Dream Home

Well, we think we've found our dream home in Christchurch. We've had relatives look around it and they like it, we compared prices in the local area and spoken at length with the agent. We've even got the agent to fax us a contract to enter a bid, and that's where we're running into problems. The NZ process of bidding is much stricter than the UK and is legally binding.

One issue we have is that we're still waiting for our house in the UK to finalise. The new owners are meant to be moving in on 1 Sep, but we haven't even signed contracts yet, and solicitors and agents are blaming each other for the delays. As I type the my solicitor has called and says he's sending out another set of contracts "just in case the first weren't received." Well, funnily enough we haven't received them either, and they were meant to have been sent last Saturday.

This mean that we're unlikely to get our equity soon, and we need that to fulfill our obligations under the NZ bid process should are submission prove acceptable to the vendors. You then have a certain number of days (commonly 10 working days) to get building inspections done, raise any issues, get finance and pay 10% of the cost as a deposit.

Just to compound the problem we're abroad next week so won't be contactable. Funny that no matter how many times you tell everyone it still seems to come as a shock to them.

I'm sure most of the stress of selling and buying homes is caused by agents and solicitors just not communicating and not doing the job we pay lots of money for them to do. Let's hope we never have to do this again!