Buyer Questions Part Two Begins

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Part two of the questions the buyers can ask of their real estate. Hello Megan.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

I don't know what accent was that, but hey.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Not a great accent.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

I feel like a TV presenter there for a moment. Awesome.

Facilities That Match The Buyer

SPEAKER_01 0:24

So we stopped at the neighbours and we talked about my lovely neighbour Dave and now we're moving on to the facilities in the area. What facilities are in the area?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

That's quite a good one because I would customize it based on who I was talking to. So if I was talking to a young family, I mention I might mention the schools or the parks or the playgrounds or the swimming pool or you know, whatever. But if I was talking to maybe a couple without kids, I might mention the veggie market or like a more adult type facility, like cafes, restaurants, bars, that sort of thing. So it it often depends what I think they might be interested in. And if it's somebody moving from Wellington, I I I get very excited. Because I'm like, what do you want to know? I can tell you everything. Although you just mentioned that there was a new shop coming in. Why can I that I didn't know about? So tell us about

Pop Up Shops And Local Growth

SPEAKER_00 1:15

that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

And our subdivision, which is really exciting, apparently it was on the plans from the beginning, and that's why it was part of the reason we bought a section here. And nothing has been happening over the last five years. And then the other day, a random container turned up in that grass area. And we're like, oh, what is that? And now the sign is up and it says big egg Otaki is gonna have a pop-up there. And then I went and I spoke to the big egg in Otaki, literally, drove down to Otaki and had a chat. They said that eventually they're gonna build a proper supermarket with car park and everything. So I can literally walk to buy anything I need with my little trolley, and uh and I don't need to drive anywhere. It's perfect. I love that, but I guess they're doing it because at the same time we also have another shop that popped up across the road from that pop up is the retirement village that's being built down the road from my subdivision, the big Arvida.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

And they're having a cafe.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yeah, so excited. And apparently they've sold 90% of them already. So it's gonna be a little bit of a busier road than I would have liked, but at the same time, I hope. Oh, and they we're also petitioning for a playground.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

That is so cool. A fenced playground. That's the latest hot topic at the moment in Carpenter with the council, is putting fences around playgrounds so that mums can sit there with their coffee and just relax. Oh, I thought it was their phones.

unknown 2:30

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Listening to our podcast.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

We got two hands, one for coffee, one for phones.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

I love it, I love it. But you're right, the facilities are important, depends on who you're talking to, what's important to them, like bike routes. You know, we've got a beautiful bike trail out of here as well. And I think if you're not local to the area, you wouldn't know about these things. Just on the weekend, I was talking to a couple, they've recently moved in from Pori Rua down to Waikanae Beach, and I was telling them, you know, my office is in Mahara, and they were like, What is that? And I'm like, How long have you been here? They've been here six months, and they still didn't know that there is a whole area of Waikanae that has New World and Countdown and a gym and various things down there because all they do is just get on the on the highway and get to Paraparumu. So they thought we're like a off-paraparumu village area.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

They didn't realize you've got everything, including a movie theatre.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah, they didn't realize there's a whole thing that exists. Yeah. Just seven minutes down the road here. So yeah, super

Schools And Zone Checks

SPEAKER_01 3:27

important. All right, next question. What are the schools like and are they zoned? Would the real estate agents know this things? Whether the schools are zoned?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

We do look up the school zones. It's all available on websites, so a lot of buyers from out of area don't know. And they'll say, Oh, what do you what do you think of the schools? And I don't necessarily have personal experience, but I can say other people have told me the X, Y, or Z about the schools. I mean, most of the schools are quite popular.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So, you know, yeah.

Sun Aspect And Simple Orientation

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Now the next question is a funny one for me because I'm terrible with my directions. So is the house north facing for sun?

