we seem to have bought a house :)
After a mere 5 weeks of looking we have found a house in New Windsor. Sale went unconditional late yesterday; we complete the sale on 17 January. Thought I'd share a bit of our experiences, since some of this might be relevant to others.
We originally budgeted a max of 700k, which would've meant a mortgage of 500k. So the new 20% deposit requirement wasn't a problem for us. We're both turning 50 in 2014 so we want to be mortgage free no later than when we hit 65--so even though we could've had an 800k mortgage we're not interested. We also want to be able to do more in our lives than pay.the.mortgage. and eat.at.home.
Very quickly we realised we would struggle to find a house for less than 700k. Apartments in NZ can be a disaster because of weak body corporate legislation: we saw one place where the body corporate executive was one person! And some body corporates are run by developers rather than owners. We'd always owned apartments before...but we were sufficiently spooked.
If you don't have kids, or plan on sending them to private school regardless, targetting the non "zoned" areas of nice suburbs is a good strategy: they're not joking when they say being in one of most desirable catchment areas adds 100k or more to the price of a property. We've got no kids and I'm barren...
TradeMe's property search will allow you to put in a price range, which scans for the c.v. of properties where no asking price is listed. But bear in mind in Auckland things generally sell for 50% or more above c.v. currently. So with our budget we searched for 600k or less.
We participated in 3 auctions. The first one, in Meadowbank, we had the highest bid at $730k, but it didn't meet the reserve. Second auction was for a stunning house in New Windsor. We dropped out at 730k and it went for 765k. Third one, in a highly desirable Mt Albert school zone, went for 798k! The first one wasn't a "fixer upper", but would've required some investment. The other two were in excellent condition.
Whilst my husband was at the auction for the Mt. Albert property, the agent for another house in New Windsor rang to say there were no bidders and an asking price of 649k would be listed the next day. The house is in mostly good shape, but we were concerned there might be some hidden nightmares. So we put in a conditional offer based on title search and detailed property inspection. The inspection showed up nothing significant, so we removed the conditions. Our $649k got us:
- 600m freehold section
- 3 bedrooms
- 1 full bath with laundry
- Open plan living/dining with fireplace
- Decent sized kitchen
- Great indoor outdoor flow with new windows and doors
- New deck
- built in pool
- "Rumpus room" stand-alone cottage at the back of the property
- Private gate access to a reserve
- Separate 1 car garage
- 2 heat pumps
Rumpus room is in need of some TLC and the windows in the bedrooms need to be replaced (but not urgently). Floors are in good shape; garage has a bit of water damage but the current owners will remediate what causes the damage (but not the damage itself).
Aucklanders are funny about their sense of distance. We'll be less than 10k from the CBD as the crow flies, but many consider it "far out" from things. We're 10 minutes from Kingsland and I'll have a 45-50 minute door-to-door commute on public transport to Grafton.
Financing, we found Kiwibank beat all others by quite a margin: 5.95% fixed for 3 years on a 20 year term. But we are setting the payments to pay it off in 15 years and can pay up to 20k$/year extra with no penalty. They're also giving us $2k towards closing costs, which will cover our legal fees and the property inspections.
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Originally Posted by Super_BQ
