[clg]

Here is the situation. We arrive in Wellington August 20th. We are trying to decide whether or not to rent a furnished place (which we could only have for 10 weeks) and try and move immediatly to a house we would purchase, or to rent a house and move out when we can.

Questions are, do you think we could find and buy a house and be ready to move in say 9 weeks?

Second question if we rent an unfurnished house how short of a lease can we get away with. Could we sign a 3 month lease that we could go month to month on (give 30 days notice or so after the 3 month period is up) once we find a place to buy?


Thanks for input as always!

Chris

[GeorgeM]

I don't know about the housing market in Wellington, but if it's anything like Christchurch I would say that it was very possible to find, purchase and move into a house within 9 weeks unless you were very very choosy.

The whole sale process seems to be much quicker here with people more ready to move furniture into store and either rent or live with friends/rellies in order to make a sale rather than building up long and fragile chain as in the UK.

As for length of lease that will depend on the individual landlord and the state of the rental market. I think that a fixed term tenancy can be of any length by mutual agreement, or you may persuade a landlord who has an empty house to let you have it as a periodic tenancy from the start (where you have to give 3 weeks notice of intention to quit and the landlord has to give you 3 months if he wants you to get out (nice and equitable, eh?)).

Go to http://www.govt.nz/record?tid=3&treeid=1&recordid=1174 for the starting point for lots of tenancy information (although as I said above, local market conditions will govern what you're able to get hold of).

[sarahw]

You can buy & move into some houses within a week providing it suits both parties! We've just bought a house & the process could have taken 3 weeks but we chose for it to be 6 so that it meets with our tennancy agreement.

If you haven't lived in Welly & don't know the city I'd recommend you rent for a few months to get a feel for where you like & where you don't - nothing worse than buying in haste and hating where you live for the next few years! Where I wanted to buy before we arrived is certainly not where I'd buy now.

Rental periods are as long as you make them although we found a lot of rental agreements in Welly the landlords wouldn't sign for under 12 months. You can rent for as little as a month but I'm guessing you pay extra for that flexibility. We chose to rent for 6 months which suited us to find out about the area. However, we did arrive just after the New Year so there should be more on the market at the mo.

Good luck!

[clg]

I think we finally decided to rent for a while and then buy. We will try very hard to keep our tenancy as unfixed as possible. We are going to be looking to buy fairly soon IF the right house came up we are going to by picky. I guess we will just take it day by day.

I have heard too many stories about could houses and a personal priority of mine is to make sure that we are in a warm place by next winter!

Thanks for the input!

Chris