Calling all Kiwis out there : )

[Quickening]

DH and I were talking about our long term plans and New Zealand looks like one of the most likely places that we will end up buying a house and settling down in. (yeah yeah i know i'm australian but my moving to nz doesn't mean i think its better... wait maybe it does!)

:D

Anyway I have a few questions... what's the $ range for buying a block of land (preferably not TOO close to town)?

Do you guys have Bendigo Bank in NZ? What are some good NZ banks?

What's internet access like?

What areas should we be looking into? The kind of environment we are after is a rainforesty kind of environment - must have heaps of trees around us, would be nice to have a creek/lake/attraction within 30 mins drive.

Anyhow I think thats all for now!

Any place HAS to be better than where I am now... :angry

[Silliest]

Hiya :-)

I'm not a native Kiwi, but welcome! Real estate is really variable. Even from one week to the next! We had really good luck with internet-searches for likely properties, and managed to find a house we were pretty sure we'd like before we went out physically house-hunting.

We have 1/4 acre section, right off one of the main highways, in a "town" that consists of about 200 families, a few stud farms, catteries, and B&Bs, and is surrounded by agricultural property. The Bloody Huge house and land together came to $180,000.

Contrast that with the house we left, in central napier, that was a tiny little poxy box with no heating, and no land to speak of. Same price.

Contrast again with a ONE room apartment in central Auckland that my BIL just bought for *twice* the price! <gasp!>

If you really want to be out in the middle of nowhere, septic tank, rainwater tank, unsealed road, you could probably get a mansion and 10 acres for not much more <LOL!>

Having water recreation areas nearby... I don't think it's physically *possible* to get more than 10 k away from water around here! Small islands, you know! Lots of rivers and lakes.

The trees might take some careful searching. It seems to me that Kiwis have a disturbing tendency to raze everything before building a subdivision on it. Older neighborhoods that *could* have nice, established trees often do not because of gardening trends, overhead power lines, property boundaries, etc. They also have the most appalling habit of monoculture *white pine* plantations on lifestyle blocks! ACK!

It's certainly possible to find a nice, bush/wooded section. But having the trees *on* your property will drive the price right up. We have nice trees *near* our property :-) And the more usual fruit-trees and hedges actually *on* it.

Never heard of Bendigo Bank. We use Bank of New Zealand. They're not the cheapest fees, but they have the best customer-service. That doesn't mean they're *friendly* it just means they don't frack-up your transactoins on a regular basis like the other banks do! the ANZ bank is also reasonable, but they are now owned by the same company, so there's not much difference, there. We've never tried ASB. I like their commercials, though :-p Avoid Westpac, and PostBank.

Internet access is shockingly bad (compared to what I was used to in Texas. I dunno about Aus. It may be comparable.)
I use paradise.net dial-up (and get 15 kbps on a good day), and pay $20 a month for 250 hrs (which I nearly use up some months). ISDN costs something like $60 a month (last time I checked) and cable is comparable.

If you have a while to sit back and plan, I would recommend subscribing to Consumer magazine (online or print). It has saved us *thousands* over the 3 years we've been here. They actually come out and tell you who's ripping their customers off, and who gives good deals. It's very handy.

[Quickening]

WOW! Thanks for taking the time to give me all that information! I will read it in detail later, babys awake gotta go!

[Aquaduct]

Auckland and Wellington areas are expensive. Small town are generally not. You could buy a cheap old house in a tiny town say near Ruapehu area (central North Island ) for 30,000 nz dollars.

But then it is hard to get jobs there.

Tauranga is getting expensive, it is growing fast. Sadlly it just got a motorway.