UK visa application times and NZQA question

Hi everyone' myself and my family are movin to NZ, we have progressed through the EOI and now have and ITA, we have completed everything on the list of documents required with the exception of my HNC in mechanical engineering still pending results, I submitted this on the 16th September 2014 and it has been evaluated and since the 17th October it has been in the "preparing documents" stage, so my first question is this, how long does it normally take from this point for me to recieve the results back?
My next step is to send the visa application off to London, I have heard many different things about time it takes to get a response back from them from 4 days to 18 months, can anyone tell me their experience with this or any info they may have on this lead time.
Finally after they points I think we will be ready to leave, does anyone have any recommended websites that I could visit to buy one way tickets to Auckland for me and my family?

One more thing, I am also looking for somewhere to rent when I get there, I have my eye on trademenz.co.nz all the time but Auckland is very expensive to live in so any recommendations on this would be appreciated also.

Thanks for your time.

Here http://www.immigration.govt.nz/branc...ocessingtimes/ is INZ's own estimate for processing times. Bear in mind, this is only their best guess based on how things have been running recently - no timing that INZ gives you is ever a promise, because it all depends on workload, which is unpredictable. Every case is different, and every piece of evidence has to be verified, which depends on third parties who may not see a need to answer urgently, so all anyone can say is it takes as long as it takes.