Buying a House

We got through it. We have a house, which we love. But the process was more than slightly annoying.

A friend of a friend of the family is an agent in town, so she showed us around to some listings her agency had that met our criteria. That was all good. We actually fell in love with the very first house we saw, which had only come on the market the day before. So dutifully we kept looking, knowing that with the markets the way they are now, there's no reason to rush.

After looking at 5 or 6 more places, we decided to make an offer on the first place. We called "our" agent ("our" in double quotes because really agents here can only ever represent the seller) and she said she'd be right by with the offer forms. By the time she came by, apparently there was another offer being put on the place. We thought that a bit sketchy, but since the place was so newly listed it was also to be expected that others would be interested an offering on the same time frame as us.

So we were made to sign a sheet saying we understood that there were multiple offers on the house. We were advised to make our "best offer", meaning don't hold back thinking that we could negotiate up. When multiple offers are made at the same time the way it goes is that both offers are presented to the sellers at the same time, and the sellers select which one they want to work with, and the others are let loose. Hence the recommendation to try to have the higher offer.

We had been planning on offering below RV, rateable (assessed) value, but decided to come up and offer exactly RV, which really, in our minds was not actually as high as we were willing to go, but with the markets the way they were, blah blah blah, we didn't want to jump too fast. We got a call later that night that the other offer was higher, so we were out.

I was really really pissed. The more I thought about it, the more I wish we had offered higher, because I loved the house. But sleeping on it, I calmed down, and got excited about looking again for something else. We started looking at more that next day. And then we got a call from "our" agent again. The other buyers couldn't go as high as the sellers wanted, so now they were offering it to us, at their original asking price. This confused me, because I thought the whole point of the multiple offers deal was that once one offer was chosen to go with, wasn't that it for the rest of the offers? Apparently not. It only meant that they would negotiate with the others first, and then if an agreement wasn't reached, the sellers could reach out to whomever they want. Really sketchy, right? Because essentially the agent told us to make our highest possible offer because there would be no more negotiating, but then there was more negotiating!

Well, I felt a bunch of swirling emotions, elation that the house was still available, but anger at the way the agents we seeming to scam us. So we turned the house down at the asking price, saying we were still interested but not at that price. And that they could contact us if the sellers were willing to come down at all. And we kept looking.

And we found a second house that we liked a lot through a different agency. This agent and agency seemed so uninterested in selling us this property, because we kept calling to see it a second time, and it took ages for us to get in again. Turned out the seller was less than willing to part with her house, and the sale was being forced on her as part of divorce proceedings. Not a pleasant situation, but we really liked the house. We decided to put an offer in.

The agent was tickled to tell us about the drama this caused, with the woman locking herself in the bathroom and refusing to come out to hear the offer. We were a bit concerned about her mental state, and over the long 24 hours it took her and her ex-partner to respond to our offer we decided we didn't really want to be involved anymore. They came back with a counter-offer, interestingly exactly the same as the price we could have the first house at. We turned it down, and withdrew our offer.

We waited another week or so, and didn't find much else we were interested in. The first place we loved was still listed, it had been a month on the market now, and we hoped that maybe the sellers were starting to feel pressure to sell. So we contacted "our" agent again, asking if there had been any movement yet. She said that the sellers would be happy to receive an offer. So we decided to offer again. We went into the real estate office, prepared to offer a bit more than we had offered before, but not as high as their asking price. When we got there "our" agent told us, "Guess what. There's another offer in again. You'll have to give your highest offer again." WTF, right?

At this point, we were sure we were being scammed. Apparently real estate agents in New Zealand are second only to lawyers in their reputations for sliminess. But there was nothing we could do if we really wanted the house. There was no way we could prove that they were making up these mysterious other offers. And technically, there could have been someone else making offers, like the sellers' best friends. Or even the sellers themselves, as I've actually heard is sometimes done here.

But we were sick of it, wanted the house, and still held onto the small possibility that the other offers were legit, so we ended up offering their asking price. The agent took them the offer, and called us back saying, "Do you have any more money?" And we were all, "NO. That is our FINAL offer." And they took it.

Blah. Leaves a bad taste, eh? Upshot? We LOVE our house. And we do know that we paid almost 10% less than the sellers paid for the house less than 3 years ago. So it's not like we were totally ripped off.

The last formalities went without a hitch. We had an inspection done, which came back with stellar results. We went into the lawyers, signed some papers. Wired the money into the lawyers' bank account, and they called us and said, "You can pick up the keys." Yay!

Moving in was a whole other story. To be told later.

Lovely Dawes

I can't believe I never posted this at the time. I guess I never really posted anything about our recon visit here in July.

We spent our time between Napier and Wellington, and when in Wellington we finally got to meet our online friends, the Dawes Family in New Zealand! I could tell you about our evening out, but Marrisa already did, all those months ago. It was a great time, and it's so wonderful to know that we're now on the same land mass with them.

