Oranges are the only fruit

Or at least we thinks it's an orange. The fruit is far from orange - more yellow-green - but I've learnt recently that Californian oranges are often dyed their vivid colour. And they're rather sour like grapefruit too - but then it seems that December is the earliest point for ripe oranges in the northern hemisphere so we can probably afford to wait a few weeks.



We have great plans for an orchard, mainly for wine-making purposes, but at the moment we're limited to one not-quite-ready orange tree.

We did quite enjoy our first taste of the fruit today though - cut in half and covered in a generous amount of brown sugar.

Self-Sufficiency

I was a bit surprised the other day to discover that our new local council does not offer a household waste collection. Instead residents have to make their own arrangements with private contractors. The council will, however, collect all recyclable waste which is probably a very positive sign.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that we will need to reduce our waste to the smallest amount possible to keep our expenses down and to save the world. Luckily Skene made a start on our compost heap this weekend. Gales had brought down some of the tired branches from our tree fern which made a good base layer for the heap to help with drainage.



Ultimately though, we hope to set up a bokashi composting system or worm farm alongside the heap so that we can compost all food waste and not just raw vegetable matter. Watch this space...

Queen's Birthday Weekend

It's the Queen's Birthday Bank Holiday on Monday so we're going to be spending three whole days and three whole nights at the house this weekend.

As a break from revising, I'm going to be busy cleaning out the kitchen cupboards and pantry so that we can unpack some of our belongings.

Last weekend, I scrubbed the meat safe. Yes, the meat safe. This is one of the features of the house that suggests it might have been moved to the site in 1969 rather than built there.




It has gauze panels top and bottom to keep the flies out and slatted shelves to allow the air to flow freely. The only other time that I've seen a meat safe was at the ranch where we stayed in Argentina. There they had a box with a wooden frame and gauze sides and it was used to keep the creme caramel cool underneath a tree - the ranch only had solar power and so the fridge was infrequently used.



Our meat safe will come in handy as we haven't yet purchased a fridge. The temperature inside the house was only 14 degrees last weekend, given the lack of heating and the autumnal weather, so I think the meat safe was quite effective keeping James' beer tolerably cool.

Uncommon carpets

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be introducing readers to some of the more unusual features of our new house. According to the title documents, the house dates back to 1969 and our building inspector has a theory that it was actually moved there from elsewhere.

If it wasn't for the fact that they're spotless, I would say that the carpets were the originals from when the house was built. I'm looking forward to relegating them to the workshop but worryingly he says that they're growing on him...

Settling in to study

There was lots of work to be done this weekend, beyond the cleaning and unpacking. He was busy writing an exam whilst I was tied up revising.

He picked the upstairs living room for his temporary study, probably spending more time looking out of the window than at the screen.



I opted for the front of the house with sunshine for most of the day. The sun was very welcome when it came round - before then I'd been sat there with my hoodie, hat and fleece on and fingerless gloves too. Auckland doesn't get too cold in the winter with an average high of 13 degrees in July (the coldest month). That doesn't quite make up for the fact that the majority of houses are unheated though.

Lunch in the Sun

We headed back to the house this weekend and I was delighted to see all our boxes which had arrived from storage on Tuesday. In no time at all, I had half empty boxes everywhere and packaging strewn across the floor.

So when it came to lunch, the deck was definitely the best option. Luckily the sun was out and our camping furniture was handy. We enjoyed a lovely view across the paddock as we ate our Freedom Farms bacon sandwiches. A great improvement on the balcony at our apartment and just like being on holiday at home.

Buying a house in New Zealand

This post is a bit of a retrospective on the process of buying a house in New Zealand. It only took us 4 months to find and buy a house here, but the process was not without pitfalls, and we worked at it really hard. We must have seen 50+ houses in total, and of these, only 4 were serious possibilities. We were successful in purchasing the second house that we put an offer in on, and that was a close run thing. The first house that we tried to buy ended up costing us about NZD3000 to no avail.

In principle, buying a house in New Zealand is an easier process than in the UK, for example. A single document, approved by the District Law Society, serves as the contract for sale. This is the house purchase agreement. When you want to make an offer on a house, the estate agent helps you draw one up. You write the price you want, plus any conditions, which should normally include a period to get a building report done, to get a Land Information Memorandum (LIM) from the council, and to get your solicitor to check the title. This offer goes to the vendor, who will typically cross out your offer price and write a higher number. They might add their own conditions such as the so-called 'cash-out clause' which allows them to reduce the amount of time you have to finish your searches if they get an unconditional offer from elsewhere. The document goes back and forth in this fashion until people stop crossing things out and everybody has initialled everything, at which point you have a conditional offer accepted.

Don't relax yet, however. Now you need to get the LIM and the building report, and this is going to cost you in the region of about NZD 1000 in total. If you find something you don't like, you can pull out or try to renegotiate the deal. At the same time, move quickly. You might have negotiated 15 days for all of this to occur, but if the vendor has a cash-out clause and gets a better offer, this period may suddenly reduce to 4. Fundamentally, you can't be gazumped in NZ, because you always have the first chance to 'go unconditional' by crossing out your remaining conditions. But do you really want to, before you have all the information?

