Steve and Ann, Thanks for such an informative post!!
"The whole Kapiti coast has less of a city feel than most of the rest of Wellington. The roads can be wide, as are the footpaths and burns."
What are burns? I'm guessing what we call the shoulder of the road?
"The area can be particularly green. It has no CBD, just light industrial areas and the retail centres. The 3-4 big schools are the largest employers, followed by the council, the hospital (no A&E), the two call centres, the police, the fire station, retail units, doctors, dentists, family businesses, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers."
LOL about the candlestick makers! What is A&E ? I saw it in a previous post and took it to mean arts and entertainment but with the word beside hospital it got me wondering accident and emergency???
I guess I'll be starting a book club then LOL
OH and I are seeing this as a pre-retirement move away from the ice and snow of Canada...so it sounds ideal so far! I take your point about not buying right away, I imagine we will rent in the short term to make sure Para is for us. We will be anxious to get settled, get the kids into schools, and we won't want to throw too much away into rent (we find nz rents exorbitant!)...so I'm trying to do as much virtual leg-work as possible before getting there! :-)
As far as I can tell from the online real estate listings there are quite a few houses under or around 400K that seem just fine for us. Are there bad areas to advoid?