Better luck the second time ...

Having previously thought it wouldn't be a good idea to sign up with someone we know to sell our home, we changed our minds and arranged to meet up with a friend last night who managed to not only talk us into signing up with him, but also to agree to selling by auction!

No dates as yet, but likely to be late November or early December.

Selling a house in NZ is very different to UK where it's rare that you sell a house by auction, here it's quite 'normal' to do so.  There's purportedly various reasons why, and to be honest it'll sort the wood out from the chaff in relation to serious buyers.

We realise now we were foolish not to question the Government/Rateable Valuation when it came out in 2011 (this happens for all houses in NZ every three years I believe), despite knowing that they had valued our house way below its worth.  Of course it meant that our rates stayed low!  We've since discovered that our neighbours DID question their RV, and it was increased considerably so is now a lot more (and sold for just under that recently) - and our land area is much larger, plus we have a great driveway that runs all the way around our house, turns around and comes back up.

So it's going to be interesting to see how the sale of our house progresses.  It really is a beautiful home, in a unique location - a little bit of country in the middle of town set in a valley which provides so much shelter it has its own microclimate.  We'll be really sad to part with it, but you can't hold on to 'things' when you are moving forward or you just live in your status quo/comfort zone and life becomes boring and monotonous - we're going to be living on the wonderful waterways of Great Britain soon, in our own narrowboat, and spending time with my family and friends in England so it'll be worth all the 'letting go' of our home and Gisborne in the long run.

Photos to follow just in case anyone knows someone who may be keen to move to Gisborne ...