Looks inviting, eh?
Greetings from Dr. Newly Zealand!
If you’ve been reading Christine’s entries, you know that I arrived in NZ (“En Zed”) about a month before the rest of the family.
I had about 10 days before I started my new job to get over jet lag, find a place to live, buy a car, get a bank account, buy some furniture, and iron all of my clothes. That would be a tall order for someone who is organised and with-it (my lovely wife, say). For me…it was a herculean effort. Thank goodness I had my dad with me.
But I digress. Let me tell you about finding a place to live in Auckland, an adventure in itself.
You probably don't know that Auckland is in the midst of a housing crisis. It’s all over the news here, and has been for ages. Over the past several years, the “crisis” has been caused by prices rising out of control. The building of new homes hasn’t kept pace with population growth, causing a shortage. Over the last few months, prices have stopped going up so quickly -- which people here consider a different "crisis." All of this is to say...the media loves a good crisis.
But still. An average home priced a hair under a million dollars would take the lead out of anyone’s pencil. (And this is coming from someone who just sold a home in Northern Virginia.)
As a renter, finding (non-terrible) housing in the Auckland metro area can be infuriating, time consuming and discouraging. Based on the number I just threw out there to buy a home, you might expect that renting a house is stupidly expensive. You’re right.
If a house is "cheap" (~$1950/month), it probably has no heat, no insulation, and is in a dodgy area. Either that or it’s a 90-minute commute with multiple bus transfers to downtown. If a house is in a “nice” area with the top (i.e., richest) schools, it’s not affordable for a white-collar worker with a PhD and 10 years of work experience. If it’s in an “up and coming” area with improving schools and lots of Pakeha (white people) moving in, it’s probably ~$3200/month.
I found our home in an area called Te Atatu South. Our rent is high, but not preposterous for how nice the house is. There are three bedrooms, heat in every bedroom (seriously, this is a luxury item here), insulation under the floors, and a huge eat-in kitchen. There is a fenced yard for the kids and the dog, and a garage that we haven’t used yet. I was able to rent this place after looking at, no exaggeration, about 20 or 25 different houses.
Moses' favorite spot to sit.
Part of the problem for new migrants is this: We have no rental history in NZ. We also have no NZ credit rating. Every application asks for references and permission to look at your credit score. According to their algorithms, I, the missus and the adorables might as well be 19-year old-frat boys looking for a place to get drunk and play video games.
Any house that is not a dump and is reasonably priced most likely has multiple applicants. And people that are from here know people, and thus have a leg up in the search. These people have credit ratings and bank accounts and rental histories and the right to stay in the country indefinitely. These people are not us.
Luckily, I used my immense charm (or maybe it was the cash money…) to convince an agent that a new migrant brought halfway around the world to provide economic insights to the regional government was probably not going to be a problem tenant. So, after a stressful week of searching and striking out more often than not, I found our home. I moved myself, my suitcase, and my bag of groceries into a three- bedroom house in the suburbs.
For the first few days, I didn’t even have a chair to sit on. I stood at the counter to eat and laid on the bare wood floor to read books or surf the Internet (via my data plan. Wi-Fi took another week). Over time I acquired all the trappings of modern life – a refrigerator (didn’t I tell you that houses in NZ are BYOF – bring your own fridge?), a chair, some silverware…
I’m pretty sure you would call the design aesthetic “serial killer chic”. I didn’t have much yet, but you know what I did have? A place for the family to move into. The whole point of getting here early was to make sure we didn't have to live in a hotel with two little kids. So – mission accomplished!
This is more like it!
And that's how I rented a home in Auckland -- and added a few gray hairs to my beard. Next time, I’ll tell you the riveting tale of how I bought my car from an elderly, one-eared, Trump-supporting Kiwi.
