House sale update

It's SOLD! The offer is officially unconditional, so we can now move ahead with our plans to build a new house.
We have found land and contacted the agent, but we're not putting an offer in until we've moved out of here and got the cash in the bank. Then we can make the offer subject to "due diligence" (which means we can do all our checking with council, neighbours etc etc). We could also do some checking beforehand and make them a cash offer, but we shall see.

We're planning to pay off the mortgage and then stay with the in-laws while we build. We've calculated that even if it costs up to $9000 top break the mortgage, we'll save that by not having repayments or house insurance to pay; and by the interest we'll earn on the remaining money sitting in the bank. We're also hoping the in-laws will not charge us too much rent, so we'll save on bills too :)

I will try and keep this blog updated with the progress of buying land and building the house.

The bit of land we're hoping to get is here:

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it's the ] shaped section with the stream on the south-west border.

and it's about 1.5 hours from where Tareka works (the maximum he's prepared to travel)

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The house we've been quoted for is this design:
http://www.latitudehomes.co.nz/site/nz140_plans-transport.asp

and so far it's all comfortably within budget, so we think we should be able to put flooring and heating in without struggling too much. Tareka's ManCave will have to wait though!

Watch this space...