Two Americans emigrate to New Zealand from Colorado,
USA.
We talk about
our life in Nelson, New Zealand.
Once residency was granted, we decided that we wanted to move mid-year. Angela felt it was the best time to leave her job and we both thought we couldn’t really tolerate more than 4 months to wait any more! We’d waited enough. So, we determined that early July would be the right time to move.
We talked often of what we would do with our house and all our belongings. First, we decided to sell the house. It was put up for sale in early March 2006. We had an early interested bite, but no luck. Weeks went on and the market in Colorado seemed to be plummeting every day. With so few people looking at our house, we were very worried we’d not sell it before we planned to leave. And initially we had concerns about the possibility of the house selling before we left for New Zealand … THAT was never to come to pass!
As each month went on, we became more desperate. April, May, then June. The house hadn’t sold. We were firm on our date, we were leaving early July whether we continued to be homeowners or not. All the paperwork could be signed from abroad and a sale completed, so no problem. Of course, paying a mortgage was an issue.
As it turned out, our house didn’t sell before July and to this date hasn’t sold to this date. The real estate market has completely nose-dived in Colorado and in the following months the entire country joined the party. We decided to pay the mortgage from our savings and leave for New Zealand. Our realtor updated us regularly and we had one glimmer of hope in the fall of 2006 with a single dad and two daughters. Our hearts were broken to learn he’d chosen a different house in the end.
That our house didn’t sell for all those months was really the only depressing thought we had throughout our move. It was the heaviest albatross possible, with cash going out of our accounts every month. By the time October came around, we’d had it, and quickly turned toward becoming landlords with the prospect of the house staying empty over the winter months.
We hired a property manager and it was less than two months before the place had tenants. And how lucky we were to have done that, because Colorado has seen one of its worst winters. If our house had remained empty, we would have had big problems. As it was, a pipe burst in the kitchen in January. We consider ourselves so fortunate that tenants were there to have everything fixed.
Either way, we have a lease on the place and will look to sell at the earliest opportunity. It’s definitely a drag to us to have this outstanding “issue” back in the States, but when you’re powerless to do anything, you can wallow about it or choose to move on. Neither of us regrets our decision to leave as planned and not allow the house situation to get us down or change our minds.
We likewise opted to sell both our cars, after briefly considering shipping Don’s car over. The sale of the cars netted us some cash for moving expenses and setting up expenses. Don’s car sold almost immediately in March and we thought we’d have a much tougher time with Angela’s big SUV (Chevy Tahoe). It was for sale for many weeks, but mid-May a buyer came along who took it off our hands in a matter of days. With the sale of the truck, we’d be car-less for nearly 6 weeks, but we couldn’t say no to the deal. We would just have to figure out what to do after it was all said and done. Luckily, we didn’t have to think too hard, as our good friends John and Star came to our rescue and lent us one of their 3 cars to use until we left. What a gift! That was really helpful.
back to Part 12: Preparing the cats | Immigration home | on to Part 13: Packing up and shipping our stuff, continued
