[Ian and Romy]

Hello all,

We are new to your forum,but have been reading posts for the last five months or so with interest!!

After reading the post "perception to reality"with GREAT interest,it raised a few doubts.We are waiting for an appeal to go through with regards our residency,and afew others as well, if the appeal went through we were coming over on my HGV licence and told we would earn $50-60,000nz depending on how much overtime I did, how "comfortable" could you be considering we would hopefully have no mortgage.

People also had certain views on housing, would $250,000 get a reasonable property or is it not even worth considering?? With my ramblings in mind hope you can give me a real view.Alot of stuff you find on the web contradict what we have read.

We only live in a terrace here in England and i drive HGV's so we are not rich but comfortable but in a highly stressed way.

Well thanks and look forward to your replies

[jubjub]

Hello, and welcome!

You salary should be fine without a mortgage, you should be able to get by reasonably, and maybe get a luxury or two on occasion! As an idea your takehome pay would be around $3100-3600 a month. Only problem may be that you cant be mortgage free,but that depends on where you want to live.

In Auckland you would have struggle to get anything decent below $350K, whereas if you were going to live in the more rural areas, you may just be lucky enough to get something for around $250, best take a look at sites such as

http://www.homesell.co.nz/browse.php

http://www.realenz.co.nz/

http://www.property-press.co.nz/

to give you house price ideas for where you want to live, but if you are not coming for a few months, then allow for a price increase, as property prices are still rising.

[Moorf]

Welcome to the forum guys.

Where are you thinking of moving to?

We're in Chch and $250k could certainly buy you a house, different areas have different prices, depends what you would be happy with.

As for salary - we were comfortable with a salary in the area you mentioned - now I'm working the additional income means we have alot more disposable. However, we don't have kids and cars etc are all paid for, and have a small mortgage. I can't comment on whether that salary would suffice for a family of four, but with no mortgage I personally think that the $3k a month would ensure you had a good lifestyle.

If you needed a mortgage to top up your buying power, you're looking at approx 1400/mth for approx $200k so that would be nearly 50% of your income - and interest rates look set to rise. :(

Hope that helps a little.

Moorf

[Smiler]

Hi Ian and Romy

I can't help on the house price front much as we rent, but wanted to say welcome to the forum.

Sal's links are good for checking prices and if you want to look at the prices of interim rentals www.trademe.co.nz (http://www.trademe.co.nz/) is good to get some idea. There are private rentals on there and some companies too. We found that decent rentals were over the budget we had set ourselves after looking on the web and differs hugely in Wellington from where we originally were setting off for, which was Hawkes Bay

If you have any other particular questions, fire away. We're all ears.

Deborah

[Diny]

Welcome to the forum folks. If you're able to be mortgage free then you'll get by OK on that salary.

We live in the Manawatu (12km from Palmerston North). We bought a large 4 bedroom house on a good size section for $270k. A $250k budget will get you a grand place around these parts. It's a rural area away from the tourist trail.

Good luck - keep us posted.

Diny

[Ian and Romy]

thanks people it's nice to get info from people actually there, thanks again