[acisman]

Yes we have finally arrived in New Zealand and I thought I would pass on our experiences up to now. We left Cambridge UK on 17th April, having sold our house in a record 6 weeks.

We flew with Singapore Airlines and our first problem was excess baggage. As most of you know all airlines coming via Asia only allow 20kgs of baggage, but will increase this to 25kgs if you are emmigranting. Well we were a total of 25kgs OVER our combined allowance of 50kgs. The guy on the desk stated that the airline would allow a total of 70kgs ( including hand luggage )but we would have to pay £35 per kilo for the excess 5 kgs. We were also told that this was only to Singapore, where we were stopping over for 4 days and that we may have to pay excess again on even more kilos from Singapore to Auckland as Singapore were much more strict.

I have previous checked our with Excess Baggage Company in the departure area at Heathrow that we could airfreight 25 kgs for a cost of £156 and this was obviously a cheaper option, given that we had 3 suitcases and one contained items we would not need until it arrived in Auckland 7 to 10 days after we flew to Singapore. 25 kgs is the minimum charge,but it was a lot cheaper than airline excess charges and it meant we had one less suitcase to deal with while in Singapore.

The plane to Singpore only had about 50 passengers !! We were therefore able to each have a complete row of seats to ourselves and this made for a really comfortable 13 hour flight. Under the circumstances you would have thought they could have allowed al the luggage wouldn'y you ?

We arrived in Auckland on 23rd April and our excess baggage arrived the following day. We stayed in a hotel near the airport and the following day picked up the hire car and drove down to Cambridge New Zealand, where we rented a house after only 2 nights in a motel.

I'll up date you from there tomorrow.

Dave

[paul&laura]

Dave

I'd love to know your thoughts on cambridge as that is an area we are thinking about...don't want to be too nosey but were there many rentals available and what sort of price range were they

Laura

[Nicola]

Excess baggage company sounds a good idea. I had not heard of this before, but it could be the solution to our baggage problems. We also want to do the 5 day stop over in Singapore, but do not want the hassle of carting around the luggage that we will need in NZ.

Thanks for the tip. Let me know how you get on with this and where you pick your stuff up from in NZ.

Cheers
Nicola

[lindajax]

HEY Dave,

Welcome to New Zealand!!!
:cheers
Bummer about the baggage - what a pain to find the plane wasn't even full!!
Hope your enjoying Cambridge - we had luch there on the way to Rotorua and thought it was a lovely place!!! quite envious of you :mrgreen:

Let us know how it is going
Love Linda
X

[Kim39]

Hoping for a little help on this one Acisman. Our friends arrived in Cambridge on Sunday and are staying at the Cambridge-Mews hotel courtesy of the company he is going to work for. Now they have been booked in for 2 weeks,and over the last few days they have been out looking to sort out a rental but so far have been unlucky.

Did you go through a rental company to find yours or just got out there and searched?

If you have used an agent,would it be possible for you to pass this info on, if you don't mind. Also was it furnished/unfurnished.

Thanks
Kim

[acisman]

Hi Kim

Real Estate Agents Century21 provided us will superb service. They had a few rentals on their books priced betwen 250 and 300 dollars per week for unfurnished 3/4 bedroom houses. Carol the office manager was a star, driving us around the town to see the location of all the rentals as well as giving us a great deal of info about the town.

Cambridge really is a great place, albeit a little expensive with good property becoming hard to find. Most agents have very few properties for sale. We have looked a little further afield and look to have found the ideal place in Morrinsville.

Hope all goes well with your friends; if we can help just drop us a line.

Cheers Pam & Dave

[acisman]

Hi Paul & Laura

I hope my comments to Kim will be of some help. Cambridge is a really great town. It has a green belt running all the way around it and is full of parks and trees, which at this time of year look brilliant with the gold and red leaves of autumn.

We are renting in the west side of the town, known as Leamington. This consists of wide streets with cul-de-sacs running off each street. The houses are closer together than we would like, but it is only a rental and we hope to be here for only a couple of months.

As I said, Century21 were excellent and I have noticed in the local paper this week that there are a number of private adverts for rental properties.
$250 to $280 seems to be the going rate for a 3 bedroom place, with 4 bedrooms costing $300+

If we can be of any further help, drop us a line. By the way today we have wall to wall blue sky and the temperature beat the UK in mid summer !! It must be in the high 20's. OK, according to the locals this is exceptional, but we are not complaining.

Pam & Dave

[acisman]

Hi Everyone

Just a few comments about our Shippers PSS. They were great in the UK, packing all our goods in early March and shipping them out to Auckland. Because our house sold so quickly, our container arrived nearly 2 weeks before we did !!

As a result our goods had to go into storage and had to be off loaded from the container. It would seem that as we did not have an address for the container to be delivered to immediately, we would have incurred high container retention charges if we wanted everything left in the container until we had somewhere for it to be delivered to.

