Renting a house in NZ

[slipperandpjsmum]

We would like to rent rather than buy. Does anyone have any advice/comments? Anyone suggest a good letting agency?

hey slipperandpjsmum, i suggest you try searching on Trademe, all the letting agents are on here

yes, look at trade me. All estate agents use it. Are you already in NZ? you need to remember that you need a north facing house rather than south facing to get the most of the sun in the winter, you won't get central heating and bemused looks if you ask about insulation.

www.realestate.co.nz

Try and get some references before you start looking.

Trademe really is the best bet. Most real estate agents list on their own sites too, but Trademe will give you it all.

Where are you looking at? just a little nosey

Yes, Trademe and realestate.co.nz.

Very new houses i.e. last few years are more likely to have insulation.

Heat pumps and woodburners are the form of heating you may see advertised for a house, other than that it's usually plug-in electric heaters for winter. Some places have gas fires/heaters.

Most places are unfurnished too - it should specify on the ad if it is furnished.

Where are you looking?

slippersandpjsmum - we are going to be renting too when we get there in July and the Trademe site is what we are using to look now. The search function is very good and allows us to narrow down on an individual suburb we are interested in.

The problem we have is that most things seem unfurnished so we are struggling to decide what to do with our UK furniture and appliancs. It takes 2 months to ship and we won't know if we are staying permanently so really we woudl prefer to leave it in the UK in a store for a year.

Are you shipping your furniture and what are going to do until it arrives? I dont fancy buying a whoel bunch of new stuff. There are serviced apartments but they are expensive and ideally renting a furnished family home would be better.

Oh BeenBeta which part of NZ are you going to? How many times have you been to NZ before? Yes our plan was to store and rent fully/part furnished but that sounds like it might be difficult.

We are going for a year to Auckland and travelling around from there as well as scouting for business/investments. If we like it we will stay - but until we decide we obviously dont want to ship furniture.

It is proving to be a bit of a problem. We have found one or two furnished properties but not many. Our other option is rent a flat and buy cheap furniture.

Furnished properties are very rare in NZ. There is no incentive for landlords to rent a furnished property. Most come with curtains, light-fittings and white goods (fridge, dishwasher, washing machine). You can rent these if required.

The Warehouse or Target furniture is a good place for cheap furnishings to fill the house while you get things going. There is no IKEA. TradeMe is also a good option for second hand goods.

HTH.

It's also possible to rent furniture and white goods. We shipped ours so didn't have to look into it, but I know a few people who rented furniture rather than buy then sell on.

One caution - most don't come with white goods (eg we have our own fridge freezer, washing machine, dryer & dishwasher). All that was included with ours was the cooker!

The amount of white goods in a property does seem to vary quite a bit. More modern property seems to have built in dishwashers/fridges in the kitchen but not often seen things like washing machines.

It costs a fortune to ship- avoid unless you are sure. Get a place with white goods and then just pick up a bare minimum of furniture second hand that you can give back o charity at the end of your stay.