Such sweeties, the Dawes sent us these beautiful flowers as we settle into our new home.





Thanks, guys!

Home Now

Meaning my new home of course. Don't worry, we haven't turned around and headed back.

I know that now that we're actually here, I should be posting heaps with all the good stuff. All the gory details of the move, the set up, etc. But I've been too busy with all the gory details to post.

I'll try to remedy that in the coming days and weeks, but until then, you can check out the tumblog I started to record some brief snippets of my life and impressions here.

Transition Time

We've been here just over a week now. It's crazy days. We're having a blast so far, though it doesn't really seem any different to a normal vacation yet. We finally got a car yesterday! So that's good. We're looking for a house. We'd like to buy, rather than rent, just so we don't have to move twice. It's a buyer's market, but that still doesn't make it easy.

I don't feel like I can really update until I feel like we really live here now. So stay tuned for that...

Serious Crunch Time

Three days from now we depart. One week from today we arrive in New Zealand. In between we hang with the rellies in California. I need to pack.

We're taking the full allowance. 2 bags per person = 8 bags. 2 of those are car seat bags, so the rest will be clothes, shoes, and other assorted stuff that we forgot to put in the container. Toys, books, appliances, etc. Hopefully it all fits.

We had a lovely going away party just before Thanksgiving. About 100 people showed up to wish us well on our move. I didn't think we knew that many people.

Our last American Thanksgiving was a traditional feast with family. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, the works. We'll have to try to keep up the tradition in New Zealand. Maybe we'll do 2, one in November as usual, and then one in New Zealand harvest time, since really, it's a harvest celebration. You can never have too many reasons to stuff yourself silly. I hope we can get turkey there.

Tracking

Most of our belongings on on this container.



This container is now on this ship.



It's the OOCL Hong Kong. You can track it along with me if you like, on the OOCL web site.

It left New York yesterday. Now it's docked at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Tomorrow it's due to depart across the Atlantic, reaching Italy in 6 days. That's the easy part.

You may have heard about the recent pirate activity in the Gulf of Aden. Guess where our container ship is heading next? Hopefully it makes it through unscathed. Assuming it does, it'll reach Singapore, where our container will be shifted to a different ship that heads down to Napier.

Timeline

Just a quick note to point out the nifty little timeline I put up on the right side of this blog. It's got all the key parts of the process of obtaining the legal right to move my family to New Zealand. Quite a long process. We're almost at the end.

One Month Left

One month from today we leave the US. Wow. I've been running around like a mad person organizing, and now we pretty much just wait.

Re: the banking stuff -

The Kiwibank application was accepted without a hitch. There was a slight delay, because we wanted a joint account, instructions for which weren't clear. Basically we had to fill out the single account forms once for each person. So all in all, once that was in, the account was opened within a few weeks.

I also decided to join HSBC, because they operate in both New Zealand and the States. So we can transfer money easily between the two countries through them. Since Aidan will continue doing contract work for a company here in the US, this will be a convenient way to get the money to us in NZ without dealing with wires and such.

The exchange rate through HSBC, though, is your standard bank rate, which isn't as good for us as we could get through other channels, so I set up accounts with both XEtrade and HiFX. XEtrade enables me to do foreign exchange transactions entirely online, taking the money from my US bank account through EFT, and wiring the money to my NZ bank account. They charge a small (around $15) transaction fee for the wiring, but the better exchange rate makes it worth the charge. HiFX seems to give an even better rate, but I have to wire the money to them, for which my US bank charges a wire fee. But HiFX doesn't charge any fees themselves. So for large sums they seem to be the best bet. Though trades with them must be initiated over the phone, and then a form filled out and faxed or emailed back to them. I've completed trades through all three channels (HSBC direct, XEtrade and HiFX) and they all worked.

And of course, while setting up all these accounts, the global economy has entered a tailspin. Things are all crazy, and so far, we seem to be benefiting from it, as the NZ dollar has fallen against the US dollar. Who knows where it will go, though?

Re: shipping our stuff -

I didn't think we had a lot of stuff, but I knew that we did want to bring with us most of the stuff we have, since stuff is generally really expensive in New Zealand. So I got a few quotes from international moving companies, and all of them seemed to think that we had enough stuff to fill a 20 foot container. But that's all good, because having a dedicated container, rather than sharing with others gets our stuff to NZ quicker. We ended up going with Allied International, and their local agent ABC Moving. Not the lowest estimate we got, but solidly in the middle.

