KEY POINTS:
Tomorrow I shall get in my car and head south. And as I traverse the Bombay Hills and the chaotic conurbation that is Auckland disappears from my rear-view mirror, I shall shout "Hallelujah!" and "Praise the Lord!"
Because for the first time in more than 35 years, I
will know I don't have to come back - not ever unless I want to.
And somewhere on the same southern highway at the same time will be a World Moving pantechnicon loaded with all our worldly possessions.
The packers move in this morning, and the event to which my wife and I have looked forward for so long will come to pass on the morrow - our move to our chosen retirement home in a smaller, slower, friendlier and kindlier place.
Auckland has been my place of abode for more than 35 years, apart from a four-year visit to Australia. I was going to say Auckland has been my home but, strangely, it has never really felt like that. Perhaps that's because I've always been a small-town boy at heart.
So it's a city roughly one-17th the size of Auckland that we have chosen as the place to live out whatever days are left of those the good Lord has assigned to us.
Our move brings to an end three months of involvement in the housing market, an interesting if somewhat exhausting business what with keeping the home for sale immaculate 24/7 and looking for a place to live hundreds of kilometres away at the same time.
It is here that the internet really comes into its own. Our house in Auckland appeared on no fewer than five websites; the houses we chose to view in our city of choice we found by surfing the Trade Me, Realnz and Open2view websites plus those of every real estate agency operating there. Trade Me even provides a useful daily email service of all the new properties listed in the place you are looking and within the size and price parameters you specify.
There are traps, however, and the biggest is the deception provided by the photographers who take pictures for a fee to appear, for instance, on Open2view.
When we saw the pictures of our house displayed we marvelled at the dimensions of the rooms. Had they been anywhere near that size we could have asked $100,000 or so more for the place.
Similarly, when we physically visited houses on the websites, we were soon disappointed that rooms which looked more than adequate in pictures were in fact only half or less the size we expected.
Someone, I hope, will one day complain to the Advertising Standards Authority about this rorty behaviour. I thought about it, but since I'm out of the market I can't be bothered.
There has been quite a bit of adverse publicity around the real estate industry of late, so I have to say that our treatment by real estate agents has been of the highest order.
The agent who sold our house here (Colin Nicholson, of Ray Whites) and the agent who sold us our new home (Peter Guilford, of the Professionals) could not have served us better.
Both went much more than the proverbial extra mile and both are a credit to their profession - in spite of their agencies charging like wounded buffaloes for their services.
If Mr Guilford had not adamantly insisted that we take a look at one of the homes we had viewed on the internet and rejected, we might still be looking. Anyone who can read us that quickly and well is obviously in the right job.
We have dealt with scores of real estate agents, both in Auckland and elsewhere, and I could count on the fingers of two hands the number who have left an unsavoury impression.
It's a big-money industry so it naturally attracts its share of wide boys and girls, but they are few and rare. Every business has its share of bad apples, even journalism, although in my 50 years in that trade I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of thoroughgoing scumbags I have encountered.
A lovely bonus in the whole business, incidentally, was to sell our house to an immigrant couple who have been renting and who have scrimped and saved every possible cent for more than 10 years to acquire a deposit to buy their own home.
These folk are a credit to themselves and their adopted country - hard-working, thrifty and determined - and the sum they managed to set aside over the years while raising two children is quite astonishing.
Those readers who had hopes of this column disappearing with its author are in for a disappointment. It will continue; the only difference will be that future dispatches will come from Rotorua.
