[NooDleS]

You can get to town from any part of the city in 20 min so you don’t need to worry too much about where you put up sticks.

Suburbs in Christchurch


Aranui: NO NO NO

Avonhead: Very nice, pricey and mostly full of Asians

Burnside: Nice, good bus routes and access, very desirable area for schools, very "family" area

Bishopdale: Very nice family area, a little far away from tech however

Casebrook: Very nice family area, a little far away from tech however

Fendalton: VERY expensive, close to uni, central city but very expensive

Bexley: Meh, cold and damp side of town, not so desirable

Bryndwr: Nice and family-ish, not in that great a condition but good transport etc

Linwood: NO NO NO

Sumner: Expensive and ocean views, takes half an hour to get to town, very desirable but pricey

New Brighton: Nice with ocean close by, can be damp and cold and is a wee way out of town, lots of
older wooden houses which can be damp ish

Riccarton: Nice, full of either poor or great houses, student central as uni is there, fantastic bus routes, malls etc, can be nice and cheap

Upper Riccarton: Same, but a little further from the city

Papanui: Half and half with condition, not my choice, but great busses and malls etc

Redwood: Nice and older people like, bit too far from town

Somerfield: Nice, good area, nice houses, very quiet, good busses

Waltham: Semi industrial but close to town and nice houses going up

Middleton: Nice, good area, nice houses, very quiet, good busses

Spreydon: Semi industrial but close to town and nice houses going up

Hillmorten: Nice but semi expensive and a wee bit too far

Halswell: Nice and cheap, but again quite far from town

Hoon Hay: Nice, older, good access, fairly cheap, but far

Cashmere: Very nice, on the hill, expensive with semi good access

St Martins: Nice, family like, close to town

Opawa: Average, industrial, cold

Mt Pleasant: Nice but too far

Bromley: NO NO NO

Mairehau: Not unless we are stuck

Shirley: Nice, older but with good malls and busses

Dallington: Average, not my choice to live in, too cold

[nippa&pippa]

Ermm, hmmm, where did you get informations from about this christchurch suburbs? Some are correct and some other areas i wasn't agree with. Notice few areas not in the list like Merivale.

[K&CS]

Mount Pleasant? Far? Hardly! You can be in town in less than 20 minutes! Might find you need to edit for language too! Still, interesting to hear your views!

[NooDleS]

Apologies for any language etc, it's not my own work. I've personally never stepped foot in Christchurch (yet). I was just sifting through my emails and decided to lift it from a conversation I was having with a university student there.

I'll go through and edit out the language and clean up the grammar etc. I just copied and pasted without any proof reading. Apologies for that folks.

Edit: Whoops, I can't edit the first post. I've reported myself for bad language.

[willowshouse]

Edit: Whoops, I can't edit the first post. I've reported myself for bad language.

:laugh

[NooDleS]

Mount Pleasant? Far? Hardly! You can be in town in less than 20 minutes!

Too far from the Polytechnic ;)

[MattA]

Aranui: NO NO NO

Linwood: NO NO NO

Bromley: NO NO NO

Any particular reason??

[NooDleS]

On a NZ toyota owners message board, somebody stated that they had a room to rent in Linwood, well I replied showing an interest (as i was planning to study at the local Polytech). I had a private messages the next day telling me that it was 'a very bad area'.

That was Thu Jun 01, 2006 1:36 pm so almost a year ago.

As for the person who wrote that list, she gave no reason. Edit:- It is her preferences from 22 years of living in ChCh.

[veronica]

we live (3 years) in the linwood / city area and so far have had no problems. If you speak to a 'posh' christchurch local they would be horrified at the idea of living on the east of the city anyway, but most of them have never lived here to experience it, it is a poorer area of town but there are some great people here.

Arunui I agree with but if you speak to people who live there they will tell you that its mainly the area north of Pages Rd that is an issue. there is a very low socio economic area there with its normal attendent problems.

[NooDleS]

I'd say it's probably the same everywhere. It's all hearsay, apparently my neighborhood is a no go area at night, to be quite honest, it's dormant at night. Pensioners outnumber everyone else a good 3 to 1.

It all seems to be fear of the unknown.

[Moorf]

I'm afraid I'm going to stick my neck out here and say definitely NO NO NO to Aranui. It's a horrid area of Chch IMHO. There, I said it..... sorry to anyone who lives there... but I don't stop there unless it's for a red traffic light. I had to drive through it each day when we lived in Chch.

If you see a nice cheap house in the internet, and it's in Aranui, there's a reason. It's just not a nice area - scruffy, hoon-ridden, poor demographic and, dare I say it, not the safest place in town... or it might be that the house you are looking at backs on to the poo-ponds (oxidisation tanks (sp?))... which some Aranui houses do....

There is a high concentration of Maori/Polynesians in Aranui too, which, like it or not, tends to put off many immigrants.

Linwood isn't as bad as Aranui and has better areas towards the cityside.

I don't know Bromley well enough to comment.

