Newcomers seeking to settle ask the same questions: What are the best suburbs? Where are the wanted districts, the desirable locations?
Estate agents are no help. They show the views, but not the atmosphere.
For them every street fronting SH1 is ‘secluded’, every house a home – even when a hovel. ‘Little haven tucked into a byway’ turns out to be a decrepit shack in Killer Beez Close, where the graffiti hits are so old they warrant preservation by the Historic Places Trust.
The City Council publishes a useful guide (http://profile.idnz.co.nz/) that shows whether an area is populated by paediatricians or panel beaters, but not how they behave. And who wants to walk around lugging a laptop? There must be better ways of checking a neighbourhood.
There are. Read on. Better still, take a stroll.
Unwoffed motors in the driveway and squashed beer cans on rank verges are a dead giveaway. So are walls too high to see over, and remote controlled security gates. The subtext: Outsiders Unwelcome.
Fortunately these are rare in the Capital. The signs are subtler. Wee metal boxes with blue lights fixed to the wall indicate the owners don’t trust the locals. Who’d want to live alongside such suspicious folk?
Imagine the reception the kids will get if they jump the fence to retrieve a lost ball. CCTV cameras will record their trespass, which will probably get onto YouTube. They’ll be in the Youth Court next day, cop a conviction and never get a tourist visa to enter the US.
Lawns manicured smooth as bowling greens indicate fanatical perfectionists. They also say Keep Off. If you wouldn’t dare tread on the grass how could you walk on the carpet, even when there’s a welcome mat at the front door?
And what sort of person would scrub the mud off their shoes on a greeting sign? That’s like spitting in the check-in drink at a Fiji resort.
Better look for houses where agapanthus bloom and flax flourish. Both need little care so appeal to those who aren’t slaves to their garden. But beware: A forest of black-trunk ponga may well mask dark dealings in the hidden house.
Take care when noting bottles in recycling bins come rubbish pick-up day. Do these indicate good taste in wine served at sedate dinners – or mark a riotous lifestyle with car doors slammed at 2 am?
Sealed yellow plastic bags and closed lid wheelie bins at the roadside signify lower middle class and limited buying power. In suburbs labelled ‘wanted’ by agents, show-offs flaunt their wealth through their discards.
The opulence test is the prevalence of open-top skip bins. The rich park these at the kerb so passers-by can see who’s tossing out last year’s flat screen TV and Vista-loaded laptops.
Keeping up with conspicuous consumers can rapidly ruin the budget. Watch out for letterboxes stuffed with yellowing bills and all curtains drawn on a hot day. The jovial bloke who was doing something in finance and borrowed your lawnmower might do a midnight flit – along with your machine.
So what are the best signs when selecting a suburb?
Ignore the advertising and hyperbole. Just check what planners and architects call ‘street furniture’.
If there are Lost Cat notices stuck on lampposts and power poles then this is the place to live.
Pussy wanted posters are the finest barometers of a suburb’s worth and the decency of its residents. People who have photos of their pets to hand, a computer to compose heart-stirring pleas for information, and the energy to billpost and letterbox the district clearly care. If offering rewards they surely worry more about their moggies than their mortgage.
As neighbours they should be just purrfect.
(First published in The Wellingtonian 3 March 2011)
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