However, while working from home a few days ago, I took a break to clean my kite. It was a nice day, not too much wind so I took it out to the driveway to brush off and fold. While out there, one of our neighbors happened to notice what I was doing. Her son, it turns out, owns a kitesurfing shop in Perth Australia and we started chatting.
After a little bit, things turned to real-estate (as they always do) and I asked if she knew anything about the house we're currently in. Turns out there had been an offer on the house that was pulled... after the builders inspection.
It would appear that the house we're currently in is what the kiwis call a "Leaky House". In the late 80s early 90s there was a rash of builders and developers that put up new housing with several major design flaws. The one that's causing our problem is that the roof doesn't have any kind of overhang, it's basically a direct connection between the outside wall and the roof. The house has rain gutters, but when they overflow, the water goes DIRECTLY DOWN THE INSIDE OF THE WALL. You can just imagine what kind of mold and damage 20 years of that does to a house. Gladly, we haven't really seen any of the effects we're supposed to look for (respiratory issues, funky smells etc) so whatever is happening isn't leaking into the living area.
This was found when they put moisture meters around all the windows. Law suits have been happening all over the country for issues like these.
Long and the short of it was that this was the last nail in our dream of buying this house. We're still planning on buying property in NZ eventually, just not this place. I'm still holding on to my dream of building our own place on a section somewhere in Island Bay, sadly land is pretty hard to find around here and it gets snatched up fast :)
