Since Spring has arrived all sorts of things are shooting up. I know our neighbours are hoping for rapid growth. After much waiting, fretting and painstaking planning today they broke ground on their house build.
There’s a long story behind this build. I’ll try and make it simple for you!Â
Now first let’s get the family lines right. This house belongs to Ross and Jenny. They are the parents of our immediate neighbour Doug. They have bought the section furthest from us close to the road and put up a barn some time ago to store all their farming bits. They’ve previously owned a lifestyle block in Kaitoke. They are the people that own the cows and sheep and are caretaking the ducks that look like they are going to nest here in our little community.
This build has been ready to go for many many weeks. But, because they are nice parents, Ross and Jenny helped Doug by his section by buying his house off him to renovate it and sell it on. Doug is a builder so it made perfect sense. Right?
Well it would have been had the housing market not plummeted here in New Zealand. The renovated house has been on the market since February but at last they have a buyer and it’s all systems go. This has been a real struggle and I think it’s fair to say they didn’t make the money that they’d home and have at times wish they’d not got into such a convoluted plan. Nevertheless a line has been drawn and their house build is underway.
It will be lovely for our neighbours to be offering us tea in their house before long rather than to pull up a bale of straw in their barn. They are such lovely people and Fortnum and Mason are great friends with their dogs Jesse and Lucky so we’re all looking forward to them completing their new home.
You can tell the sun is out as the workmen have dusted off their shorts for the occasion!
This house will be next to our other neighbours Mike and Andrea (see their house behind!)
Ross and Jenny have worked hard on their land. Clearing the debris and old trees to release the natives to the air and create more grazing space for their stock. It’s taken weeks and weeks of hard graft to get it to this state and they’ve opened up a huge amount of extra space. They’ve also got lots of wood stockpiling for their wood burner for their new house. That’s sustainable living!
I will be following the house building developments with much interest. Maybe one day we will be able to have our own house built, something that is almost impossible in the UK. I always found ‘Grand Designs’ fascinating and have a few scaled down ideas of my own.
Sorry about your your new neighbours trouble in the housing market, they seem to have the only attitude in this housing situation, upwards and onwards and I am sure in the passing of time they will realize once again their financial loss. Hopefully things willl start to improve within the next couple of years and we have just to weather the storm. Looks as if we will have to delay our retirementt plans for the foreseeable future, as you know most of our pension plans are in property, it would be good even if you could sell houses, lots of people want to buy but mortgages in the UK are………dont really want to talk about it . It has taken a credit crunch to put the mockkas on all our carefully laid pension plans lol. But we are fit and healthy and we do wake up in the morning lots of love to you all from the Robbie clan. Nice to see that spring is on its way to you, all your planting will be amazing to see over the next months look forward to that
We were looking at the latest stats for our house and it seems if we were thinking of selling we should start the price at $40k less than we paid for it! We also have friends in the UK who are continuously reducing their listing price due to the pressure to sell, bad times. Apparently though there is supposed to be a massive boom January…probably just a media created one sadly.
You have a gorgeous home and live in such a wonderful place. You are very lucky, but you knew that already 🙂
xx