The alternative was to pay a one off $300 storage charge and then $60 per weeks to NZ Vanlines, PSS's agents in NZ.

Well we found a rental property on 26th April and moved in that day, buying two single beds and some bedding, all of which was delivered that afternoon. The landlady had a couple of settees already in the house and after Vanlines stated they could deliever our goods from Auckland to Cambridge 2 days later, we decided to move in.

Our "home" arrived on time 2 days later, having been unpacked from the container and then subsequently loaded onto a removal lorry. The Vanlines lads were great and everything was in perfect order. In fact we slept in our double bed that night, using bedding that we had last seen nearly 2 months previous.

MAF had already inspected those packages they wished to inspect and Vanlines only charged as $60 for storage.

Another instalment tommorrow.

[Kim39]

Thank you very much Pam/Dave. I will now pass this info across to them.

:nice1

Kim

[leslie]

we lived in french pass outside cambridge some 11 yrs ago. its a lovely, sleepy area and the sunsets are phenom. great facilities and 'bustling' hamilton/ lake karapiro a short drive away. its nice to know someone else likes it. you could do worse...

lucky!

[Glenda]

Hi Pam and Dave,

Everything seems to be going so smooooooooothly for you both! :clap

Cambridge sounds really nice, though a bit smaller than the original perhaps? ;) My info says the population is 13-14,000. It does sound lovely.

:cheers

[acisman]

Hi Nicola

Excess Baggage Co are located in the same booking in area of Terminal 3 at Heathrow as Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines etc. What we did was to arrive early, go to Excess Baggage and get a quote for excess baggage of 25 kgs. (Remember 25 kgs in the minimum they charge and for us it was £156). We then went to Singpore Airlines check in, where we discovered how much would cost to take the 3rd suitcase with us. It was then just a case of going back to Excess Baggage Co, completing some paperwork and then taking the suitcase to the left luggage office for x-ray.

Excess Baggage Co use Budget Baggage in Auckland and they will phone you when your baggage arrives ( need to provide a number at Heathrow, although provided you know where to go at Auckland Airport, I guess you can just turn up) Anyway Budget Baggage phoned to say it had arrived and gave us directions to there office.

It is just before you reach the International Terminal in the one way system. As you cross over the traffic lights (Shell Garage on the right handside) you will see a slip road immediate after the lights on the left, signposted NZ Post, or something like that). AS you enter the slip road turn right into the NZ Post car park and go into the reception. Budget Baggage share the building and have a phone on the counter to call them.

It costs $45 at Budget Baggage, who then direct you to MAF and Customs ( in the same location). MAF charge $22 and you have a MAF form to complete. Next door is customs, where again there is paperwork to complete, but no charge. You then return to Budget Baggage who get the baggage out of storage for you. The case was completed covered in clingfilm and everything was in perfect condition when we opened the case.

It took 8 days from the time we deposited the suitcase, until it arrived at Auckland and was available for collection. Excess Baggage Co quote 7 to 10 days.

Hope this helps.

Pam & Dave

[acisman]

Hi Everyone

Thought you may like a further insight to our settling in in NZ. Well after a couple of nights in a motel we arrived in Cambridge with a copy of the Waikato Times in which we noticed that Real Estate Agents Century21 have a list of properties to rent. There were also a number of properties to rent listed privately.

We visited C21 and the Office Manager Carol greeeted us like long lost relatives, listened to our needs and took us on a tour of Cambridge and the properties that were both available immediately and in the next few weeks. We obviously wanted something immediately and so she stopped so we look more closely. One 3 bedroomed house seem ideal so we returned to the office where she rang the landlady, who was available to show us around immediately.

The place suited or short-term needs so we signed up there and then on the basis of us needing to give 21 days to terminate the rental and the landlady having to give us 42 days notice.

While the best advice on this forum is to rent longer term so you are sure you like the area, we arrived knowing we like the area ( based on previous visits and the fact that we are retired, albeit early) So after settling in we started the process of finding the perfect house to buy.

I must say that in Waikato this is becoming somewhat difficult. We are looking for something a bit rural and it is fair to say that all the agents have very little on their books and prices are rising very fast. Cambridge had nothing available meeting our needs and price,so we looked further afield and found Morrinsville (20 minutes away) had more scope.

Having visited all the agents and looked at a few properties we finally met Dave Young of Hookers. Dave had nothing on his books, but the following day he called to say he had trawled the lists of other agents for us ( apparently a common practise over here) and we did go and look at a couple of houses with Dave and the other agent.

Neither were what we were looking for, but the following day Dave phoned again to say that the neighbour of one of his colleagues had sold their 3 bedroom house, with swimming pool and one acre garden, only for the deal to fall through. The owners had decided to take the property off the market until the Spring, but when they heard a cash buyer may be interested, they agreed to let us have a look.

Suffice it to say we love the place, our offer has been excepted and the survey we had on the property has just returned an A1 report.

I'll update you on the sale and survey process next time.

Pam & Dave