A holiday getaway for less
If you want to buy a holiday home for less, you might have to avoid where the in-crowd goes, as Liz McDonald reports in this second story in a series on baches.
You don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to buy a holiday house or bach in Canterbury if you pick the right location.
The hotspots for Canterbury holidays such as Lake Tekapo/Takapō, Akaroa and Hanmer Springs may command million-dollar prices and draw the elite set, but there are less expensive finds in quieter places for the budget-conscious.
Twizel in the Mackenzie country has been popular for years with boaties, skiers, fishers, and families who enjoy an outdoorsy holiday.
The town has one big advantage for the holiday buyer – a large stock of simple prefabricated dwellings, which were brought in by the government for hydro workers in the 1960s and 70s, and stayed instead of being trucked away as first intended.
This means buyers can get a simple but comfortable holiday home for under $500,000. “That’s what a lot of our holiday homes are,” LJ Hooker Twizel real estate agent Karan McDiarmid says.
“They’re our entry-level homes, and they sell between high fours and mid sixes. Then there are people wanting a modern home on lifestyle land with a beautiful view – you pay between $1.1 million to just over $2m for those.”
Most holiday home buyers are after “a simple three-bedroom home with a garage, or space to put one, for storing the boat”.
She estimates 30% to 40% of the town’s houses are used as holiday homes.
Other Canterbury locations with not-toopricey holiday homes include Lake Coleridge, Gore Bay, Leithfield Beach, and other quiet spots near lakes, rivers and the coast.
Peel Forest is a tranquil getaway spot inland from Geraldine, well known to South and Mid Cantabrians and only an hour and 45 minutes from Christchurch.
It’s certainly not a vibrant location – the only hustle and bustle is of the native birdlife – so it’s truly a place to escape.
The seller of one Peel Forest home purpose-built for holidays, on a large section surrounded by bush, is asking for offers over $499,000.
Sometimes the pool of homes in small settlements is small, and a would-be buyer might need to be patient.
A secluded home at St Arnaud, near Lake Rotoiti, recently sold for the first time after being in the same family for 75 years.
There’s also the option of a hut on public land – such as Taylors Mistake and the Selwyn Huts, but there are council rules limiting the life of the leases, and restrictions on selling the homes.
Portable homes are another way of securing a holiday home, as long as a buyer has somewhere to put it.
For between $150,000 and $200,000, several businesses sell new dwellings of various sizes. Then there will be a few tens of thousands of dollars to pay for consenting, transporting, putting in foundations, and connecting services.
Russley Portables co-owner Matt Roche says they send their holiday homes all around the South Island, and recent destinations have included Cape Foulwind on the West Coast, Lake Coleridge, and Purau on Banks Peninsula.
“Wherever someone can buy themselves a piece of land.”
The homes can also be trucked most places, and even craned over obstacles if needed, Roche says.