The lowest quote was given by a kinda sketchy local moving company. They actually didn't seem sketchy in person, or in any way in fact except for one. When I asked them who they outsourced any part of the move to, they said they did it all themselves, except for the local moving in New Zealand of course. First over the phone I specifically asked who they used for the actual international part of the shipping, the freight forwarding, and he clearly answered that they do it themselves. When another employee came out to do the visual inspection for the estimate, I asked again, "Who does the actual shipping, the international portion, the container ship portion, the freight forwarding?" And again, he said they do it all themselves. But all international shippers must be licensed by the Federal Marine Commission. This company was not on any of the lists of licensed forwarders. I emailed and asked if they were licensed under a different name, because they were not on the list. And I got a response that they used a different company for the forwarding. Huh. Obviously I couldn't trust them to answer this straightforward question truthfully. How could I trust them with all of my worldly belongings?

So Allied came out and packed up all of our stuff on Thursday. And then Friday they put it all in the container. It fit with some room to spare, but not much. Now we get to live for approximately 80 days without stuff. Which means a month here, and a month and a half after we get there. It'll be such fun when it arrives!

We have our tickets!

I've been saying for a while now that we're going in January. And just a few days ago that was still the plan. Mainly because that would enable Bic to finish her first half of the year of school here, and get us to New Zealand right before the start of their new school year. Also it would give us more time here to pack and prepare, and let us have one more white Christmas.

But then I went to go buy our plane tickets. In January, two adults, two children flying one way from Boston to Napier, with a stop over in San Fran for 2 days came to US$7330 on Air New Zealand. We like Air New Zealand the best because they have direct flights from San Francisco, where we like to stop over to visit relatives. Plus they do New Zealand domestic flights, so we wouldn't have to switch airlines at all the whole way. We could have probably found a cheaper domestic flights for both the US leg and the NZ leg, but having it all on one ticket means we can bring the max amount of luggage on all the flights. Which is 2 per person before being charged extra. Most domestic flights in the US now charge for even the first checked bag. And we're probably going to bring as much as we can.

Anyways $7330 is a lot of money. It sounds like too much. So I did some searching around, and found that if we leave in early December the price drops by over $2000. That's too much money to ignore. So I bought the tickets. We leave Boston on December 6. Leave San Francisco December 8. And arrive in New Zealand on December 10. Whohoo!

I had a mini anxiety attack when it dawned on my how close all this really is to happening. There's really no turning back now. And December is SO soon. But now I'm good with it. Better than good, really. That extra month will give us more time to find a place to live, visit schools and kindergartens, etc. before the start of the new year. It will give us more summer and less winter. It will give us Christmas and the New Year in our new home and with Aidan's family.

Banking Before Embarking

This week has been insane for financial institutions in the US, so obviously my mind turns to our money. And where it's at. And where it will be.

We'll need a bank account in New Zealand, and it occurred to us that it would be best to set one up before touching down. On our recent reconnaissance trip we planned on doing so, but time got away from us, and in three weeks we never made it to a bank. So now that the date of departure is fast approaching, I've got to sort out a way to open a NZ bank account from overseas.

Thankfully we live in the age of the Internet, and all the major New Zealand banks have web sites. And on these sites they have pages devoted to people in just my situation... mostly. The Bank of New Zealand has a page titled Moving to New Zealand, but then the first line of the page states "The information is applicable to UK residents considering a move to New Zealand." Well, that's not very helpful for me. I'm not in the UK. So simply because of their discriminatory lack of information for other migrants, I've decided against BNZ.

National Bank is more inclusive, with a big link to their New Residents Services page right on the home page. Unfortunately, you must move to New Zealand within three months of opening the account. We're planning on moving in January, which means we would have to wait until October to get this going with them. I don't like the idea of being on a time restriction anyways. I mean, we're 99% certain we're moving in January, but should something happen, we may move a few months later. Then what would National Bank do? I dunno. Not really worth finding out when there are other banks.

ASB Bank is another big one, with their Migrant Banking information available in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean, as well as the usual English. They also have special services for UK residents (which again, don't help me). Their document requirements are a bit of a pain, though, as they want notarized copies of everything.

So in the end, I decided to apply with Kiwibank. Kiwibank is a relatively new bank, the only one in New Zealand 100% Kiwi owned. I believe they're partly government backed, so they have many branches in local post offices. Their Migrant Banking page is straightforward, with a link to directions on opening an account from overseas. The only slight confusion I had was that the "Migrant Banking Forms" are not migrant/overseas specific at all. There is no place for "Country" in the address area. The telephone number field doesn't have enough spaces for longer, international numbers. Little things like that.

So I wrote to Kiwibank and asked to confirm there were the right forms. They responded promptly, that yes, they were, and I should just write in whatever additional information I need to provide. Which I had to do in two cases. First was the rate the earned interest will be taxed at. The forms only have the choices 19.5%, 33%, 39% and Exempt. Well, as non-residents until we move, the interest should actually be taxed at the Non-Resident Withholding Tax rate of 10%. So I wrote that in. And then I also had to note that I would be wiring money to the new account once set up, rather than including a deposit cheque, as requested.

Yesterday I sent the forms, along with photocopies (non-notarized) of my husband's and my passports, and a recent bank statement. I'll let you know when I hear from them.