Wellington: Top rated in quality of life report in NZ?

Hi there, I would be interested in living in Wellington, I've heard the weather is not so good, though. Yet, after reading the Quality of Life Report done by NZ government, Wellington scores best in almost all categories, any comments? :icon_surprised:

The only complaints I've heard of relate to its windiness. But that's all I know.

Yay Wellington! We've been here nearly a year now and although it was VERY windy when we first arrived in August last year, (the worst storms in 40 years! Welcome to Welly Jod & Daz! :icon_lol: ), it hasn't been too bad since. Yes, you do get the odd day of wind, and when it blows, it REALLY IS STRONG, but on the other side of the coin, when it's good, it's fantastic here. OK it's not quite as warm as it is further north (but it's warmer than further south! ::): ), but we don't get as much rain as Auckland and up that way, in fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of rainy days we've had so far this winter.

It's got such a great social culture here - more bars and restaurants per capita in Welly than in New York I read somewhere, so plenty of socialising to be done!

The shops are great, the houses are still affordable, and the wages are the same, if not more on some occasions than those in Auckland. The traffic isn't too bad in rush hour, and the transport links are pretty good.

All in all, we love Welly, although in the summer when we saw further North having 5 or 6 degrees more on their temperatures, we were tempted to move that way, but to be honest, the sun is so strong here, even if it only says 22 degrees, it feels like much more so it's not really essential. Plus, Wellington is such a great city, I don't think either of us could bear to leave it now! (And thats saying something because before we came over here, Wellington was last of my list of places to live because of the weather! Must be something special to have changed my mind to now being number 1 on my list!)

Anything else you'd like to know about the area?

Jod

:icon_cool:

Well Duh!
As the so called quality of life report was written by the govt in wellington of course they are BIASED.

They probably never finished their skim milk decaf lattes and their waffle baked panninies in their trendy cafe, and talking loudly on their cell phones in Cuba street before reaching that conclusion. After which they probably drove their leased BMW's back to their triple mortgaged houses via the supermarket where they maxed out their credit cards getting TV dinners.

Alternativly people in Auckland are told that their over priced, over polluted, rainy, traffic jammed city is actually the place to live and not to bother about the rest of the country. It panders to the innate egotism of Aucklanders and Wellingtonians that keeps them trapped in their cities and away from the rest of the country, which suits us all fine :)

[quote:8d741c035f="calazo"]Hi there, I would be interested in living in Wellington, I've heard the weather is not so good, though. Yet, after reading the Quality of Life Report done by NZ government, Wellington scores best in almost all categories, any comments? :icon_surprised:[/quote:8d741c035f]

hehe crumbs netchicken you have some severe chips on your shoulders lol. I was speaking to someone from Wellington and she said yeah its windy in Spring and Fall but it's fine most of the time. You can't deny that it set in beautiful surroundings and certainly is the 'trendiest' city perhaps. It's true about the rainfall being less than most other places too but also has the second highest house prices I'm told. You can't disregard this now either, even since we've been preparing to go the house prices throughout have really scared us a bit. It's like the UKs property market was 10 years ago, and we've been priced out of a alot of places that we could easily afford a year ago.
Wellington keeps going in and out of our possibilities list so who knows we could end up there too, I guess time will tell.

Some of the things people say about places gets blown way out of proportion...

Wellington is 'The Windy City', but as Jodie says, its not that often that it is, it just has quite strong winds.

Hamilton is supposed to spend most of its days hiding in fog, and a few people from Tauranga have commented to me about how awful the fog is in Hamilton.. well, it get's foggy very late at night, and is all but gone in the morning, on maybe 1 or 2 days a week, yet Christchurch and Dunedin have had their airports closed on and off the last 2 days due to intense fog lasting throughout the whole day, and are otherwise always suffering from fog further south!

The only place that lives up to the 'bad' tag, is Auckland. But, as a Brit, I can honestly say I'd rather live in Aucks, than go back to anywhere in the UK!

[quote:f3950e4e31="Taffy"]
The only place that lives up to the 'bad' tag, is Auckland. But, as a Brit, I can honestly say I'd rather live in Aucks, than go back to anywhere in the UK![/quote:f3950e4e31]

I plan to settle in Auckland nad I did not like the quote at all! :icon_evil:

What do you mean by that, Taffy. Lots of rain and wind ?

What you mean you'd prefer Auckland to Wales? :icon_eek: icon_exclaim.gif
My word it must be nice, for a welsh bloke to have that opinion.

Maka,

Yes, it suffers from drizzly rain and has a degree of polution. Apart from that, I didnt think Aucks was that bad, and the people seemed friendly. I wouldnt want to live there as it's too big, and I dont have that much experience of the place to say what else is good or bad about it.

Steve,

I'd rather live there than where we were back in Wales, but I still love Wales as a country!

Merthyr, Swansea or Newport? Thought the rest was all good. Anyway won't drag us off-topic.

I always liked the look of Upper Hutt, looks real nice over there, is it the katipi coast? That would be an idyllic commute down through the hills into Wellington.