After being in the property market for many months, Christchurch Stuff reporter Michael Hayward has learned a bit about the market in the Garden City.

OPINION: Buying a house anywhere is stressful. But in Christchurch it's diabolical.

I know because my partner and I have been in the market for about eight months now. In that time we've been through a parade of wobbly homes with crooked floors covered in Earthquake Commission (EQC) grey carpet and fresh coats of paint.

We're probably more cautious than the average Christchurch home buyer. As a reporter who focuses on rebuild issues, I'm exposed on a daily basis to people who live with the consequences of choosing the wrong quake-repaired house. Whenever I tell them I'm looking myself, they warn me not to buy in the city.

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It's given me a healthy fear of becoming the owner of an over-cap, on-sold house. These houses have been described by Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister Megan Woods as a "real looming challenge".

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For those who don't know, an over-cap, on-sold homeowner is someone who bought an earthquake-repaired house, but later found the repairs were incorrect or some damage was missed. When they go to EQC to try and get it fixed under insurance, they learn the repairs will cost more than the commission's liability cap of $100,000 plus GST. Generally this means the issue is with the foundations.

DAVID WALKER/STUFF Mike Stewart and Julia McEntyre bought a supposedly repaired earthquake-damaged house in 2013 and found it had botched repairs when they came to sell it. It needed at least $300,000 of foundation work.

At that point EQC pays to its limit and sends the new owner to their private insurer, which then tells the new owner they didn't own the house when the quakes happened, so didn't have insurance on it. In other words "bad luck" and you're left with a bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix your house, which is now worth less than the mortgage.

More than 660 homeowners have found themselves in this position with an unknown number still to come. It's not yet clear who is liable in these situations. Test cases are planned for the courts, but it's possible the Crown will need to pick up the bill.

Until there's clarity, buying a pre-quake house is much more of a gamble than normal.

There's no clear indication of how many more time-bomb homes are out there, though EQC has accepted 11,000 claims for re-repairs, of which more than 1000 went over-cap.

This is a stressful setting for the largest purchase of your life. It's coloured the way we evaluate houses we look at – I pay close attention to how level the floors feel, any cracks in exposed concrete in the foundations or bows in the walls. It's surprising how many houses in our price range have this type of thing on display, with the real estate agent adamant it's all cosmetic.

JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF He says he and his partner are "probably more cautious than the average Christchurch home-buyers" as they're wary of landing am over-cap, on-sold "time bomb" home.

Then there are all the niggly bits that are part of house buying everywhere: the stresses of arranging finance and legal advice, the endless hours looking at houses online, the weekends sacrificed to open homes, the working out which house you want to put an offer on and what you want to pay, and the nervous wait to find out if you're successful while trying not to get too attached to the place.

There are days when I think it would be better to stop looking in Christchurch, pack up and move somewhere else where the housing stock hasn't been so badly damaged. Neither my partner or I are born-and-bred Cantabrians or have family here, but we both like the friends, jobs and lifestyle we have, so we don't want to move.

Though it feels a bit like a trap, we both still want to buy a house in the city. It's better than the trap of renting, paying off someone else's mortgage in a cold home we could be turfed out of at any time.

I understand we're lucky to be able to buy a first home at all as sky-rocketing prices to unobtainable heights mean it's getting increasingly difficult in many places around the country. We're excited about the possibilities it gives us in life and thankful to be in this position.

We'll be thankful when the extra-tricky search is over, the stress recedes and we get our weekends back.

* Michael Hayward is a Stuff reporter.