Justice of the Peace

This morning Alex & I went down to the local Johnsonville Community hall to visit the Citizen's Advice Bureau. One of their people is a Justice of the Peace, and can legally verify the accuracy of copies of our passports and addresses, which are needed for the process of withdrawing all (or almost all) of our KiwiSaver funds.

Once that was done, I spent the rest of the afternoon getting the forms all completed, scanned, turned in to pdf files, and sent to the lawyer via a dropbox link.

I also have an appointment now with the builder, on Thurday afternoon in Dannevirke. My brother Harry is going to join me, and possibly so will Dad. Lots of judgemental eyes on "our" house!

Finances and other legal documents

Intensive day of filling out legal documents. In order to get the finances together, we will need our own deposit, plus both our KiwiSaver accounts emptied, plus an extra $10,000 for the government's First Home Grant (2x $5k). So today, we applied for the grants, and sent them to NZ Housing Corp (from Kainga Ora, as they're called these days).

Also, we sent a statement to the Lawyer to say we're legally entitled to purchase land in NZ; i.e., we're actually resident in New Zealand, and have passports and visas to match that claim.

I'm sure there's a ton more documents to be signed - we'll hit them one by one.

Contract signed!

After an intensive read of legalese, we signed the contract today, returned it to the Real Estate Agent, and it came back signed by the Vendor two hours later, so they seem keen to sell as well. There's still a bunch of conditions - we want to see a report from the builder, a plumber, and an electrician; and the vendor wants to see if the house she's buying to move to actually goes unconditional as well, but everyone is willing, and the next step is done.

Received a contract today

Today we got the first version of the contract for us to read, sign and send back. Nineteen pages of small print, so I'll spend a bit of time reading through it.

Offer accepted!

Beyond expectations, I got a call from the real estate agent Pam this morning to say the owner has accepted our offer. I'm glad I stopped by the side of the road yesterday, because apparently an Auckland investor called after us as well. The owner decided on us getting the house since we'd actually be living here, so that's good!

Next stop, the lawyer & the agent will come up with a contract, which we'll both sign, and then we have to get the three reports made; builder, plumber, and electrician. Once everything checks out, we hand over the cash, and get the keys in return.

Exciting!

Dannevirke

After realising we have an extra $10k available due to the government grant for first time home owners, we spoke to the Dannevirke real estate agent Pam, to see if we could be in with an extra $10k bid on one particular property, in Allardice Street.

 

She said yes, and extra $10k would possibly get it, but come and see it first. So we drove over and viewed it. The

View from the gate

View from the deck

View of the deck

 

Overall, we really liked it. My sister Ellen had provided a quick checklist of things to watch for, and we ticked them off one after the other.

 

There were various problems that all looked to be fixable. The weatherboards need addressing; there's some rot in some of them. The guttering could do with a good do-over. Various other (hopefully) small issues like that. We'll get some expert advice later.

Weatherboards damage

More weatherboard issues

 

On the drive back afterwards, after discussing it in the car, we called Pam back to say we'd like to make an offer. Tomorrow (or in the next few days, at least) we'll hear if we were succesful. Our first offer!

Frontispiece

Here follows the account of the new adventures of Jack and Alex in their pursuit of the dream, in which they realise that the only way to win the rat race is to stop running.