SPEAKER_00 4:06

People don't really ask if it's north facing. They sometimes ask me where's the morning sun or where's the afternoon sun? So, yeah, the person who wrote this list is unique. So I always orientate myself to Carpete Island because usually the sun sets either at the top end or the bottom end, depending on what time of year you're at. So I'm like, okay, Carpenter Island's over there. So the sun sets in that general direction, the sun rises over the other side towards where the hills are. Most of the time you can orient yourself yourself pretty well. Some buyers have compasses and things like that on their phones, so they do it themselves, but yeah, which is like when does it get the sun? What is the quite an important selling point? The sun.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

What is the prevailing wind direction?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Do you know? I have not been asked that. In the city, that would be interesting though, because when we were looking to buy in the city, they had high wind zones.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

And that was to do with if you could add a second story to your house without consent. No, there was a special consent you had to get. I can't remember, it was so long ago. But like that, the wind in the city is important. The wind in Carpenter.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Less so all right. The washing normally doesn't fly away. No. Is the home sheltered?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Again, I don't really get asked that a lot. But should you can see? Yeah, you can kind of like I mean it's common sense, isn't it? Really? I mean, sometimes I might say, oh, it's it's really sheltered in if it like there's this pipe place over the tracks up in the hills that is very sheltered, for example. So I might if it was particularly sheltered, I might point that out. Oh, look, you don't get a lot of wind here. But most yeah, it's a weird question, right?

Noise From Roads Trains Planes

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Is there a is there a noise from traffic, trains, planes? That's an interesting one. I get asked this a lot. With the expressway. Anyone that comes over here, they go, Oh, is there much noise here? Yeah, none. You know, we record this in my podcast studio that's facing the road, literally. There are cars flying by and trucks. The only time I guess it gets a bit noisier is when there is sirens, like if there is a police car or ambulance or that's not very common though, right?

unknown 6:20

No.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

No, no, we can sometimes hear the train like what it's not a what is it? Like the toting sound of the train. There must be a word for that. You know the sound. She's looking at me like, what, what? We can yeah, that sound. Cool. Um, but not often. And then obviously we're all on a flight path, but the planes are tiny, so I personally don't hear them, but my husband George does. He's more sound sensitive. We did sell a property on Raumati Road, and that was quite close to the expressway. It it had hush glass in the bedroom, but not in the main living space. But when you go inside the house and close the doors, you couldn't really hear the expressway noise. But when we had the open home, we had all the doors and the windows open. So some people more sensitive to noise than others. Okay.

Flooding Erosion And Red Flags

SPEAKER_01 7:15

And the next one I have for you, is there a danger of flooding or erosion? Would you know those things?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Uh, we do check ponding because the council publishes that. So that's part of our due diligence when we're listing a house. Erosion, I guess that's probably coastal erosion. That's a hot topic. We won't get into that today. People have strong feelings about whether that's real or not. But uh, if it is marked as a zone with the council mappings, we will disclose it.

Redevelopment Rumours And LIM Reports

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Okay. And then we've got any major redevelopment plans for the area.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

That would probably be like on Carpenter Road, you know, there's the horse paddock development that was rumoured for many, many years to be coming, and now every now and again they they do something down there, and you're like, oh cool, it's starting, and then they stop. So we would tell them if there was something that we knew of, even if it's a rumour, would say, look, there's supposedly a development going there. We haven't heard anything specific. Yeah. Like we do tell them that.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

And I guess this is why it's important to get LIM reports because they will have some of that information. Resource consents and stuff, yeah. Awesome. Are there any zoning restrictions?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

I mean, we only do residential listings, so I guess that might be for the city, maybe. This is like a Westpac list for the whole of New Zealand, so I don't know. I haven't noticed anything like that because we only deal with residential.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

But I wonder if they also mean like, you know, I'm in a development where we're not allowed to do XYZ.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Well, yeah, I think there's a question about that like further down. So covenants and easements and things like, are you allowed to put up a fence or are you allowed to have a caravan parked on your driveway? Can you change your cladding or paint your front door bright pink? Things like that. Yeah, we definitely have to disclose that sort of thing.

