[Belmont Babes]

How much approx would it cost to purchase a house in NZ? I have just had estimates from my solicitor (we are selling and purchasing in the UK) OUCH! The fees and stamp duty etc really stack up. :uhoh

[lockstock]

We just bought our house and the solicitors fees were $600. And there was another couple of hundred for the portion of the rates we had to pay the council. That's it. Simple

[M&J]

Yeah ours was similar too, around $600-700, no stamp duty!!!

[bartons]

Yes, $500 for solicitor and no other fees. :)

[Asli&Mark]

That is good to know for us too
:)

[Pip]

yep...we had solicitors fees which were $700, but these were paid by Westpac as part of our mortgage arrangement.

the only other thing, we did was to pay $400 for an independent valuation and survey - principially because we'd only been here two months and although we'd read a lot of housing papers and visited some, - we wanted to be sure that we weren't overpaying. (as the valuation came back over $25000 higher than our agreed price, we were quite chuffed)

the process is a little bit different, so best to read some threads/chat to a few people first. I found it a bit odd because its so different from the UK, you get locked in a lot earlier and everything moves much much quicker - but now I'm a fan! especially the no stamp duty bit!