We Rejoin The Propertied Classes

Yes folks, after eight months of being tenants we have become homeowners again as of today.  Yay!
However, don't rush to update your address books just yet - we are not occupiers but landlords as the previous owners don't want to leave until the end of May, which suits us as our current lease doesn't expire until the beginning of June.  So we have bought the house and are now renting it back to them, which feels a little odd.  They have also invited us round for a BBQ in a couple of weeks' time, which will be even more odd: 'What do you mean, there are 2 light bulbs that need replacing and the toilet is blocked?  Oh, you want us to fix it.  Crikey, don't put the red wine down there, one of the children will knock it over and then you'll want the carpets cleaning...' etc, etc.  But I'm sure it will all be fine and we will inherit a perfectly presentable house in a few months!

Dave is finding not being able to move in right away a bit like not being allowed to play with new toys at Christmas, but we have lots of photos that we can flick through to refresh our memories and which you can check out here.  The house is about a 10 minute walk from where we are currently - you can find it on Google maps here.  Unfortunately, all that lovely beach on the other side of the road isn't accessible - it's probably another 10 minute walk to get to our nearest beach down Peacock Street, but the good points are (in no particular order):

• A big 'dick'
• Two decent heaters and a log burner.  You UK lot are probably going 'huh?  so what?' right now, but our current house (no more than 20 years old) has one wall-mounted fan heater and a log burner that doesn't get as hot as a decent hot water bottle as its sole sources of heat and that is normal for a Kiwi home.  It's pretty warm here now, but over the winter I found myself looking forward to doing the washing up as a way of raising my body temperature...
• A garden - not large by any standards, but it's really common in Auckland to find a huge house with a teeny garden.  I have plans for installing some more raised beds down on the grassed area and growing lots of vegetables
• Space to install a huge sandpit for the children
• Really close to 2 parks and the school Reuben will be going to later this year (it's the cluster of buildings nearly due south of our house in the Google maps image)
• From Reuben's point of view, the fact that his friend Jamie lives over the road at 773 is a big bonus too.

In our previous house buying experiences, we thought we'd bought something that needed minimal doing up and then discovered things were a lot shabbier after we moved in.  We think this one doesn't need anything doing to it, but we'll get back to you on that one after the end of May!