So those are the rules of the game. The big problem is that the New Zealand housing stock is of extremely variable quality. In the 90's a lack of regulation of the building sector led to an epidemic of 'leaky building syndrome'. Also, every council has strict and very variable rules about the kind of planning permissions required. Therefore it is necessary to thoroughly research both the permits and the fabric of any house you want to buy. If you start to renegotiate, this costs you extra in solicitor's fees. If you have to walk away, all this money goes down the drain.

This happened to us with the first property we wanted to buy. It was billed as 'two homes on one title', and was actually two houses next to each other. We thought this would be great for visitors. The trouble was, we discovered that the second house wasn't permitted by the council. The owners had gradually converted and added to a garage/studio and weren't aware of the regulatory problems. Because you can't insure an unpermitted building we had to walk away.

As has been mentioned, the big problem with the house that we managed to buy is the 'fibrolite' cladding. We had no idea what this stuff was, but the building inspection turned it up, despite the fact that our builder didn't think that we should regard it as a problem. It does seem to be the case that there isn't a huge amount of asbestos in this cladding, and that as long as it is painted and in good condition, then it isn't a problem. However, nobody really knows how long this stuff lasts before it starts to deteriorate. Also, it is already expensive to dispose of, in a country where many people don't seem to care about asbestos, so we look at it as an increasing financial liability if people wise up to the problem in the future.

So, we went to negotiate the cost of the house down. We got some quotes for recladding the house and knocked that much off the offer. The vendor came back with a counter quote that we didn't like the look of, and so the negotiation began again. We went back and forth again, with even the real-estate agents knocking money off their fee to try to get the deal through (we've generally had a really good experience with real-estate agents here). Finally, in the last minutes of the last day of our due-diligence period (the time we agreed in which we could do the searches, etc.) we seemed to have a deal.

But, in a cruel twist, we didn't. There was some miscommunication and the offer didn't get signed off in time. The vendor took this opportunity to 'consider some other offers' and came back the next day saying that they had a better offer waiting in the wings, but that they'd still consider our offer if we upped it by 10 grand. I thought that I was going to become the first person in New Zealand history to be gazumped! Despite my anger at this situation, negotiation continued for another day and our offer went up by another 2 thousand (not 10!). Finally the vendor admitted that we had a deal and we could breathe a sigh of relief. Moral of the story: when you go unconditional, write the word 'unconditional' in big letters in every communication with the vendor. Then they can't wriggle off the hook.

Ultimately, despite the hard negotiations, and the problems with the house, I am delighted that we got it. It is in a beautiful situation and has the potential to be an extremely comfortable and gracious home. Once we have removed the asbestos. Caveat emptor!

Why Fantails and Fibrolite?

Despite the house's obvious shortcomings, he would not be dissuaded from the purchase. Even when we discovered that the entire house is clad in fibrolite - a fancy name for asbestos cement - he was keen to proceed.

This James Hardie product is no longer in production due to the toxic nature of the dust produced when the cement is damaged. However, it was once hailed as a miracle building material, the answer to every house-builder's wishes. Countless baches were made of the stuff alongside great numbers of mid C20th homes across Australia and New Zealand. Now we're going to be contributing to the clean-up job, replacing the cladding with a modern-day safe equivalent.

If it hadn't been for the fantails fluttering in the ferns and the other beautiful native fauna and flora on the land surrounding the house, I would never have been persuaded to make the purchase. After nearly ten years in London followed by five months living in a flat with not even a plant to perk the place up, I'm now eagerly looking forward to moving to the countryside and meeting our new feathered neighbours.

An extra helping of Pavlova Paradise

Jo and I arrived in New Zealand as immigrants on the 6th of January. I had a New Zealand passport by descent thanks to my Dad, and Jo had marketable skills, with which she had already secured a plum job. We were escaping from the rat-race in London, looking for a friendlier and easier environment to settle down and start planning a family.

It is now the 14th of May. While a scorching hot summer has turned into a wet and windy winter, we have spent time settling in and getting to know the nation that plan to call home. I have managed to secure myself employment, by the simple expedient of turning up at the university and hanging around, until, out of embarrassment, they had to start paying me. We have also done some touring, and reintroduced ourselves to my extended family out here.

However, these things are only peripherally the subject of this blog. We moved to Auckland knowing that for the same price as our tiny two-bedroom home in Southwark, we could afford something quite special out here. Since the first weekend that we arrived we have been looking for a place to buy. The idea was to get some privacy, a little land, and some spare room for visitors. After many adventures, of which more later, we finally bought the house of my dreams. Turns out, my dreams are pretty scary, featuring as they do, a seven bed 1960's farmhouse on six acres of land, clad in asbestos and sorely in need of renovation.



Jo and I are going to be keeping this blog to document our trials and tribulations making a home for ourselves. It will be part 'A Year in Provence', part 'The Good Life' and part 'The Silence of the Lambs'. I hope you enjoy it.