When I get my mortgage set up, I may change from National bank.
I was in Kilbirnie anyway this lunchtime, so I thought I'd pop in and get a printout of 3 months of my current accounts, and 6 months of my savings accounts (for mortgage-based purposes). I was told that printing out what would normally be sent to me was free, but it would cost $4 for stuff that wasn't current. At first, I thought that they meant $4 for everything, which is a bit stiff, but reasonable. Then I thought that they wanted $4 per account - which was pretty much at the edge of my comfort zone, in terms of "money I'm prepared to spend to avoid the drudgery of finding a whole lot of pieces of paper".
But no - because my savings account gets a monthly mail (and I'd just been sent one), they wanted $24 for six months of savings records. (Plus $4 for current account, which I get every 3 months or so.)
Now, if they were using letterhead paper, or there was some complicated and esoteric procedure, I can see how that... no, even with letterhead paper, I've probably only had 10 lines worth of transactions a month in my savings account, and I wasn't willing to pay $24 for less than a minutes worth of typing and a printout of a few pages. So... I have to photocopy the originals that they sent to me, wasting half a dozen pages or more (since I can't condense it down).
So... if I get a National Bank mortgage, I probably won't bother moving; but if not, I'll be doing a bunch of stuff to my accounts anyway, so I figure it's as good a time as any to move.
***
Have been feeling pretty ill the last couple of days - annoyingly, this started just before a large amount of free food. (Giffy & Puggle's mum was celebrating the end of her degree.) I was able to stay, but unable to eat - a most frustrating combination. Monday wasn't much better, being a "free pastry" day; I had every intention of leaving early, as I was feeling even worse, but there was always one more urgent thing to do... and so I ended up working through my lunch break, and leaving at my regular time. Bah.
There was a nice surprise waiting at home, though - Sok had decided to make spaghetti! I had a bit, and it was very nice.
***
Had a big chat to my house-owning brother about the costs of things like doing up bathrooms. (I had a quick look on the web, and most sites seem to be "look at how pretty things could be" rather than "here's a vague idea of how much things might cost".) His guestimate was $10-15k to do up a bathroom, which is a useful kind of figure to keep in the back of my mind.
I was talking to him about this stuff because Mum pointed me at a house that would obviously need quite a bit done to it - this one, which is the one that I pointed at in the last comment. Looking at the WCC GV site (a very useful resource), the next G.V. is $320k - which isn't a small amount, but it is a three bedroom place with a garage. Of course, I have no idea how much competition there would be for a place like this, nor how much they're expecting - even though a bunch of work needs to be done, I can easily imagine someone renting it out to a bunch of students as-is.
The fact that the G.V. for this property has jumped from $285k to $320k is certainly sobering - I've got some idea why the property market is crazy, but I guess I hadn't realised just how crazy.
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"We do not inherit the world from the creatures who prey on us," says Martin. "We borrow it from the things we prey upon." -- Hitherby Dragons
Posted by svend at January 11, 2005 1:41 PM