[Familyofmonkeys]

Having an evening browe at all the houses we can't afford...and came across one we could. Probably needs a bucket load of work doing....but what character :)

http://www.allrealestate.co.nz/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=104529966&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&regionid=9205&c=89669926&s=nzsi&snf=rbs&tm=1213611301


Think it might be British owners as think we spotted a few ikea/mothercare type items in the background :p

[Mels]

What a suprise. I never expected to see a house like that in NZ. I love the huge windows in the living area/hall bit.

Mels

[Kim39]

Definately not the Warrington that i know so well from home, that's for sure!


Kim

[TrentBridge]

Absolutely beautiful!!! :clap

Must have a look where Warrington is on the map.

I was browsing Otego last night (for a change ;)) and came across this one http://www.realestate.co.nz/812083? May need a bit of tlc :laugh

Didn't think I'd come across something like this either!

[Moorf]

Wow - that's fab and look at the price!! *scuttles off to show OH and whine "i waaaant it"....*

[NZ Hopeful]

Definately not the Warrington that i know so well from home, that's for sure!


Kim

It's not the Warrington I drive through every day :no

[Familyofmonkeys]

*scuttles off to show OH and whine "i waaaant it"....*

:laugh:laugh
But as OH keeps reminding me....it's not where the work is :roll

[Moorf]

Yeah, FoM, that's pretty much the answer I get :wah we need to set up a NZ-wide telecommuting software development contractors community :)

[CJ22]

Dusk and I would be up for that, then we could live on Waiheke :)

[marcia]

Love it, all the wood, it looks gorgeous, but you'd need to buy half their furniture too to keep everything in the right era! The kids would love the gardens too - they could disappear off on adventures all day.

[colindp]

Warrington is a very nice little village about 20-30 min drive north from Dunedin, Ideal spot for cockles...YUM!!

[KiwiDreamer]

I read this thread with great interest. We arrived in Dunedin on 20 April, and the "Manor House" in Warrington was one of the first houses we went to see - I too had spotted it from the UK. It is exactly as described, so I can't fault that. I don't want to dampen anyone's enthusiasm, but I thought I might try and add a little perspective to the debate. Firstly, the description of Warrington as a village makes me chuckle. Yes, it's a cluster of houses, but that's it. If on reading that previous post you had visions of strolling down to the pub in the evenings, nipping out for milk you'd forgotten or getting to know your neighbours whilst strolling around the green, forget it. Warrington is a cluster of houses. That's it. No shop, no pub. The nearest food shop is in Port Chalmers which is about 25 mins drive over the mountain. That's where the nearest garage is too. As for shops for anything else... that's Dunedin, another 15 minutes on top of that. So, that's Warrington. As to the house.... We worked out today that we're spending about $400 a month on heating and electricity here - that's $200 for a load of wood that's lasted 1 month, one bag of coal at $9 every three days and electricity to boil a kettle and do 10 minutes of cooking. That's IT. No electric fires, no electric equipment. That's for a tiny 2-bedroom bungalow we're renting. But then there's hardly any insulation, no double glazing or other "English" things we took for granted. So, why am I telling you this? The Manor House at Warrington was vast space with no double glazing and only a wood fire to heat it. Some of the window frames were warped with age and the place was icy, even looking around it in April - my feet froze standing in the kitchen talking to the agent. Did you wonder why there were no pictures of the bedrooms? The bedrooms were - to put it bluntly - awful. The downstairs one was pitch dark. The two upstairs were small but okay. The top one was open to the rest of the house - very unsuitable for guests or family really - it was more of a "landing". Also, no garage. There was room for one, but if you did have one built it would really have to be in the same style as the house. So, double glazing, garage, heatpumps.... the $400,000 begins to creep up. And however much you spend, you're still in Warrington. Did I mention the train track? If you google earth the house you'll see it's got a train track as one of its boundaries. And the bank the train is on (a good 5th of the garden) is owned by the railway company and only on lease. We were told this wasn't a problem by the agent. Ahh. What else? The house was described to us by another agent as The Folly. Do you want to be the English person who saves a vendor from his folly? The house has been empty for well over 2 years and can't sell. I wonder why if it's such good value.
Don't get me wrong. We loved the house, despite all this. For about a day. Then common sense, cost of living in NZ and being near some shops came to our rescue.
I know it's very unpopular to post anything negative about NZ - how could anyone, isn't this the land of endless dreams? But it's not all good here. Houses, and the process of buying them is as hideous here as it is there. I'm afraid the old saying is true - "if it looks too good to be true it probably is".

