting a mortgage it turned out that I was going to have to have a job as well (Kelly was the only one with a job when we got here last year), so we stopped looking and found a place to rent.
Now that our lease is almost up and I have a job we’re back in the hunt. And ugh. The market in Wellington has cooled a little bit recently, but it’s all relative. There will always be a greater demand than supply here since there just aren’t many places to build new houses. What it means for us, is that we’re going to have trouble finding someplace that we can afford. Mortgage requirements are also fairly strict here, which for us means we’ll have to put 20% down. That, coupled with the competitive market, means we’re basically just looking for a place to get a foot in the door, with the idea that we’ll move again in a few years when we have some more equity built up.
Home buying here is quite different from the States, It’s much more seller-oriented. In the States, as a buyer you have a real estate agent who will take you around homes and act as an advocate throughout the process. But not here. In New Zealand, as a buyer you’re mostly on your own. It’s possible to work with an agent, but they’l only show you homes listed by their company. As a buyer you do have a solicitor on your side, but since you’re paying them by the hour, you mainly use them once you’ve identified a property to help with the offer and sale.
Right now we’re at the stage of looking at properties. Coming from the US, it’s a pretty frustrating process. For one thing, they don’t have asking prices here. The closest thing is the RV, which is the rateable value used to assess taxes. But in general houses seem to sell for anywhere between $0-$250k over that value. But you have no idea what a competitive offer would be, no baseline. You just have to put it in and hope for the best. The other frustrating thing is that open houses are generally only about 1/2 hour long on Sundays, often at 1pm. So you have 30 or 45 minutes of rushing around, trying to get to the two or three properties you’re most interested in, in one part of town. It is possible to set up a private showing, but you’re can’t really do that for every single place. Often times the seller will provide an inspection report and council report (to show liens, etc), but not always, so if you want one before you put in an offer, you pay. So why not put conditions on your offer to for an ok inspection? You can. But. There are likely other offers with no conditions, so it’d hard to have yours accepted with conditions in this market.
So that’s where we’re at. We’ve looked at a handful of places so far. Nothing that we’d like to put an offer in on, but we’re told that the market should be picking up as we move into spring. The main thing is to get into a part of town that we’d like to be in long term, with good schools etc., so hopefully we’ll have some viable options soon.
Kiwi Bound 