NZ Property Investing

Hi all

Anybody researching NZ property should check out http://www.terranet.co.nz. For afew dollars you can get all sorts of reports on the property you are interested in.

Yesterday I settled on my first property in NZ. Yahoo – pretty exciting for me! To help people who are not up to this stage yet, I thought I would relate some of my experience buying in Palmerston North.

I was lucky in that I was staying with my sister there while looking at properties. I would go home to her place in the evening and tell her about various properties I had seen. One in particular I was telling her about seemed a very nice house to have as a PI. She said “yes, that’s a nice street, but did you see the street next to it has alot of 2 storey, wooden, state flats?” Of course I hadn’t as the agent had taken me to the property via a different route. For those of you who don’t know NZ, these type of flats are probably the roughest type of state housing (State homes are like Housing Commission here). You really wouldn’t want a rental too close to them.

By what I could gather, in Palmerston North, while there are areas that are good or bad, it is also the streets that are important i.e. each area seems to have good and bad streets.

Also, alot of agents were saying how State houses are very popular now as they were built so solid in their day with good size rooms. I found this true in some areas where alot of these are now owner occupied (a little like Dundas in Sydney). However, there are other streets where they are still all owned by the State and this can make for a rough area to get into. You only have to drive along the streets to see the wrecks of old cars all over the front lawns etc (something you can’t judge by buying sight unseen).

In Wanganui the agents were selling alot to Australians. One Australian lady had bought 10 properties over the internet, sight unseen. A scarey prospect I think when you actually go out and view properties there!

When I was there the market seemed to be still racing along and alot of properties were selling within a day or two of being listed. There also wasn’t much negotiation. Properties are often listed with a buying range ie. $120,000-$150,000 and properties are mostly selling towards the upper amount. Offers toward the lower end of the range aren’t even considered.

However this was a couple of months ago and with all the talk in the Kiwi Property Investors magazine and http://www.propertytalk.co.nz it sounds like the market is beginning to cool. (By the way, I would certainly advise subscribing to the KPI magazine).

Prices have gone up alot there in the last couple of years and there aren’t the bargains available that there was, however, there are still alot of good properties at extremely good prices compared to Australia and the rental yields are still very good. Every man and his dog seem to have bought IPs there and now Aussies are going there to do the same, I think this is keeping the cycle going longer than it might have otherwise.

Well worth going over there to suss them out even if it is just to see the place as it is a truely spectacular place to drive around, and it is so easy to get around, the roads are excellent and so little traffic! And the locals are so friendly and helpful! Re getting to NZ – I found Pacific Blue very cheap to fly with.

I hope this is helpful to others as I myself have been helped so much on this forum and have learned so much from it!

Cheers

Sharyn