 Hey, welcome back to my YouTube channel guys. Today we have a Christy and we love Christy. Everybody misses Christy. So we had to bring Christy back. How are you guys the best? Yes, everybody. So many messages, but they don't call you Christy. They call you everything but Christy. They call you Christy, Chris. Not really her name. Her name is Christy with a T. Anyway, today we're going to talk a little bit about houses and how they're different in New Zealand compared to the US. New Zealand is in a bit of a housing crisis and I always get this question, so I thought I would answer the question today talking with Christy about some of the housing differences between the two countries because they are quite different. Oh girl, good to see you. It's been so long. I'm liking the green. Thank you. Good. So is it left over from St. Patrick's Day? Well, I would love to say that it's left over from the clearance rack that I found it on the Benton and the Men's Isle. The Men's Isle? I know. I was like, this green is fantastic. You know, and it's spring here. It's spring. What is it there again? It's spring here. It's, what is it? We're going right, we're going into fall and winter. So it's, yeah. OK, so like, I love fall. Do you like fall? Well, yeah, yeah. It's rainy and windy the last couple of days here. But yeah, it's OK. It's not the same. It's not like leaves are falling. So what's nice about New Zealand is that it's always green. So there's not like, you know, like in not everywhere in the US, but in Wisconsin, you lose all the leaves. And so for months on end, everything looks desolate and boring and ugly. Great. Gray or brown seem to be the colors of the Wisconsinites in the winter. Yes. And so it's so when spring comes, there's a lot of rain in Wisconsin. And then you finally get the flowers and it's so exciting. But it's mud. It is. I know. And now we have, you know, football season in 2021. Oh, that's true. They're having football season in the spring, which is normally a fall sport. So that's weird. I saw your son's touchdown the other day. It was, I know that was the first time he started in a game. And I'm like, I'm going to be calm. I'm going to be calm. I'm going to be calm. If he gets the ball, he gets the ball. It is what it is. He got the ball and went for a touchdown. I literally about died. Oh, I would have loved to have seen that. You would have gone crazy. Let's do a little reenactment. What's a reenactment of what you did at the game? So I'm videotaping because that's what I do. It's to try to get myself calm. So I'm like, you're just going to be calm. And then I hit a cowbell. No. Oh my gosh. It's so fun. Yeah, where's my cowbell? It's over there. Next time, I will show you how the cowbell. OK, you have a cowbell, like literally? Yeah, when the kids, OK, in Kimberly, that's where we are. If when you make varsity, you get a cowbell with your number on it and your parents get it for the games. Oh my gosh. It's so fantastic. Yes, and the question from the New Zealanders are, does anybody want to sit next to you? No, they don't. They don't want to sit next to you. But everybody with a cowbell is fine with it. That's so funny. I have not heard of that. We never had cowbells when we were kids. Oh, right. I like the hair. It's poofing. Your hair is poofing. Fix it, fix it. Oh, is it poofing right here? I just got it. Wait, hold on, no, guys. I just got it done. It looks good. It's really fine. Because I was very gray. Yeah, well, that's what we're going for. Blonde because it's really either white or mouse gray, which then makes me look like I'm anemic or something strong with my liver. It's fine. I'm good. I'm good. OK, so let's talk about our topic today, housing. How are houses different in New Zealand compared to America? Because this is a question I get from New Zealanders about what they see on TV. Are the houses really that nice? And it seems like the bathrooms and the kitchens and everything is really fancy. And no, not everybody. Don't believe everything you see on TV. Or on the Facebook. Or on the Facebook. I think there's houses in New Zealand that are huge because you guys are up in the mountains. Yeah, yeah, so our house right now is extra. Well, our house was built in an American style, which I didn't really know until I someone's like, did you know that you're in the American house? And I'm like, nope. And then like now that I look around, I'm like, no wonder why I liked it. Feels like home. Who knew? I didn't, you know, you don't really think about it. So yeah, so we used to own a construction company. So I'm very familiar with how things work in a house. And so today I just thought I'd highlight some key differences that I think you might be surprised about in talking about the differences. So first of all, let's talk about prices to buy a house or to rent a house. Well, let me just start with renting. If you're going to rent a house, you're going to pay per week. You're going to pay per month. Per, people only want to live there per week? Yeah, so you, that's just the way it is. They pay per week. So like when you are looking at rent in the US, you're always going to look per month. I've never seen anywhere in the US where it's per week, but you know, probably has because every time I say anything on here, it's like, it's not true in my case. Okay. And so the average rent in New Zealand, I just checked the number was around 550 per week. So you can times that by four is the average rent per month. Okay, what size house are we talking about? Average is what we're talking about one bedroom or three bedrooms, one bathroom. Three bedrooms, one bathroom. So you're like a single family. This isn't like an apartment, but like our average rents are expensive. So a lot of people will rent a house for say 500 and then they'll get some flatmates to share it. And that's how they can afford it cause it's per week. Wow. Wow. So how much, how much are rents, would you say, if you even know in your area? Like I don't, I can tell you what Milwaukee would have been. Do you guys have duplexes there? Like there are duplexes of thing? Yeah, I've seen some. Yeah, there's duplexes. So duplexes would be two houses that are connected. That's a lot of what we've got going. Oh, okay. A lot of duplexes are for sale and they're super nice. So the cheapest I've seen right now is, let's see, for like a three bedroom would be like 900 a month. A month. Two, 1500 a month. