Home... at last.
Shortly after Jay and I moved our four suitcases up the stairs and settled in at the Hannah Warehouse, we were surprised to find a flyer sitting down in the lobby with a picture of our flat -- for sale. We called the landlords (who had been strangely eager to avoid signing a long-term lease) who reassured us that, "Yes, we have have put your flat up for sale,
but we're only just
floating it on the market. We don't expect anyone to buy it at this price!" Three weeks and a dozen real estate agent-led showings later, of course someone did. Wellington's burgeoning housing market had claimed another victim, and we received our official 6 weeks notice to vacate the premises!
Wednesday and Saturday mornings, the local paper prints its major classified sections, both for housing and for jobs. The first several weeks of my life in New Zealand revolved around these two poles, with a flurry of flat inquiries and CV writing filling the mornings of these days. Since we have decided not to buy a car here, we were on foot for all of our increasingly far-flung visits to potential flats, and an entire weekend could easily be eaten up trekking from one hillside neighborhood to another to another.
(From Kelburn, to Roseneath, to Thorndon, to Brooklyn, to Mt. Victoria, to Haitaitai, to Te Aro....) Crowds of flathunters met us at most sites. One open house, scheduled for a mere 15 minutes at a tiny 1 bedroom cottage, yielded more than 20 people trying to cram inside.
Some of the things we learned during our search, mostly unique to NZ:
- Rent is paid weekly here. When you move in, you pay a "bond" of 1,2,3, sometimes 4 weeks rent (there doesn't seem to be any agreed upon standard) to a government body that holds the deposit. When you move out, you get it back after lengthy delays. In practice many landlords keep the bond themselves, or pass it directly to the outgoing tenant to speed things up.
- Fridges, washing machines and dishwashers are referred to as "whiteware" and in many cases are not included in rental properties. People "hire" their whiteware from special companies and pay a weekly bill for them.
- Some flats, like the Hannah Warehouse one, are listed as "fully furnished". These are at the opposite extreme from the bare, empty flats we found on the market. They are designed to be immediately livable, and provide everything including towels, sheets, can openers, tea pots, alarm clocks, you name it.
- Many of the best flats never get advertised...
Eventually we started to get savvy -- any flat wanting less than a certain amount of rent was guaranteed to be a) falling apart, b) mildewed to a toxic degree, or c) a basement apartment with no sunlight in an impossibly distant suburb. Flats like the one we were leaving were truly out of our price range for the long term, so we decided that our only real shot of a decent living environment was going to involve locating a room within an established house. Although we are used to living alone, it was going to be worth trading privacy for the chance to spread rent among several flatmates and to avoid the need to purchase furnishings for completely bare living rooms and kitchens.
New Zealand, sadly, does not have a well-established
craigslist. It does have two sites that serve a similar function,
Flatfinder and
Trademe. We launched a multi-pronged offensive, involving daily checks of both sites, broadcast inquiries to flats that looked promising, and pinning down as many "interviews" as possible. The competition was intense, and households looking for a new addition could afford to be picky. Sometimes we could tell as soon as the door opened that it wasn't going to work out. Sometimes we sat down for hours-long conversations over cups of tea, only to be called back and told that someone else was more suitable. We started to become extremely discouraged, especially when people we genuinely liked and thought we'd made a good impression on told us they'd rather live with someone else!
After a particulary dismal Saturday, wasted entirely on unsuccessful interviews, we were at our low point. We had ticked through our entire list of prospects, the fruit of a hard week's labor, and we were down to our last shot. For over a week, we had been corresponding with Drake and Casey by email in response to a text-only lising for their flat on the web. By this stage in the game, we were acutely conscious that a good relationship with the people living in the flat was the only thing that was going to secure us a home. So, we'd agreed to put off this particular "showing" several times until it was convenient for Drake and Casey. We knew next to nothing about the house. It was located in our favorite neighborhood, Aro Valley. The rent was very reasonable, and their posting asked for a flatmate "who knows how to have fun, but is mature enough to clean up after themselves when it's over". When we finally learned the address, we decided to head over a coffee in the neighborhood and a sneak peek, even thought the "interview" wasn't until the following afternoon.
Our hearts sank as we counted the house numbers up to 87a Aro Street. This is what we found: Number 87 Aro Street was a creaky-looking fish and chips shop, and we could see the stairs leading up to apartment above it. Of all the places for a flat! We sat in the cafe across the street, crest-fallen. Should we cancel? They seemed so nice. Maybe it was a cozy paradise inside, despite appearances.
The following day, we received good news: one of the flats we'd seen was willing to take us. They were very far outside the city center, and it was going to take some getting used to. They wanted a commitment from us, and Jay was all for it, but I couldn't shake my intuition that it was the wrong choice. Against all logic, I was holding out for Drake and Casey. We decided to keep our appointment with them. We had climbed the stairs outside the fish and chips shop and were about to knock, when I had a sudden suspicion.
Remembering Wellington's odd habits of numbering houses, I told Jay to wait while I ran down the driveway.
And our luck changed: A house with a garden, surrounded by roses, lavender and native plants. Drake and Casey turned out to be Kiwis around our age, with a lot of common interests. They were looking for flatmates to help them make a home out of a house.
We sat by the gas fire drinking coffee and talking animatedly for hours. They showed us the room upstairs with windows on three sides and views of the hills, but we barely looked at it, we were so certain it was the right place for us. And so here we are now, finally moved in, settling in at last.
