Catch-up Blog 1: Purchase (2016)

We decided to purchase a block of land in New Zealand to build on and found a promising piece of land in Maraetotara through the trademe internet site.  We travelled to New Zealand for John and Lesley’s wedding in March 2016 and driving a rental car up from Wellington with the kids we went straight out to look at the land and made an offer the same day.  After 2 years on the market another offer had been made the day before and went unconditional – we missed it by a day... doh!

The wedding was amazing :-), and we looked at several other properties while in Hawkes Bay but nothing that moved us to make another offer and we all flew back out to Australia and Indonesia. 

We kept on surfing the net though, looking for possibilities... and another popped up, a lifestyle block of nearly 1 hectare, also in the Maraetotara river valley. 

The pictures looked good and we could vaguely remember driving past its driveway a few weeks before, so had an idea of where it was...  it was time to get family and friends into action to view it and give us feedback.  John, Lesley, Bob, Phyliss, Andrew and all Vicky visited, took photos on-site and each independently gave us a thumbs up.

We decided to make an offer, remotely - without having set foot on the land, because it just felt right. 

The offer included an easement on Mike and Kirstie’s property to supply us with spring water, and after negotiations and setup of the easement were completed, we went unconditional and purchased 1281 Maraetotara Road.  We purchased the land in April 2016 with an easement for supply of spring water, it had an engineered driveway and a formed building platform, and our neighbours cattle grazing on it , no services, or house… yet! Happy Days!!

April 2016… potential, lots of potential :-)