Property Blogs

Kris Pedersen of Kris Pedersen Mortgages recommends New Zealand Property Investors avoid the ‘One Bank Trap’. Kris has years of experience in the finance sector and founded Kris Pedersen Mortgages in 2007.

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Hot off the press, yet long awaited is the review of the rules around swimming pool and spa fencing. Although I have heart felt empathy for anyone who may have lost a child to drowning, the rules around pool fencing are old fashioned and way over due review (in my opinion). So here we go, [...]

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Thinking of you all as most of us are winding down into the pre-Christmas week. What an interesting year 2012 has been. I donand#8217;t believe that 22/12/2012 will see the end of the world doomsday style. I believe there have been shifts in our thinking, awareness and choices in 2012 that has either prepared us [...]

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There’s a lot of publicity today about the Royal Commission’s Report into the CTV building. While the media have focused on the bad news there is some good news in the report. Sure there are some recommendations for improvement with the hope of preventing such a tragedy again and some of it relates to training. But let’s [...]

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A simple set of questions for you to ponder: What do you like about the building controls regime? What do you dislike? What would you change of you could? I like that there is a set of rules to keep us safe. For example, the core principal of the Building Warrant of Fitness is sound. [...]

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As I look back over 17 years of teaching building law (in one form or another) I notice how often we are asked to “bend the rules”. For example: Someone is selling a house and did not realise (all the years they have lived in it) that it did not have a Code Compliance Certificate. [...]

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What is the point in investigation into disasters? A Royal Commission is set up, time and money invested in getting to the bottom of what went wrong. Media reports sensationalise the issues and initiate a witch hunt of their own. The personal stress for those involved cannot be quantified and all for what? The point [...]

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This year I have facilitated sessions on changes to the Building Act. The main focus has been on Compliance Schedules.  The sections of the Act are insignificant in number compared to the amount of work involved to get the job of an updated Compliance Schedules. So we can have all the knowledge and the facts at [...]

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Often people complain to me that Councils are inconsistent. Their complaints relate to the perception and in some instances reality. One of my simplest examples is Form 2 – the building consent application form. Why do we really need so many variations on the same form. Gosh, if we had an online consenting system then [...]

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I thought this headline might grab your attention… Of course some of us do care, but the law does not. As you may know, section 103 1 (d) of the building Act has been deleted (March 2012 amendment). The net effect of this is that IQP checks for access and facilities for people with disabilities [...]

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When thinking about selling your property many vendors think “how hard can it be?” Many will try to sell privately to avoid paying commission to real estate agents and many will fail and end up having to use an agent anyway. But there is another way – where you can have the best of both worlds. Save thousand of dollars in high commission charges by using a great value private sales kit through Green Door.

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I have been doing some work with Optimism Learning and Development specialists and I have been having some fun. It has been a great reminder to analyse the “problem” before throwing training at it as if it is a silver bullet. You may like to use this free tool (and yes it is free)… to [...]

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Start 2013 with s stimulating, informative and Take some time out of your business / organisation to work on the plan not in it… Plan for 2013 to be the best business year ever.. Check it out here http://buildingnetworksnz.eventbrite.co.nz/

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There is not way better to sharpen the mind, refresh old knowledge or learn something fast that being in a situation where you have to teach it. However , it is even more important to understand how you learn best so you can rearrange the information to suit your brain. How you receive info, store [...]

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Some ‘tradies’ have got caught out recently by not having a design licence. It seems to me that most people understand the need for a brand new residential building to have an LBP designer involved at consent stage, get a “COW (certificate of work)” issued (and for any alternations to the drawings that involve restricted [...]

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This tragedy has had a personal impact on the staff at Building Networks. The grandparents of the triplets are known to one of our staff members and our hearts go out to the whanau for the loss of these beautiful wee ones. There will be talk and angst over coming days and months about the [...]

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