hi again joanne,
some shops for you to look up are as follows:
big discount warehouse, briscoes, liam neeson (electrical shop), the warehouse, farmers (deparment store)
Estate agents : Harcourts
bay of plenty, yes have heard of it but know somebody from our village who moved there and she didn't like it but don't let that put you off. we used to call her lemon face in our village behind her back because she looked like she sucked them. she weren't a friend. just another mum in the school who if she liked you she would give you a nice smile but if she didn't like you so much, you got the lemon face smile! lol.
don't think mortgages are restricted to time limit nor is life insurance. just got life insurance but we are personally waiting for dollar to be worth more for the pound as our money is still in barclays bank, uk although if you do want to open up an account with the bank, westpac, you can opt to keep your money in pounds sterling here in the nz bank but we have andy's mum taking care of it as a third party to our bank account so when the time if right, she can transfer it.
what are you looking for and what made you choose the bay of plenty? we can get a four bedroom house, two lounges, one dining room, 2 bathrooms on 1000sq metres of land for approximately $300,000-$400,000 although you are better off buying one off an estate agents that has been recalled because people have failed to pay the mortgage. twas a beauty in the local paper this week but we missed the deadline date this week. we shipped our furniture with pickfords but don't bring you car as we got a 1996 nissan sunny from kapiti cars for $5995 and it has good bodywork and runs like a dre (hope I ain't tempted fate for it to pack up next week ha ha!) and it has only done 67,000kms and i had it checked by AA and had odometer tested myself for $120 to make sure odo had not been put back but it is genuine! Cost of furniture was (pounds)3,500 plus (pounds)950 insurance and it took 10 weeks to arrive.
i would advise use pickfords because they have an office of pickfords in wellington whereas if you use another removal firm and they don't have an office here, then they use an agents and it can cause all sorts of problems but with pickfords, you only deal with them.
to be honest, if you can find an unfurnished rental, do what we did for 10 weeks. buy a nice patio table and chairs to eat off, buy beanbags and tv for the lounge with some rimu wicker chairs, sleep on blow up beds and just pack your duvet covers and because we came in summer, well we didn't need duvets/buy your pillows in the warehouse, $9 each or thereabouts and make do with salvation army plates/saucepans etc. just to get you by.
my friend who lives here, they paid $525 per week for a small two bedroom furnished rental property compared to us paying $290 per week for unfurnished three bedroom rental and although we have a current small garden like they had, well we do not want to do anybody elses garden personally hence why a small garden is ok for us for the time being.
i would not have wanted to have "started again" as some things are important to us like certain bits of furniture etc. and our dinner set and stuff and CD's and my Freddie Mercury oil painting (sad I know but I was/am a huge Queen fan!) and he is now back on my wall ha ha!
you just got to decide whether you prefer spending money for the sake of 10 weeks without your sofa and bed etc. or whether you prefer to save the money!
with regard to your husband being a joiner and not being qualified, i will look into this in the week and get back to you. depends if there is a professional body for it, like a trade. i will look up and find out and get back to you.
anyway, got to go for now!
linda. x