Monday, February 16, 2009

I'd rather be listening to Mahler

The worst thing about house hunting is how it takes away one's weekends. Not that we spend that much time actually out and about looking at the damn' things; but there's time researching online, drawing up a shortlist, scheduling, travelling and looking; then there's time discussing afterwards, trying to decide which ones deserve any sort of followup.

This (Monday) morning my phone has been ringing with agents wanting to know what I thought of their property, which to tell the truth I can barely remember. So here, for my own convenience, is my take on this weekend's crop of no-hopers:
  • 3/57 Mariri Road - nice little place, good neighbourhood, but criminally overpriced. The agent was talking loudly (to a roomful of viewers) about a price possibly "in the high $500s".
    Yeah right.
    If she's been fool enough to talk like that to the vendors, they're not going to sell. Not this year, anyway.

  • 11 Esperance Road: very nice - in summer. But I can't rid myself of the thought that, come winter, the huge, all-glass, single-glazed walls are going to be something of a liability.

  • 31 Duke Street: ancient phone kiosk and collection of stolen roadsigns in the front garden. Two bathrooms, no bath. Ensuite with underfloor heating, but no heating in the rest of the house. In short: built by and for a man, with no noticeable input from his wife. Sorry, but sometimes stereotypes just work.

  • 64 Parau St: this one I think the agent put us off by playing obnoxious music on the outside speakers. All Kiwi estate agents are obsessed with "outdoor living". Me, I like to spend time indoors. Guess I'm just a foreigner.

  • 38a Symonds St: this is a lovely house. Good condition, great rooms, excellent storage, a downstairs. It suffers only from two things: too much sun in the kitchen, and greedy developer syndrome (some wanker built three houses on a lot that would've accommodated two just nicely). Taken together, these things are enough to spoil it.

Two other places we saw that we haven't completely ruled out yet - and that's even more of an intrusion on my time. But I'm not very hopeful for either of them.

7 comments:

Nodressrehearsal said...

Open houses are much more fun when you're not actually, you know, looking for a house.

That "too much sun in the kitchen" one sounded nice, though - maybe with an awning on the windows or something...

Of course, living in Western NY, it's hard to imagine the phrase "too much" and "sun" ever being used together in a sentence here.

Nodressrehearsal said...

Dammit. I forgot to click the "email me" box. Grrr.

Nodressrehearsal said...

I finally got a blog set up:
http://nodressrehearsal-synchronicity.blogspot.com/

I cross-posted one of my livejournal posts to get it started.

Oh, and I experimented with that garbage can - so commentors can delete their own comments, I see. But not edit.

vet said...

Interestingly, I could see you'd deleted a comment - it said "This comment has been deleted by the user". But when I deleted it, it (appears to have) gone properly.

Ha. Take that, unwanted comment.

The kitchen with too much sun... had big glass doors opening out onto the deck, which was suspended above the carport. It all felt a bit precarious, and somehow I think an awning would make it feel worse, although that's probably purely psychological. No, what that house really desperately needed was just a teensy bit of land to go with it. Just another 100m2, or thereabouts, would have made all the difference.

Michelle said...

I put off househunting myself this weekend. Just too much friendliness with strangers for me, it seemed. Good luck to you.

vet said...

HiStandards, we've prevaricated quite long enough. Summer will be over soon; it's high time we stopped pussyfooting about and bought somewhere, so we can move before it's too wet and cold to enjoy it.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting descriptions, especially of Duke Street and Symonds Street.

I am enjoying the running and illuminating commentary of house-hunting in Auckland.

It all sounds like a lot of hard work to not find a home.

-s