We’ve started the process of getting a house built. The design is going well – we’ve decided on the number of walls (four) and a roof and even some of the internal stuff too, but we don’t have anywhere to build the damn thing. We have agreed where we’d like to live – around Tai Tapu or Lincoln – but have not managed to agree a price on the section of land that we decided we wanted.

I’m sure that the price is a fair one and as the Kiwi housing market slides into the toilet, perhaps we will finally get something at a realistic price. The problem with Tai Tapu is that it is, in theory, upmarket, if a bunch of fields can be upmarket. Perhaps the grass really is greener there? Anyway, as a result of being an upmarket field, it has an upmarket price and the exchange rate is eye-wateringly bad at the moment. If we pay that, we won’t be living like kings any more, it will be like just one king and not a very wealthy one.

One of the things that you need consider when you build a new home with a decent amount of land is the cost of running the electricity and phone cables from the section boundary to the house site. As a result, we have observed that most people have positioned their home quite close to the boundary and hence the road. You’ve made the effort to move away from town to a rural setting, bought yourself 10 acres and then you plonk your house about 5 metres from the road where it’s nice and noisy like it was in town.