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it would be in Milwaukee as well cause I've rented a lot of three bedroom houses. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so that's great. So it's quite more expensive here. Yeah, but our, you know, minimal wage is higher. You generally make more money than you would there. So, so the price, the average price of a house here, this was a 2019 statistic and we're in a housing crisis which is driving the prices up. So it's much higher now, but like the average sale price was 700,000 and that's just for a basic house. Yeah. Okay, those are like well over a million now and they're like, okay. Okay, those are what we would call California prices. Right, exactly. Los Angeles, like Hollywood, like Wisconsin, no. No, okay, I've always bought in pretty cheap houses in the US. I've never spent more than 200,000. Well, that's cause you flip them and then make them fantastic and then you can sell them cause you're smart. I'm not handy at all. So anyway, that's beside the point. I would say the house is here right now. We're okay in the area we live in because the school district is a big deal and the sports are a big deal where we are. Well, and we're known for academics too. So we kind of, and we're a small community sort of. Everybody wants to be here. So right now you cannot find a house. So when you go to sell your house right now you can sell it for probably $40,000 to $70,000 more. Oh, nice. So what's like a price of a house? So like an average house, yeah. So like my house right now, I think we bought in, it's a, it's 2,500 square feet. Super cute and probably almost a half an acre. It is, we bought it for 230. We could sell it probably for 280 right now. Yeah, and it's still a fixer upper. It's like older. It still needs to be painted and updated and we could still sell it for that. If it's new, I don't even know. I don't look at those prices because I can't afford it. Yeah, so in essence, it's cheaper to live in Wisconsin than it is in New Zealand. Okay, I wanna know what do people look for? Like in Wisconsin, everybody's looking. It seems to be open concept and bathrooms and kitchens seem to be the thing. Yeah, that's a great question. And that leads me into my next point is one of the big things that people look for when they're renting or buying a house is heating. They didn't figure out heating in New Zealand until relatively recently. And so, yes. Okay, so we are from Wisconsin, which gets zero degrees freezing for months on end, snow, ice, everything, but negative numbers, like freezing. But we don't ever live like colder than 72 degrees indoors. Like 72 degrees Fahrenheit would be like 22 Celsius here. Okay, so you're never cold when you're in your house, but here in New Zealand, they didn't put insulation in houses until recently. I mean, recently being like the last 10 years or whatever. And so it's cold. Like I used to be in a house that was a much older home where it was warmer outside than it was in the winter because we don't get winters like that. So we don't get really, really cold. So we'll get it cold as like 50 degrees Fahrenheit. You know, it's like it's not that cold, but with the wind and the rain, and it can feel very chilly. So just imagine though that that temperature when you are having no insulation. No, I can't imagine it. What, and with the rain, do you guys have to worry about flooding in the houses that you're in? Like do you have a question? There aren't basements. People don't really have basements. No basements. Yeah, there's gotta be reasons it has to be with the soil. I know one of my friends put in a basement and it flooded. So there must be reasons why people don't have it. And I really can't speak to that. But yeah, no, there's flooding that happens, but you know, lots of hills too. So the valleys watch out with the flooding. So yeah, so anyway, the heating is, so they're just starting like all new houses will have furnaces or like the gas heating, you know, with the radiators, but they're just figuring that out. So like probably the most common way to heat a house is by a heat pump, which is just like this thing that sits on your wall and it pumps out the heat. So it'll be very warm in that room, but when you go into the other room, when you go into the bathroom, it's freezing ass. Right, so there's no ventilation of the heat, like there's no, like everywhere. Yeah, and like saw this first house that I rented, we were open the closet and they had these big rubber bottles. And I was like, what is this? And then we're like, why would we ever use this? Until it was winter time. And so people literally use heating bottles in their beds. So they fill it up with hot water, they put it under their covers. And so when you get in bed, it's nice and warm. And I was like, I feel like water's gonna get all over my bed. So it's kind of like back in the day, water beds, except you only have a bottle, like rain on it. That, I'm just saying. It works. I just got the money. Because electricity is also expensive here. So like people weren't trying to use electric blankets. So it was like a cheap way to heat up your bed because I've never been so cold in my life. I used to get up and make oatmeal for my two year old. I had a winter coat on my head on my gloves on. I'm like, because it's not warm in that room yet. