The Search Begins

My rural rental adverts in the Friday Trader and Wednesday Mover brought two replies. One was an offer to live in the Ormmondville School which is situated near to Dannevirke and therefore is too far away. The second was for a 100 year old farm cottage with one acre of grazing at Maraekakaho, west of Hastings. It was part of a family farm that has been slowly cut up for lifestyle blocks. The landlord told me he felt that there wasn't enough grazing, especially as Maraekakaho is extremely dry and hot and doesn't have much grass growth. However I felt I would regret it if I didn't take a look so Tuesday morning my brother Richard, his friend Lorraine and I drove out to see what the property was like.

We met the landlord at the cenotaph in the middle of Maraekakaho and followed him down a little winding shingle drive amongst other houses to this tiny cottage. I couldn't see that there an acre with this place- maybe a quarter and although they had a lot of rain recently the grass that was there wouldn't have lasted two days for Briar. The remaining farm land is leased out to someone else so no more grazing available. The promised double garage turned out to be a series of woodsheds. The house was rough but livable- by the sounds of it they had only recently moved the toilet inside as it used to be in the wash house (which was outside and darkly depressing consisting of only a tub behind a door). Afterwards Lorraine gave her opinion that the place wasn't worth $185 rent a week and she was right. It had some things going for it but there was a lot against and by the sounds of it the landlord has a high turnover of tenants in there.

I came home, rewrote my advertisements to be more specific and placed these back in the trade magazines. I am still waiting for a reference from my current landlord- even put a message on their answerphone a week ago with no success. The Tenancy Tribunal advised me to give prospective landlords Ken's phone number plus show my bank statements which will demonstrate that I pay my rent regularly. The guy I spoke to heartened me by saying that I have strong record as a good tenant as I have lived here for eight years- a bad tenant would have been thrown out long ago.

I have begun going through all my unopened boxes of stuff sorting out the rubbish to be thrown away from things I need to keep and items that I can put up for sale on Trademe (I have added a permanent link to my auctions to the left of this blog). Hopefully I will be able to earn money to pay for the move so I don't have to take a loan. I am now extremely determined to buy my own place so I have some security in life.