11th Feb 2007 – Open houses, what can we get for our money?

Today we set off around 10:30 and drove to Eastbourne which is about 30 minutes drive along the coast from Lower Hutt. We had a lovely breakfast of eggs benedict and a flat white before highlighting a few houses in the property pages to view today. In NZ, some homes become open to the public to view at pre-arranged times, usually at the weekend. So, we set about choosing which ones we could see, then Joe and Susanne very kindly drove us around to the different ones, stopping in between to get an ice-cream and drink from a local dairy (corner shop).

So, for around $330,000 – $350,000 you can get a 2/3 bedroom house on quite a small section (a plot of land, a “plot” here means burial plot so the word isn’t used in the same way as it is in the UK). The ones that were really lovely and had annexes or granny flats were about $400,000 and basically just about perfect and you could move in with no real need to do much. But, we could never afford $400,000 unless we earned loads of money and could get a huge mortgage. The way open houses work is that people go around to these houses, sign in on a piece of paper and then have a look around. The estate agent is there to answer any questions and we did see quite a few faces we had seen at other houses so I am sure