For the past 10 days, Jonathan and I have been staying with our friends Matt, Nicole, and their son Caden. They were kind enough to put us up while we looked for a place of our own to call home for the next month.
After traveling for the past 8 months, Jonathan and I have a bit of a system down for how to search, and what we’re looking for.
Usually, while lengthy, this process is fairly productive. We’re usually able to find, and move into a place rather quickly.
I’d thought that that would also be the case in Christchurch, New Zealand (where we arrived on 20 May 2010). I was wrong.
Christchurch ended up being the most difficult location yet. There are lots of hotels, lots of beach homes, and lots of rentals on the market. However, we ran into some problems.
The first challenge was being basically told we could have an apartment, and then have it be rented out to someone else.
Other furnished apartment owners / managers didn’t want someone for 4 weeks. They instead wanted someone either on a per night basis, or 6 months.
We had someone say they could rent us an apartment (based on pictures online), and then came back to tell us they didn’t own the place yet, but would see if they could take possession early.
Then, we had another apartment rented out from under us (after we waited outside in the cold / rain / snow all afternoon).
But, finally, a breakthrough. We’d finally started emailing real-estate agents to see if they could help. And, one did.
She found us this great apartment!
While we are so thankful to Matt, Nicole, and Caden for opening their home to us, we’re also happy that we don’t have to trespass on their hospitality too much.
We’ll still be getting together often!
We plan to be here in Christchurch for a month, exploring all that the south island of New Zealand has to offer.
Here are some of the websites we used when looking for apartment rentals in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Somehow, I had missed this video of your apartment, but now that you’re staying another month, got a little more determined and found it!! It’s very modern, but looks like you have everything you need :~ } YAY!
Yes, we really like it here in the apartment. Easy to just hunker down and work. Which has meant that we haven’t seen much of New Zealand (yet) in our 5 weeks in Christchurch, but I sure feel like we’re getting a lot of work done, so that’s good. We really love the under-tile heating, but don’t use it that often as it takes a while to heat up and the electric may have a higher cost here. Thanks for watching and commenting on it!
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