[Lizelle]

Hija

Hubby and I have been in NZ for about a year now. We are currently living in Auckland, but plan to move to Wellington at the start of next year.

I am looking at houses, at notice that there seems to be a lot of cheap houses available in Otaki (Kapiti Coast), and some of them look quite good.

I would need to travel into Wellington city every day. So, I was wondering if someone could tell me what the commute is like. I don't want to move there, and then it is a nightmare to get into the city each day, which would really defeat the purpose of our move.

Any info giving would be greatly appreciated

[Lizelle]

Sorry for the spelling in that post, I was in a bit of a hurry

[sizzlingbadger]

Have a look at http://www.tranzmetro.co.nz/ . Also have a look at http://www.tranzscenic.co.nz/services/capital_table.aspx . It looks like you can get a train from Otaki to Wellington it takes about an hour and 10 minutes. Although there's only one train there and one train back, could be quite busy. It will cost a fair bit a month as well $40 return every day.

Have you considered the Wairarapa ? We live in Featherston and my husband travels over to Wellington every day by train, it takes an hour. It costs him $20 a day although he usually buys a monthly ticket which is a lot cheaper.

[Lizelle]

Nope, but it is just because I did not see any houses there (in the lower price range). Ideally, I would like to live a close to the city as possible. I take the train at the moment, and it takes me about 45 minutes (one way). I would REALLY like to shorten that if I can.
Then there is that eternal question between how much you pay and where you live. I would not like to pay more than $300k (I know it seems a bit low, but coming from SA, it is quite a lot for us), and not smaller than 90sqm (so that excludes the inner city)
I have to admit that I have never been to Wellington, so one area is much the same as another for me. Our biggest consideration at the moment is the travel times, and how that fits into our budget

[sizzlingbadger]

We had a similar problem although we could strectch our budget if we wanted to.

It was really catch 22 every property we looked at in easy reach of Wellington was a fair distance from transport. In the end we came over to Featherston and have ended up with a fantastic 4 bed house with 1/2 acre of garden for 300k and a five minute walk to the station for my husband. Have a look at Upper Hutt, particularly Pinehaven and Silverstream, they're both really nice areas. You should be able to pick something up still around the 300k mark and below. I think it's about 1/2 hr, 45 min train journey into central Wellington.

It's definitely worth coming over living in rental for 3-6 months and get a feel for the area. We had never been before and found it a lot different to how we imagined it.

[Lizelle]

Yip, trying to find something nice that is close to transport, but far enough away to be a bit more quiet is a bit of a problem.
Your house sounds exactly like the sort of place we would want to buy.
We would definitely rent for a while, since looking at a place on a map, and living in it is two very different things (auckland being a very good example)
How is the traffic like in general? If you had to drive in to the city, would it take you 2 hours or something?

[sizzlingbadger]

From Featherston into the City it takes an hour. Not sure with rush hour. Although when we rented in Churton Park it was a 10 minute drive in normal hoursbut in rush hour it took 40-50 minutes. With only two main highways, one from the north and one from the west it bottlenecks into the city highway pretty quickly. That's why we realised that the train was definitely the better option and why a lot of people use it as well.

[Debbie P.]

Also there's that nasty road over the Rimutaka(?) ranges, which we found pretty scary when we visited. Presumably you'd have to go over that to get to Wellington from Featherston - or have I missed something, is there another road route?

Debbie

[sizzlingbadger]

Yes you do have to venture over the Rimutakas to get to Featherston. I have to admit the first few times we came over it was pretty hair raising. Although now we go over without a thought and you kind of get used to it. It takes us about 20 minutes of our journey to go over the hills then the rest of it is pretty straight. When the Kaitoke bypass is completed next year it should make the journey a little bit faster.

[Avalon]

We checked out as far north up the Kapiti Coast as Te Horo (just south of Otaki). Otaki is quite a distance from Welly - which is why the property is cheaper. I believe (though do check this) that you can get the "Nice" train in from Otaki - it comes through P North - comfier than the Trans Metro.

At the moment - if you want to head in the Otaki Direction - you really do need to consider the train as your main option. The SH is full of roadworks, and there is a LOT of traffic using it - there are often holdups- and thats before you get past Porirua City or hit the Hutt Valley Traffic.

Also, bear in mind when looking at Kapiti, that Infrastructure cannot cope with Current demand from what I hear - and its getting more crowded, so services are going to get more pinched. Its all relative of course - many of these problems are actually not bad when you compare with te UK for example - and may be fine compared to Auckland.

Sizzlingbadger has nicely covered the Wairarapa! The hill is bad to start with, but it can be very spectacular. And you do get used to it.

My biggest peice of advise is to take your time to look at the two options. Thers actually quite a lot to consider between Kapiti and Wairarapa - each have thier ups and downs. Im really surprised we ended up here - it really was not what we envisaged - but when we looked at the options it was definately better for us. Do the drive, and take a train trip - see what its like and whether you can do that day in day out.

Something we are aiming for - OH spends 3 housr a day on the train. If he works while on the train for 3 days - thats an extra days work. He has effectively worked 5 days in 4, and can therefore work a 4 day week. Not everyone will have that option obviously - but it can drastically cut down transport time and costs (and give you more time to lounge in teh garden!)

[dave k]

Yeah, Otaki would be a helluva commute by Welly standards. At least an hour..on a good day. And it's a bit of a no-horse town in any case.
Check out some of the burbs like Churton Park, Grenada etc. - or even U.Hutt. Pretty sure you'll find something to suit your budget there - and commute times would be more like 20mins/half an hour I suspect.

[SoCal Gal]

We bought a house in Otaki based on two things - doing a whole internet dream of NZ on the web, 1) it seemed close enough to Wellington and the 2)house prices were great. After being bogged down by my nice (!) NZIS guy in London for 6 months, we decided to wait a year and try again. NO ONE wanted to rent our house in Otaki. It is just too far away, and anyone that's going to live out there, well, they'll buy. Plus, in some of these smaller towns, a thing you don't find out until you live there is that some residential streets are considered "good" and some are "bad" and you can't tell by looking from the outside like maybe you could in the U.S. We bought on a borderline "bad" street, and even though my husband lived there for a month with no problems at all, in these small towns it can be very, very clique-ish, and people know about your street. Before anyone jumps on me about having a good attitude, we DO want to go back to NZ, just in not too small of a town. And, yes, it's pretty one-horse, the video rental place closes at 5 on Fridays, which I thought was really odd. It did have pretty fancy cosmetics in the pharmacy though, and a couple of grocery stores. Not a bad town at all, you just have to do it right. And, our real estate guy told us - warned us, I should say - that people went to retire in Otaki. My idea of the train commute was quite 'mad' but in Southern California, it would be no big deal. Sorry for ramblilng, been off the board for a while!

[Avalon]

Its a good point about "good" and "bad" areas. We feel that we have been pretty blessed in meeing some fantastic people who took weekends out to drag us around the areas we liked (and some they thought we would like but hadnt known about), and told us what was good and bad about them. Obviously such things are all relative, and depends entirely on your point of view. Otaki being a "one horse town" sounds perfect to me for example (most of the places ive lived would be in heaven if they could manage one horse!), but for others its Hell on Earth.

This is why i think its good to take your time and research an area before buying. This is easier if you work, Alan's collegues were an amazing source of info. (Actully the current lot think we are mad to live out in the sticks and commute to welly - but again - its all relative. We think they are nuts for living in the suburbs - which would be our idea of Hell).