Covenants Easements And Title Types

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Cool. What type of title does the property have? Again, this information will be available with your property pack.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Definitely. So cross lease or freehold is our usual two most frequent types of title. I spend a lot of time with buyers explaining what cross lease is. I'm hoping the mortgage brokers and the lawyers also do that. I think that they do. But it's funny because even on a cross lease, they'll go, so which bit of the land is mine? And we have to explain what it is and how you know it's a jointly owned bit of land. But then I stand on the driveway and I'm like, look, their car has to get into their garage. So you wouldn't be able to park right here, for example. And then they go, Oh, okay. So you could park on this side of the driveway, so you're not blocking their garage. And then it's quite common sense, really. It's just about being courteous.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yep. And this is how neighbors at wars start.

Protected Trees And Council Fines

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Okay. Uh any protection orders on trees or buildings?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

So protected trees is quite common in Waikinae, and that shows up on your limb. And it's really worth checking the limb or the building file, you know, when you're looking into the property with your due diligence. The agent should also disclose it as well, because you don't want to cut down a protected tree and then get a fine. How big is the fine? I don't actually know.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

I I I don't know why, but I recall like $5,000 or $10,000, like quite a big fine if you do something.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

It's it's not worth finding out, is it? You would want to know.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

And council keeps track of them.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Yeah. We have had a property that was sold and it boarded a reserve, and the advice from the council was you're not allowed to enter the reserve and cut down any trees, but you are allowed to cut down branches that overhang your property. But I always just said, hey, look, check with the council if in doubt, get it in writing, like make sure before you cut that you don't do the wrong thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Okay.

Boundary Mistakes And Fence Assumptions

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Is oh what are the bound where are the boundaries?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Oh yeah. There was an REA complaint about that that we looked at as a case study at one point where the agent had specifically said that the boundary was where the fence line was. And it turned out that it wasn't. The homeowner had just built the fence because they wanted to build it there, and there was a planned cycle path to go through that. Yeah, your eyes are telling a story. There was a planned cycle path to go through. So the cycle path was within the fenced area, and these poor people had to move their fence back, and they had lots of cyclists going through where they thought their property was. So we never say where the fence exactly is. We always pull up the title. Like my favorite thing is to pull up the title and say, here's the boundary of the where the property boundary is. This is roughly where we think it is, but a lot of them don't have boundary pegs clearly seen. So we always refer it back to the lawyer as well, double checking.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Wow, that's a really cool story.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah. Not for the people involved.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Not for the people involved, not at all. Okay.

Renovations And Subdivision Reality

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Is the home suitable to renovate? I don't even understand that question. Like, surely every house can be renovated.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Unless it can't. And surely you can see it with your eyes.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah, I mean, it's weird, isn't it? That that question is even on here. Yeah, I wonder who is. Like, what were they thinking?

SPEAKER_01 12:30

When they're I mean, not in the mean way, but like what was the reasoning behind it?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah. They must have a scenario where you couldn't or you could renovate a house. Maybe like if it's got asbestos in it and Or maybe it's like where the agent could just say, Hey, look, if you move the hot w water cylinder from here and put in gas, you could gain back some kitchen space or something like that, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

I don't know. It could be spuckulating. It could be. Okay, and could the section be subdivided?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Now that is always a council question. If we have it in writing from the council that it can be, then we provide a copy of that email. Otherwise, we refer them back to the council for checking. Because that's not up to us to approve or decline. Like that's a that's a council, totally within the council responsibility to tell people whether they qualify or not. But we'll try and find out. Like we just had one down on Manley Street, and that question came up over and over and over. So we went to the council and we said, Can you put it in writing whether you can or not? And the guy sort of said, Well, you probably could, but here's a load of things to consider. So we don't want to be giving out the wrong information. So we just said, can we pass your email without his email address in it to buyers to read? Because it was quite detailed. And then can they go to the council and have a chat knowing that information?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Hmm, that's really good.

Wrap Up And Part Three

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Now we're gonna wrap up here and we're gonna do part three. So stay tuned.