If you want to live in a flat and have a semblance of urban life in Aotearoa, downtown Wellington is one of your two options. Since there is currently no downtown Christchurch, the other option is Auckland, and – let’s face it, you’re not reading “It’s An Auckland Life,” are you? It’s with downtown residences […]
Entries Tagged as 'real estate'
Moving To Wellington: The CBD Experience
March 9th, 2012 2 Comments
Tags: real estate · wellington survival guide
Starting the Future
December 31st, 2011 Comments Off on Starting the Future
On a soggy, southerly-blasted New Year’s Eve, Wazzer, and more of Ram’s acquaintances than he was expecting, are packed into Ram’s apartment. They came to have a yarn with their mate. They came because the poor weather made their own porches and verandas a bad idea. And they came to have a peek inside of […]
Tags: real estate · wazzer
The Thirties House
October 12th, 2011 Comments Off on The Thirties House
Winona, at her sister Helena’s house to survey baby hand-me downs, looks around and sighs. She remembers when this house on a Hutt Valley hill was the archetypical Wellingtonians-in-their-thirties house. In these newly acquired abodes, the purchasers spent all the money on the mortgage, or the baby, or the mortgage and the baby. The house […]
Tags: helena · real estate · style · winona
IAWL Doesn’t Like….Housing Anxiety All Around
March 7th, 2011 Comments Off on IAWL Doesn’t Like….Housing Anxiety All Around
Usually we keep it positive in editorial entries here (empanadas at the City Market this weekend!) but we are all worked up about housing this week. A piece in the NZ Herald talks about flat hunting in Auckland but this tale of woe – the 5-month search, the desperate grooming to look like a presentable […]
Tags: migrants · other cities · real estate
My Welly Valentine, II
February 14th, 2011 Comments Off on My Welly Valentine, II
Will and Winona have settled in for a romantic Valentine’s evening. A bottle of good red wine; a thin, crisp pizza; a small box of chocolates; and Will’s iPad, scrolling real estate ads. Together, they are planning their future. “I’d like…a place with some character. Except warm, and insulated, and with heating.” “Walking distance from […]
Tags: real estate · will · winona
Wellywood Magic
October 8th, 2010 Comments Off on Wellywood Magic
Meanwhile, up the coast, Frankie, recently made redundant from Winona’s office, is dealing with the challenges of her new vocation. With her redundancy payout and a little loan on her little house, yearning to be free of an office in late middle age, she has started up her own business. Everyone who visits her cleverly […]
Tags: celebrity · frankie · real estate
Valley of the Bachelors
August 13th, 2010 Comments Off on Valley of the Bachelors
There are only three escapes from the Flat of Legend. Moving in with a very serious partner – going overseas – or, for males, taking up their post in The Valley of the Bachelors. In Wellington, three features mark the abodes of men who choose to live alone after they turn thirty-five. Be they blokes […]
Tags: blokes · real estate · unreal estate
Not A Jolly Holiday
June 7th, 2010 Comments Off on Not A Jolly Holiday
Wazzer is bracing herself for tonight. Queen’s Birthday. A public holiday. The bar where she’s the night manager is open, levying a 15% surcharge. The slightly plumper paycheck she will receive does not compensate for the resulting annoyance. Customers will be few and crabby. Tips, in short supply at this time of year without tourists, […]
Tags: real estate · wazzer · willow
The Flat of Legend
May 14th, 2010 2 Comments
Flatting isn’t always bad. When flat veterans are in a more mellow mood, they will talk to each other, in hushed and reverent tones, about the Flat of Legend. Somewhere in the mists of Aro Valley, up a leafy side street, there is the Flat of Legend. On winter nights when the Pleiades shine unimpaired, […]
Tags: old city · real estate · social mores · unreal estate · welly at its best
My Squalor Was More Squalid
May 12th, 2010 1 Comment
Winona has joined Will and his co-workers for after work drinks. One of them has asked where Winona is working, and gotten more than he bargained for as she describes her ongoing interviewing experiences with the Department of Stodge. “…so then I spent all afternoon taking those bizarre employment-fitness psychological tests. The ones where they […]
Tags: beer · real estate · social mores · will · winona