House buying

[Autech]

I'm currently looking at buying too for similar money.
One house that I'm looking at making an offer on tested positive for meth and they had to strip and clean the inside of the house. The report is in the LIM and it looks like they did a good job of cleaning the house and replacing alot of things but I'm not sure how it will affect the resale value.
What are people's views on buying a clean and renovated meth house?

Where are you looking to buy and what price range mate?


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[HEsch]

[QUOTE=Swoop;1131044566]You sound like a well structured and dedicated saver.

Yep that's me to a T - decide what I want and work to get there.
I got flatmates, who pay 2/3 of my mortgage for the privilege (???) of living with me, which means I can throw more at the mortgage. At the same time, I don't want to get sucked into only thinking about paying off the mortgage as quickly as I can, so I've balanced it with other savings/spending on 'fun' stuff. EG bought my first bike two months after the house

IF a person is a saver and not a "spend it now!!" person, look at an Orbit loan (ASB name for it, other banks will have similar).
This is essentially a huge cheque account overdraft. The advantage is that every last cent goes into it, so technically reducing the amount still owing. This makes the amount that is used to calculate your fortnightly repayment less = faster to pay off.
I swapped over from a reducing loan to this and it made a massive difference in getting the mortgage paid off. The bank wasn't keen on helping to move onto the Orbit, since they make less money from you...

With the low interest rates on savings, this is looking more and more attractive. I think it's usually structured so that you don't get any interest on the "offset" portion (essentially your 'savings') but also don't incur interest on an equal amount of your loan. I didn't look into it enough to decide whether it was a good idea for me, or not - ie can I only have a portion as an offset/Orbit type loan, or does it need to be the total loan? Because I think it is at the floating/variable rate, which is always higher, and subject to change much sooner than a fixed term loan.
Definitely need to check it out...

[Asher]

Where are you looking to buy and what price range mate?


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I'm looking for a renovated character house for less than 400k. Not too bothered about location but preferably something central.
Most of the places I have looked at are in Woolston, Marehau, Spreydon and Sydnam but the decomtaminated meth house is in Richmond.
I'm hoping to put an offer on it by the end of the week.

My situation is slightly different than others here, my girlfriend and I are pooling our kiwisaver together but that combined with the kiwisaver grant is less than 20% deposit so we are getting the loan guaranteed by HNZ. Hopefully we will hear back from them this week but I was going to talk to our mortgage broker today about how to best structure an offer without having our finances completely sorted.

[jasonu]

. May vary from council to council. .

Well that's fucking stupid. In a country as small as NZ one would think there could be a clear and concise level at which the house is either inhabitable or not.

[Moi]

Well that's fucking stupid. In a country as small as NZ one would think there could be a clear and concise level at which the house is either inhabitable or not.

I think the expression you want is Laissez-faire

[jasonu]

I think the expression you want is Laissez-faire

Naaa mate I think 'fucking stupid' sums it up.

[Moi]

Naaa mate I think 'fucking stupid' sums it up.

That as well!

[Zedder]

Well that's fucking stupid. In a country as small as NZ one would think there could be a clear and concise level at which the house is either inhabitable or not.

As I understand it, there isn't because the research was done around sites where meth was manufactured only and the information taken from that has been used out of context.

However, I see NZ has a single guideline from the Ministry of Health, unlike the USA, where it varies from state to state.

[R650R]

As I understand it, there isn't because the research was done around sites where meth was manufactured only and the information taken from that has been used out of context.

However, I see NZ has a single guideline from the Ministry of Health, unlike the USA, where it varies from state to state.

Its a bit ambiguous too as :The revised October 2016 MoH recommendations now define post decontamination levels based on whether meth contamination is due to the use of methamphetamine or due to the manufacture of methamphetamine: Where manufacture has occurred, the revised post decontamination recommendation remains at 0.5μg/100 cm2 (individual sample); Where use alone has occurred, the revised post decontamination recommendations are; 2.0 μg/100 cm2 uncarpeted properties (individual sample); 1.5 μg/100 cm2 carpeted properties (individual sample).
This is kinda crazy for several reasons as typically the wall surfaces are sampled, so pull out the carpet and you can claim higher safe level limit, when the walls will have had the same levels exposed no matter what....
Also the lower level of 0.5 only applies IF evidence of lab. So if property not raided by cops and the tenants and their gear are all gone before you test a house then you can say its 'safe' to new occupants....
Agent i spoke to says you can really smell strong smell when ti has been lab tho.

