According to Statistics NZ - 18,361 people came to live in NZ from the UK from July 2008 - July 2009.
The house buying process in the UK is somewhat different to NZ. In the UK, a 'Offer of Purchase' is made to the vendor from the buyer via an Estate Agent. Ok, so you may be thinking, this is not too different to the NZ way of putting in an offer on a property via a 'Sale and Purchase Agreement'; but here is the difference: The UK offer is not a legally binding contract like the NZ one is. You can walk away from the UK one at any time and you are also at risk right up until the day of Exchange (our Unconditional day) of being Guzumped or Guzundered.
So, my issue is that UK immigrants are at risk of unknowingly making offers on NZ property and not understanding at the offset that the offer is a legally binding document and they are at risk of losing their deposit or worse.
To aid in this issue, I think that NZ Real Estate Agents should at all times ensure that Immigrants are made aware of the risks of an unconditional Sale and Purchase agreement and advise to set conditions especially a full building report in support of Steve's blog post as mentioned above.
3 comments:
Thanks for your support Jodi,
Good point re UK buyers and worth highlighting for sure!
Building reports should be standard yes. The problem with leaky home building reports is that they are too open to interpretation and the disclaimers these days are bordering on the ridiculous...thought that's no fault of the inspector.
That's the Govt's fault. They allowing NZ leaky home disaster to develop then fester. They need to design a standard building inspection check list deals with 1991 to 3003 built risky homes.
That report needs to become a mandatory part of the listing. Consumers won't be adequately protected until this happens.
Govt refuses to listen to this. Too hard. They'd rather agents a) warn about risky buildings and b) just tell buyers to select a random building inspector.
I say it's not good enough!
Hi Jodi,
I miss your posts but hopefully that's a sign of the market picking up and you are getting busy again. I regularly check for new posts.
I have been looking at relocating recently and came across something I wanted your opinion on. It would seem that even in smaller cities, like Napier/Hastings, Palmerston etc, as well as bigger cities, places out of the way are slowly building up as popular areas. For example, Whangaparaoa would jump out to me as an example in Auckland, Paraparaumu in Wellington, Clive and possibly even Waipawa in Napier/Hastings. Do you think these kind of areas make good investments? It seems to me that it might be risky that it could become hard to sell the houses again if you do buy into these areas?
I will look forward to your reply.
Cheers.
Hi, thank you for your comment.
I have always been an advocate for purchasing in areas that you know well. The thing is, even if you buy in one of those "up and coming areas" it is possible to buy in the wrong street and if you unfortunately were to do that, yes, it might be hard to sell off again.
Stick to what you know in terms of areas. A good investment property is found in all corners of the country mate and they say 'the deal of the century comes along once a week', meaning, don't rush into a purchase, as there will always be another great deal just around the corner. Property investment is a long term investment strategy so wherever you buy will give you a good return over time if you buy and hold.
Hope this helps a bit.
Jod
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