Hey, my name is Andrew Duncan.
On my blog, you will find real estate tips, advice and market commentary, along with articles about climate change, plant-based food, personal finance and travel. I love working with nice people, solving problems and living in Wellington, NZ.
If you are planning to apply for a mortgage in the near future, there are steps you can take in advance, to increase your chances of getting a YES from the bank. As you’ll hear in the podcast below, it pays to start planning 3-6 months before submitting your mortgage application. That way your accounts will look as good as…
I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by Darcy Ungaro, for the NZ Everyday Investor podcast. These episodes are full of practical tips for anyone who might be thinking of buying or selling a property in future. Darcy is a great host and I’m proud of how much useful content we managed to squeeze into 2 x 1-hour episodes….
Updated June 2020. Many of you will have experienced the feeling of seeing a home you like, getting excited about it, imagining your future there and then having your dreams shattered when you obtain a builders report and find they are recommending what can often be tens of thousands of dollars worth of urgent work required to your dream home….
UPDATED: May 2020 Everyone wants to avoid a multiple offer situation. We all want to negotiate directly with the owner, one on one. It’s programmed into our genes to want to start off low, see what the vendor comes back with and maybe meet in the middle if it works for us. To buy a home any other way feels…
UPDATED: May, 2020 Learning how to negotiate while buying and selling real estate is a tricky business. The process can be full of traps that you can’t be expected to know about as most people only enter the market every 5-7 years. If you only rode a bike, drove a car or swung a golf club every 7 years you…
Welcome to the Thought Locker, a podcast, blog combo that enables personal growth, particularly in the world of real estate, personal finance and reducing our carbon footprint… In this episode, I discuss what the lockdown quarantine experience can teach us about our own financial situation and how we can use that information to achieve financial freedom quicker than we ever…
NZ encompasses a total land area of approx 26.8 million hectares, or 268,000 square kilometres. That includes the North Island, South Island and around 600 smaller islands that make up our part of the world. Consider that, as at 2016, a full 31.9% of that land was being used for farming Cows and Sheep (not including dairy). Another 9.8% of…
This is a story about how a group of friends unlocked a path to mental strength and an exponential life with love, Jui-Jitsu and a hell of a lot of fun and how you can do the same. It’s a sad side-effect of modern society that our google search bar often knows more about our deepest anxieties than our own…
If you want to know what’s really going on with the real estate market, the best way to find out is to speak to the salespeople that are working with buyers and sellers right now. On that note, I set up a Zoom chat with Ben Cartwright, one of Wellington’s most sought-after real estate salespeople. In this podcast, we cover:…
Common property finance questions answered by mortgage adviser, Jenny Cheevers… In our latest bi-monthly property finance episode, we cover: – Mortgage holidays. Are they a good idea? – Can you still get pre-approved to buy a home during lockdown? – Now that interest rates have dropped again, should you break your mortgage to re-fix? Plus other advice for first home…
