Building our first home in New Zealand

Its been almost a year since we have built our first home in New Zealand. It all started unexpectedly following a casual Sunday afternoon visit to one of the show homes in Palmerston North. The show home was a G J Gardner property located at one of the fastest growing premium locales in the city, Summerhill. This house was pretty flash with brand new flavor throughout the place inside out. Although it was the first time, we were visiting show homes, there was no significant anxieties or worry as we were not serious about building a new home.

Being to numerous other open homes in the city, this was a whole new experience being brand new. And that feeling caught us as we moved around awestruck, 'I wish this was our home'. Nothing to lose, we did catch up with one of the friendly consultants and asked what's the smallest budget house we could have. It has to be noted, this was the first time, we ever had a conversation or tried to have a conversation with a consultant; the case with any other open homes, we would be running away unnoticed. We were  quite surprised with the options and affordable budgets presented as shockingly some of those were much lesser than established homes in the city.

We happily returned home with our thought process being completely aligned into a new dimension, 'It is practical to have an affordable brand new home without much hassle'. There were a few brochures handy and quite a lot of testimonial videos in YouTube to refer to. Those videos were really inspirational and gave us more confidence to head the way to owing a land and building a brand new home.

Being exposed to only one builder this time, we expanded our research into other potential builders but all others blew up our budget and watching those G J Gardner testimonials further, there were no second thoughts. Palmerston North is one of the fasted growing housing markets within the country with the tagline ''most affordable''. And have to say with G J Gardner, its even better and you could skip the worry part.

Our first step as advised was to find the section. Being the foundation and the money spinner, it took a while for us to get through this stage. We searches mostly outside of the city, to have an affordable section. With basic searches from Trademe and QV, we passed through the then available sections in Ashhurst, Fielding, Bulls, and Highbury. Lots of travel, google searches, property videos and articles were reviewed in the meantime. With helpful advise from our consultants and feedback from friends, we bought a section in Ashhurst from RE/MAX.

Oh wait, I missed to mention the significant role played by our mortgage broker from Mortgage Link. Without his help and support none of this would have materialized. There were timely and meaningful advise as to when we were ready to start the ball rolling. This was key in making those big decisions. Plus leave all the stress part with selecting the right bank, interest rates , term payments etc.

There is more to the process involved from start to finish, with building consents from the council, title arrangements with solicitor, complying with land covenants etc. More or less this is one exciting experience with heaps of joy and happiness. At the end of the day, this is your home and you are proud of the decisions you made, from the design to choosing the color. Enjoy the journey of creating your signature home where memories are awaiting to sprout, to be cherished forever.