Originally Posted by
jessica1313
Hi everyone!
I've been madly reading through these forums for a month or so now, trying to get my bearings, and have found some wonderful bits of advice that have really helped. What a great place this site is!
Hubby and I have made the decision to sell our house in Perth, Western Australia and make the move to Christchurch. We are both approaching our late 20's and want to have one last big adventure before we think about having kids. Since we are Australian, we are able to come over without visas and the whole permanant resident situation is very straightforward for us, so it really makes sense to come to NZ over anywhere else. His family is originally from NZ and we have both been and loved the place.
Right now it all seems very overwhelming (which seems normal on these forums!) and its hard to know where to start! Should I be focusing on getting our house ready to sell here, getting shipping quotes, organising vet stuff for the dogs, booking flights, or just making lots of lists of stuff we need? If anyone knows where is a logical place to start so we can get organised and do things the easiest way, it would help so much.
Also, just wondering if anyone has had luck shipping their household items from perth to christchurch (or anywhere NZ)? It is really hard to even know how big a container we need and therefore how much to get an estimate for. We will be culling a lot of our possessions but still want to bring over our good stuff ie fridge, bed, bbq, outdoor furniture, desk, dining table, couches - all the basics really.
Finally, does anyone know about obtaining a rental house when you have dogs? I have been scouring the classifieds and on trademe, but most ads say "no dogs". We have 2 dogs who we will be bringing over, and are happy to pay a pet bond....
Thanks everyone! Look forward to getting to know some of you
-Jess
Hi Jess,
Welcome to the forum!
I am a fellow Aussie from Sydney, my husband is from Christchurch, we have two daughters, they will be 13 and 10 this year..
We moved to Christchurch in November 2009, we are back in Sydney at the moment but hopefully will be back this year if all goes to plan..
We have relatives in Christchurch (cousins) so we could go for a few trips over and look around..
This is the order we did things:
-Hubby had work transfer
-Put house on market and got quotes for shipping and pet shipping
-I opened an account with ASB from Australia
-Sold the house
-Paid the shippers (we used Movements International)
-Paid the pet shippers (we used Jetpets)
-Booked the airfares
-Sold my car
-Transferred our money and stayed with inlaws for a few days
-stayed with family that end
-bought a house there, enrolled kids in school all before christmas!
With the dog, he is a little maltese x shihitzu, as long as we had his vaccinations in the last six months, they saw a copy of the certificate for that, and they came around and checked him, gave him another jab, and took a blood sample..we paid $1200 from Sydney, this included them picking him up and the crate as well, plus boarding one night in Sydney, then overnight in Christchurch..
The reason we didn't rent in Christchurch is that we were arriving in november, honestly there were hardly any rentals that time of the year where we wanted to live, especially in our school zone..you may be ok..I liked buying my own house, it made me settle better and we didn't think we were coming back so we sold..we live in the wop wops in Sydney (40 km south west from the cbd) so wasn't worth holding on to anyway..
Good luck with your move, I really hope you like it, any further questions feel free to ask, I don't mind at all!
Michelle
p.s forgot to add we had a 20 ft container, we had a lot of stuff and it was well packed! We paid around the $8000 mark including insurance..