Counting Chickens

For the past few months we’ve been spending a substantial amount of our Sundays going to “open homes” – the traditional way of house marketing for most New Zealanders. These are normally held on a Sunday. We started off looking just in Miramar and surrounding areas, as we quite like the area. Having exhausted all the suitable homes in these suburbs, however, we started looking further afield, including the central city and also the Northern suburbs, in search of something that meets our exacting requirements. I say “exacting”, but they’re not all that…but it’s surprising how many homes fail to meet them.  Internal access from the garage and 2 bathrooms means that we’re looking at modern houses; older houses tend to have a separate garage and only one bathroom.  What can I say? We’re a fussy couple.

We came close to finding what we wanted with a house almost on the coast in Strathmore Park, with views out over Point Dorset…but felt it was a bit too far out, with no express bus service (see? Fussy!), and another just up the road from us, which we felt was possibly a “leaky home”, so we walked away from that one.

A couple of weeks ago we went to see another home in Miramar, and decided that this ticked all the boxes. The only drawback was that the sale process was by tender. For those not familiar with this process, sealed bids are deposited with the estate agent by a specified deadline, and the vendor selects from the bids (not always the highest bidder – often there are conditions attached to the bid which may cause him to sell to a lower, less conditional bidder).

The time period for submitting bids was quite tight in this case, so our bid was conditional on a number of things which we weren’t able to complete prior to the closing date;  however, after a bit of toing and froing on the final day, our bid was accepted. We are now in the process of satisfying all the conditions which we set out, and plan to settle at the end of next month.

The house is on a hill in North Miramar, and has views out over the peninsular and to Lyall Bay. There’s a good deck for barbies in the summer, and it’s double-glazed and centrally heated so should be cosy in the winter. There’s an express bus nearby, and our local café will be The Larder, so I look forward to spending more time in there!

I can see your house from here