New Zealand’s first home buyers' have shifted what they need, according to the country's newest real estate TV show.
In Prime's new show, Dream Home Dilemma real estate experts - auctioneer Shane Cortese, interior designer Hamish Dodd and real estate agent Anita Dobson - help house hunters purchase their dream property.
Anita Dobson says the show will reveal the complex journey buyers go through before they purchase their first home.
“There’s this horrible saying in real estate ‘buyers are liars’ and they are not.
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"It's a process where they figure out what they want and what they can afford and it’s a matter of going through this list of compromises on the way until they find that so-called dream home,” she says.
Celebrity interior designer and television presenter Hamish Dodd says the definition of a dream home has gone through a fundamental shift from what it was about six years ago.
Back then when he was asking the nation about the main features they wanted in a property, the common answers were for a big backyard with a nice deck, a beautiful kitchen and a bathroom.
Designer kitchens and nicely tiled bathrooms still sell homes and play a big part, he says, but today the number one factor is having a healthy home.
Dodd says it makes him happy seeing Kiwis finally prioritise functionality, warmth and dryness of their houses over their looks.
"You can put in a kitchen or a bathroom by yourself and have fun with it, it's cosmetic.
"But when you go into a house where someone has already done all the insulation and have all the certification for it, they've double glazed all the windows and done all the hard work - that's the actual bones of the house,” he says.
Dobson also noticed that despite Kiwis having the reputation of loving a DIY project, not many buyers are keen to buy a major do-up.
“It’s slowly changing because people do not have the time or don’t know how. Most of the buyers can fix small bits and pieces as long as they are in working condition, but a lot of people didn’t want to do a big overhaul,” she says.
The Dream Home Dilemma team travelled around the country to help house-hunters find their perfect property and learned that what makes buyers tick varies in each area.
In Saturday's premiere episode, the team work with a first home buyer with a budget of $600,000 looking for a property in Birkenhead, on Auckland's North Shore.
Dodd says priorities and definitions of affordable also vary across the country.
“You will see from the show that in different towns of New Zealand people are after different things.
"There was a couple of young guys who are looking for a house in Central Otago and for them a priority was to have a warm house as the winter gets cold there,” he adds.
