On Wednesday last week we decided to put an offer in on a house. We’d viewed it in the first week we were here but had looked at what seemed like hundreds since!
After we’d been back for a second look we contacted a local builder and went back with him to discuss some of our ideas. He seemed to think we weren’t completely mad and that some of our ideas would work. Next we visited the district council office and had a chat with the planner to see if our ideas would be allowed. We would like to eventually build a couple of self-contained units on the land so needed to check whether that would be possible. There are lots of rules applying to traffic movements and percentage coverage of the land etc. but we seemed to be within all the limits. So, we put in an offer on Wednesday afternoon which was promptly rejected on the same afternoon! It was quite a low offer but you have to try! So, we upped it a bit on Thursday morning – sending an email to the real estate agent before we left for Wellington. When we landed in Auckland we both had messages on our mobiles to say that the offer had been verbally accepted – much to our surprise.
This morning we’ve been in to sign the agreement. In NZ, once the agreement is signed the buyer is legally committed to buying the house and the vendor to selling it. Conditions can be added to the agreement – we have conditions that we are satisfied with a building inspection and the LIM report (Land Information Memorandum – like a council search in the UK). If all the conditions are met we have a completion date set for the 6th of April. The only slight problem is that all our stuff is sitting somewhere in the UK so won’t arrive by that date. We still have our rental house until the beginning of May so that will give us time to buy the essentials for the house and redecorate if we want to.
A couple of photos of the house. There are more here.
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