[dusk]

I don't think it's unpopular to post negative things at all :)

actually, I think your first hand experience of vewing the property is exactly the sort of thing those of us not in NZ are looking for - real, actual experience of things in NZ - it's so hard to tell what things are really like from photos alone :)

[Moorf]

I guess we're just all too shallow here eh? We'd have bought that place without looking cos we're all rose tinted up to the hilt here :laugh (please don't believe all you hear about ENZ being somewhere you can't post negatives...).

As for the house, yep, I did wonder why no piccies of the bedrooms, you get skeptical when looking at Kiwi real estate descriptions and pictures (although some people don't even bother to tidy up, it appears!).

House buying here is far from hideous imho, but I'm sure there are horror stories out there. However, my family back home are often stunned and how quickly and smoothly NZ house purchases can be compared to the lengthy red-tape process back in the UK (for instance).

Thanks for your impressions of the house though - certainly not worth a gander should we have been in the area! Having said that - the location (i.e. miles from anywhere) wouldn't be a negative in my books... the train/cold/bedrooms and "whatever is stopping it being sold for 2 yrs" are!!

[colindp]

KwiDreamer said......Warrington is a cluster of houses. That's it. No shop, no pub. The nearest food shop is in Port Chalmers which is about 25 mins drive over the mountain. That's where the nearest garage is too. As for shops for anything else... that's Dunedin, another 15 minutes on top of that. So, that's Warrington.


I seem to remember a shop just off the motorway at Waitati about a 10 min drive away and of course shops and pubs and filling station in Waikouiati about 10 mins in the other direction. So not quite totally isolated and no real need to go all the way to Port Chalmers unless you need to go the New World supermarket... :nice1

[KiwiDreamer]

Agreed, there is a small shop in Waitati, but it's up for sale and we were told it's closing. And also agreed there is a petrol station in Waikouaiti... but as most people would be heading into Dunedin on a daily basis, not away from it, it's a bit out of the way. New World in Port Chalmers is the closest shop where you'd want to do a family shop and even that is a bit small - it doesn't have the same savings, for example, as the much bigger one in Mosgiel.
We saw well over 50 houses in our house search, and when I described the process as hideous, I really meant that moment of turning up and going "oh" - it's the same let down as in the UK. For example, we turned up at one very promising place (in Waikouaiti as it happens) and when casually chatting to the agent I said the garage (detached and across the drive) was nice, he told me that was another house with another family living in it. Oh. At another I asked the agent where the heating was for this huge 5-bedroomed house and she said "You're standing by it". One heatpump in the hallway for the whole house. Oh. At another we saw the family sitting with hot water bottles on their laps. Not a good sign really in the middle of the day. At another there was a vast chain of electrical pylons going right across the garden and, funny old thing, the family wanted to sell because the father had cancer. What else? Oh, there was the house with 12 acres of land. The only trouble was the land wasn't actually with the house - the house sat in someone else's land like a little interloper. We saw houses where the agents turned up over an hour early just to get the heating on maximum. One where we had to shout to the agent to be heard over the noise of the road... none of this mentioned in the descriptions. Oh. So, yes, hideous, just like the UK.
I would go as far as to say that nothing is the same here as you percieve it to be when looking at it from the UK. This is only my opinion of course. For example, there's one place near Dunedin described in all the guides as "an attractive artists' colony with historic buildings and art galleries". When I first drove through it, my thought was "another scruffy dump". Only my opinion, of course. I saw lots of very promising houses for sale in Palmerston, north of Dunedin. On driving through there however on our trip down from Christchurch, I got why they were so "reasonable". You know those sorts of movies where men stare at you from bars and you just know they're thinking "new meat"... The only thing open was the liqueur store, but the four guys with guns and pig-dogs chained in the back of their RV rather put me off going in.
None of this need put you off coming here, of course, if you are particularly fond of pig-dogs. I only want to put the NZ dream into some perspective - that of a very ordinary English wife and mother.
My one piece of advice would be DO NOT buy a house over the internet however good a bargain it looks from the UK!

[Kirst&Kev]

Aw you guys are making me homesick...Port Chalmers is where I grew up...(sigh). Not too much longer now (only been waiting 5 years for OH to be convinced NZ is where it's at!)

Kirstie