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. It was so cold. It was so cold. They live cold and they just wear, they're just used to wearing merino, which is like the nice, thinner material. And they just are just used to just all living in one room in the winter. Yeah, I bet. I'd be like, what, this is the warm room here it is. Yeah. Because it's expensive. So gas or electric, electric is really expensive. And so my house had only electric heat and then a gas fireplace. But so that one, what room with the gas fireplace? But then it's like the windows, like they didn't, they just, they weren't double paint. Like all the hot air would just go on out. It was not good. Do people heat your houses by fireplace then? Like is it like- Yeah, yeah, that's real popular. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's real popular. Oh, okay. Yes, but you know, like with any fireplace, it's gonna be just in one room or two rooms. Like and then your bedrooms upstairs are gonna be freezing. Freezing, I know. We have a fireplace, so nice. But it's like, it's super hot. I get like sweaty in the room that it's in, but then you're freezing when you walk five feet away from it, you know? Yes, absolutely. I don't get how it heats like that, but it does. Now, what about garages? Yes. Okay, you all have garages. How many garages? How many cars fit in it? Yeah, so we have, the last two houses have had a two car garage where they'll have a one car garage or they'll have like that covering where you can park under. They'll do that here. So yeah, garages are big and, you know, especially for people that work in the trades, definitely want a garage. Okay. So some of the other, so number three I would say is, let's talk a little bit about like, I would say like they have really nice stuff here, but I think the way that you can design your kitchen or your bathroom in the US is quite different. Like a lot more granite countertops, like countertop options, I would say. Like they do their kitchens, I would say really well here and some of their en suite. So they'll make the nice bathroom, the one that's attached to the master bedroom. Sure, yeah. All right, yeah. So yeah, so there, I just feel like in the US, there's a lot more options. Like even your cheap option is really nice, whereas like your cheapest toilet here is still really expensive and like, ooh. Yeah, so. What do you think is the selling point, the best selling point in New Zealand for a house? Is it location and view because you guys live in like the Garden of Eden? Or is it the size of the house or like what is it, location? What is it? Well, of course I would depend by person. I mean. How I suppose you're right. Like if I am, for me I've moved across the world, I need to look like I live somewhere. Like I'm not living in a neighborhood. So I really want a view. So this house, we have a view. We just rent, but I like, I just, we lived in a neighborhood. I'm like, I could live in a neighborhood anywhere. I want to look like I'm living in New Zealand. So at least be by the bush or be by the water or have something. And so that's just me personally. So I think that that's a big one. Although it's funny because I live in the hills and the hills tend to be cheaper than, you know, down in the valley because of the convenience of everything. And so, and so it's great for me because I'd rather have a movie inconvenient. I would rather have a view too. That is awesome. No. Yeah. Are your houses on top of each other? Like, you know how, like, is there spacing in between houses? Yeah, I would say the spacing is pretty good. Some of the areas like closer to the beaches, the houses are pretty close and the spacing is not as good. And I wouldn't say that they don't have like huge, huge yards. I think certain areas, like I noticed when I was driving through Christchurch they had really big properties, you know, just kind of depends. And then some people have like lifestyle blocks where they have acres and acres and acres of farmland or, you know, so it all depends. You know, you can kind of get what you want here. So, and it's so nice because not everything looks the same. So like there isn't like cookie cutter, every house looks the same. I mean, I haven't seen it much. There's a little bit in the new builds like that, but I love it. All the houses have their totally different look to them. So. See, that's nice. I feel like sometimes we get a little cookie cutter-ish. Yeah, I don't like that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I just bought a brand new house. Aren't you so excited? And then there's 50 of them that look just like it. Oh, but my trim is maroon and yours is gray. So that's how we know the difference, like. No. No, let's not do it. I know it's efficient. I know. It's exciting. It's true. And so one little thing I want to highlight for you, and I'll put a picture up here for when I edit this, but like there are, how do I say this? There are switches on their outlets to turn it on and off on every outlet. So the outlet that you're not supposed to touch because you could electrocute yourself, there's a switch on it. A switch. Because apparently there's like a little bit of power that's run to it when it's on. And so to save on electricity, you have to turn a switch. So just imagine how many outlets I have in this house. Which means you have switches to turn everything on and off. Yeah. And so people, like whenever I have people over there noticing that they're turning all these switches off and I'm like, I don't even notice the switches. I'm not used to the