Anyway its all getting updated soon, I wouldnt want to be a landlord as I feel its going to get expensive, around 40% of tenanted properties are exposed to some degree... shows how big the problem is.

[Zedder]

Its a bit ambiguous too as :The revised October 2016 MoH recommendations now define post decontamination levels based on whether meth contamination is due to the use of methamphetamine or due to the manufacture of methamphetamine: Where manufacture has occurred, the revised post decontamination recommendation remains at 0.5μg/100 cm2 (individual sample); Where use alone has occurred, the revised post decontamination recommendations are; 2.0 μg/100 cm2 uncarpeted properties (individual sample); 1.5 μg/100 cm2 carpeted properties (individual sample).
This is kinda crazy for several reasons as typically the wall surfaces are sampled, so pull out the carpet and you can claim higher safe level limit, when the walls will have had the same levels exposed no matter what....
Also the lower level of 0.5 only applies IF evidence of lab. So if property not raided by cops and the tenants and their gear are all gone before you test a house then you can say its 'safe' to new occupants....
Agent i spoke to says you can really smell strong smell when ti has been lab tho.

Anyway its all getting updated soon, I wouldnt want to be a landlord as I feel its going to get expensive, around 40% of tenanted properties are exposed to some degree... shows how big the problem is.

It's about the carpet because of babies and toddlers who spend a lot of time on the floor. The pending NZ Standard will supercede the MoH recommendations and is meant to take care of any loose ends. Yes, it does appear to be a big problem.

[R650R]

It's about the carpet because of babies and toddlers who spend a lot of time on the floor. The pending NZ Standard will supercede the MoH recommendations and is meant to take care of any loose ends. Yes, it does appear to be a big problem.

Yeah I meant to add that. Getting a place tested at the moment, done a lot of research, will write up a summary of useful info in couple months.
One thing to know tho, the common prepurchase meth test is an average type thing. A 'tester' swabs multiple places and the samples all go into one pot or beaker/testtube as the case may be. Your final reading is an average which either tells you that there is no contamination (at the sampled 10cm/x10cm sites) or that there is some. The next stage of actually establishing location and how bad in an accurate way is about 10 times more expensive.
And that's assuming that the current owner hasmnt just wallpapered or painted over the contamination (which will eventually seep through).

[Asher]

The house we are looking at had another open home on sunday so we swung past to arrange a time to make an offer and noticed alot of fresh borer holes by the front entrance in the weather board. Had a look around the house again there was a huge amount along one entire side of the house. Probably hadn't noticed it before as borer are coming out of the wood now and the last 2 times I looked over the place was at night.
So I told the agent that unless the owner would accept a really low offer (40k below asking) we will be walking away.

[Grumph]

Bit of borer shouldn't put you off. Our place is over 125 years old and yes, shock horror, has some borer.
The affected walls didn't do any worse than the good ones in the quakes, in some ways actually better...

They're not like termites, I'd never write off a potential purchase cos of borer - and you can treat for it anyway.

As a side issue, I hear that borer doesn't like P contaminated timber....

[Asher]

Agreed but I don't know how bad it is behind the weather board, and we are paying the money for places that have had this sort of thing fixed already.

[Zedder]

Yeah I meant to add that. Getting a place tested at the moment, done a lot of research, will write up a summary of useful info in couple months.
One thing to know tho, the common prepurchase meth test is an average type thing. A 'tester' swabs multiple places and the samples all go into one pot or beaker/testtube as the case may be. Your final reading is an average which either tells you that there is no contamination (at the sampled 10cm/x10cm sites) or that there is some. The next stage of actually establishing location and how bad in an accurate way is about 10 times more expensive.
And that's assuming that the current owner hasmnt just wallpapered or painted over the contamination (which will eventually seep through).

What you've described is composite sampling as opposed to grab sampling which is one sample per test. Grab samples are advantageous in that you get either a positive or negative result for a particular area but a number of single grab samples are expensive, hence the use of composite sampling.

It'll be interesting to see some results.