Blog

RNZ's money correspondent Susan Edmunds. Photo: RNZ Send your questions to susan.edmunds@rnz.co.nz I've just found out that I'm being made redundant but I am due to settle on my first home in a few weeks. Can I pull out, now the deal is unconditional? Lawyer Thomas Biss, from Henderson Reeves, says it might be tricky. He says, once you have an unconditional agreement for a house purchase, that's a fixed commitment from both sides that you will settle. "The purchaser has accepted the risk of a change in their circumstances. If they are not able to settle then they are likely to lose their deposit unless some concession is made by the vendor." But that may not be something to hold out much hope for, because the vendor will probably have used a significant chunk of your deposit to pay the...

The Aratere on the Cook Strait (file image). Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King Marlborough businesses are warning the region and the entire South Island are starting to miss out on tourism dollars due to the unreliability of the Cook Strait ferries. A power failure on Bluebridge's Connemara ship on Thursday night is the latest in a spate of ferry breakdowns. Acting head of the Marlborough Chamber of Commerce Stephen Waters said the continued problems on the ferries are making both holiday-makers and tourists nervous about booking a ferry to Picton. "People are starting to then fly into other ports, not go through Auckland and travel down the country, across the Strait. They're going to fly down to other ports and do the South Island, and we might not even see them in Marlborough so we'r...