switches. I haven't got used to the switches, but they're everywhere and it's crazy. Because your lights just automatically go off. Like you're like, hey, who touched the switch from down by the toilet there? Like how do you know? I'm like crazy. That doesn't really happen. I mean, it's nice to not have to unplug everything. Sometimes like Christmas lights, it's nice to just hit the switch. Yeah. That's great. How do you not go, you know what I mean? Like you would have to be careful. Yes, we do have control over not putting our finger in the outlet, Christy. I'm just saying it's real close. It's, it's. I mean, and we taught our babies in Wisconsin. You, first of all, you have to buy all those plastic things that you shove in there so nobody can electrocute themselves. Right. It didn't sense to me. I was like, I'm shoving that in there. I hope that doesn't cause an issue. But anyway, and now you people have your electric switch. Don't touch that, don't touch that. And then here, go ahead and play with the switch over here. How do you teach your children that? Interesting. Well, you know, a funny story is I can't tell you how many times I've heard kids saying, oh, it's my job to turn off all of you. It's more of their job to turn it off than because there's so many. And people like really, I just, I'd really like to know the study about how much electricity that really uses. I've asked an electrician because I'm like, yeah, really, like, does that really in there? They say there is, but you know, I'm not an expert, but it's interesting. It's something different when you move here. And then the last thing I wanted to mention that's different about housing is gardens are such a big thing in New Zealand because, wow, the soil is great. But also I think it's because it doesn't have winter. You know, like I wonder if like big parts of like warmer areas of the U.S. have gardens, but garden, like people do garden tours, like garden tours are big, people are always talking about their garden because it's something that you can use all year. Right? It's like you get a different, vegetables and fruits and flowers that grow all year at different times. And so I have had houses that have amazing gardens and it's like, I feel really bad that I'm the tenant. Yeah. How many of them have you ever planted? Yeah, I don't even know what's a weed here, what the weeds look like here. I would be pulling them all out going, oh, I guess that's a carrot. Sorry, it looked like a weed to me. I didn't know. And so, but it was amazing. And I really appreciated what they did because it was like every month there's new blooms and it was all organized and they did that on purpose and it's just amazing. And like fruit trees everywhere, like I had olive trees, grapefruit trees, lime trees, lemon trees, fijoa trees. I mean, just in your house, by your house, it's amazing. It's really fun. It's really fun. Like I am so not a gardener. If I had time maybe, like maybe in the future, that's me, but people really talk about it a lot. Do you like hire somebody to do it? Like I honestly would have no idea. People buy me a plant because they find that funny. They want to see how long I can keep it alive. It's a joke to buy you a plant. For like two days. Yeah, my plant I just got is outside now because I didn't realize I should water it. I thought it was supposed to look crispy like that. Like I thought it was just supposed to kind of be like. You thought it was supposed to look crispy? Wow, so good. I just really did. I thought it did and they were like somebody came over who's more of a green thumb. That's what we call it over here if you're good at gardening as a green thumb. Right. Like a good green thumb. Yeah, mine is not green thumb, mine's black. They're afraid of me. I should be on a poster and the Home Depot that we buy the plants. Don't get to buy them. Yeah, because I was home when I was raising my kids and I really tried to do gardens when I was, and I did, I did like that square foot garden and it was like, but it was too good. You know, like I had cucumbers and zucchini. I remember that with this big and huge pumpkins and then it would just sit there and like, I don't know even what to do with this. How am I going to eat all this? I don't even look good at all. I don't want to eat it. We didn't let us and because they were little seeds I just had a really good time being like, whoa, look at us, look at the seeds. Okay, nobody can eat this much lettuce in a lifetime. I mean, I was like clipping lettuce going, you gotta, can you wear it or something? We can't eat it all. I mean, we had so much lettuce. Oh my gosh, so much lettuce. But yeah, we've tried that here. Wisconsin likes their gardens too, but they're into canning then. If you do gardens, you're into like canning. You guys do that too? Yep, okay. Yeah, and I was super glad you said the Fajoa tree because I was going to call it a Fajuti tree because I forgot the name of it. So thank you for reminding me. And it's Fijoa, I always say Fajoa and I get corrected a thousand times. So Fijoa, Fijoa, Fijoa, oh and they're in season and girl, I have a lot of company, so many. How are you going to ship that to me? You got to figure out how to ship that to me. I do need to figure out how to ship that to you. Girl is so good. Like you just put it with whipped cream. Anyway, we can talk about this forever. That's next. Okay, so any other differences? No, though, I just thought I'd highlight a couple for you today and for the audience so they can kind of get some ideas on what it's like living in the houses in New Zealand. So, but it was good to catch up with you today, Kristie, I won't keep you and it was great to see you. I love to see you, I love to see you. Thank you guys for coming to us, we'll see ya. Bye girl.