[NooDleS]

New Brighton has been drawing me ever closer the more I look at it. Can anyone go into a bit more detail for me? It looks incredibly picturesque.

Travel times, amenities, housing standard, access, size? etc

[benandclare]

Looking at Lincoln, Templeton and Rolleston for when we come , not exactly suburbs I know but i need fields , ah thats the farmer in me , now where did i leave my combine harvester ?:laugh :laugh

[Andy-Dee]

We thought New Brighton was very 'shabby chic' would imagine a lot of artists might live there. Loved the beach - which was deserted. Someone who lives there will know better than I do - may be full of hoons after dark or something. But if it doesn't, it seemed a good place for a student.

As a more mature family we are looking at Prebbleton, West Melton (Selwyn in general) or conversely Merivale.

[K&CS]

Have you considered Lyttleton? It's a bit of an up and coming place these days? I really didn't like it when I first came, but it's grown on me a lot. There are some pretty cool bars and restaurants there too.

[nippa&pippa]

Looking at Lincoln, Templeton and Rolleston for when we come , not exactly suburbs I know but i need fields , ah thats the farmer in me , now where did i leave my combine harvester ?

:laugh prehap you could work for me with my 10 acres of land :laugh at springston, not too far from rolleston :nice1

[benandclare]

:laugh prehap you could work for me with my 10 acres of land :laugh at springston, not too far from rolleston :nice1
I have been known to plough a straight furrow :laugh

[nippa&pippa]

I have been known to plough a straight furrow :laugh

:laugh There is lots of farms around where our house is as our house is not in springston, but few kms out south way. So if you looking into buying farm but in resonable distance for your OH's work in chch, then look at south chch surrounds areas as less wind areas and good soil but under 30mins from chch :nice1
We did look at north side (west eyreton etc) but problems with motorway will take longer for my OH to get into chch as his workmates used to live there, now have moved to lincoln, springston and leeston because of this motorway.

[benandclare]

Not quite in the league to purchase a farm but have seen some lovely lifestyle properties that we could run to :nice1 .

If yiou need any farming type advice fire away :laugh

[Pip]

Ben & Clare,

you may also want to look at Mandeville, Ohoka, Swannanoa etc (basically all grouped together as Waimakarri on housing websites. Lots of ten acre lifestyle blocks out here...!

[Moorf]

LOADS going in around Darfield, Sheffield and Springfield at the moment too- the Torlesse Lifestyle site in Springfield looks gorgeous, sitting at the foot of the mountains... cheaper this way too than Ohoka/Swannanoa... ;) (maaan, I should get commission!)

Found a link with details - scroll down to "Selwyn Surrounds" :nice1

http://www.bayleys.co.nz/search/property.aspx?MAXPRICE=200000&MINPRICE=200000&ar=0&go2.y=1&pc=10&pt=0&rg=144&st=0

[ellenmelon]

LOADS going in around Darfield, Sheffield and Springfield at the moment too- the Torlesse Lifestyle site in Springfield looks gorgeous, sitting at the foot of the mountains... cheaper this way too than Ohoka/Swannanoa... ;) (maaan, I should get commission!)

Found a link with details - scroll down to "Selwyn Surrounds" :nice1

http://www.bayleys.co.nz/search/property.aspx?MAXPRICE=200000&MINPRICE=200000&ar=0&go2.y=1&pc=10&pt=0&rg=144&st=0

my mum and dad bought a house out in darfield a couple of years ago because the price of real estate in chch city was making any nice house unaffordable. its a three bed brick house.they bought it blind (with my dads cousin, who lives down the road from the house, acting on behalf of them) and my dad only just saw it before xmas last year.he's very impressed with the area and from the photos ive seen it looks lovely.fields all around and quiet. the great thing is that the people they bought it off are renting it, as they needed to release equity to buy a business. and when they moved out, the lady's sister moved in!

sorry to ramble, just wanted to share! lol :D

[westi]

We bit the bullet and bought a house in New Brighton this february despite listening to some people suck in their teeth and murmer a bit whenever we mentioned how much we liked it.

We love it. We can walk to the beach which is just accross the road. The river is behind us and there is Bottle Lake Forrest just up the road. It takes 5 minutes to walk to the local palm tree lined shopping centre with it's cafes and fantastic library which over looks the beach.
Still getting used to seeing people in wetsuits walk past the window, barefooted and carrying their surf board !

It's quite a hub of activity at weekends with people having surfing lessons, or kite boarding etc. There's a small market once a month, and they have events at the arena outside the library - a recent one was the street entertainers festival & there was a Hip hop / skate boarding thingy at a nearby reserve too.

There is no traffic noise where we are but I think you have to be picky with the road you buy on as apparently there is a bit of hooning going on - same as everywhere.
We've found it to be a really friendly and relaxed area to llive in and wouldn't want to live anywhere alse in ChCh.
Also, we hardly use the car as we can walk to shops, supermarket cafes ec. and buses to the city are so frequent and cheap it's easier to use public transport for work and school.