Looking for a house and UFB availability

for checking UFB you can never be 100% certian until the order is placed, but here are the steps you should follow to give yourself the best chance

1) check Chorus maps https://www.chorus.co.nz/maps for the suburbs that show UFB coverage as available now.
2) within that coverage, you want to prefer houses more towards the middle of the shapes. (the map is not 100% accurate, so the edges may not show coverage precisely - you don't want to end up in a house 3 doors down from coverage where you cannot get UFB
3) within those suburbs, you want to be looking for a property that either
a) already has a live UFB connection (won't be many of these but this gives you the least pain if you can find one)
b) is a standalone freehold property, with frontage onto the road, with no shared driveway. Ideally you would also want one where the install will be 'easy' (easy to dig up driveway, lots of crawl space underneath or in attic to run cables etc)
If you can satisfy all those criteria, you should find installation takes only a couple of weeks. If not, you may find it will take several months as it requires consent from other parties. (lots of shared driveways on the north shore unfortunately)

For choice of ISP, it really depends on what you want. I assume you will want unlimited data.

If you want 200Mbps with unlimited data broadband bigpipe www.bigpipe.co.nz is the cheapest AFAIK for $99/month or they also do 100Mbps for $79/m - which should be more than ample for almost all users).
You do need to buy your own router (which you can get for $100-200 depending on specs you want), but they don't lock you into a contract. Online support is awesome, catering for more techy people like us :) (no scripted call centre, replies to emails in 30 mins instead of 3 days like the others)

If you want someone who provides the router, then probably check out MyRepublic. They do 100Mbps unlimited data for $99/m, however this does lock you into a contract with very expensive termination if you find they are no good (they are quite new so not much feedback on them yet).
MyRepublic also are 'fibre only' which means if you need to wait for installation they cannot put you on ADSL/VDSL in the meantime whilst you wait, whereas Bigpipe can do that.

Other ISPs to consider:

Spark (Telecom - equivalent of BT)
Vodafone (currently terrible support with massive wait times, but do have some good deals if you like old fashioned linear TV for some reason)
Snap (good all rounder, rated high on this forum)
Orcon (the ISP world's 'hospital pass' being bought and sold 2-3 times in the last couple of years)
Slingshot (cheap. reputation for bad service, but definitely seems to be improving. watch for 'hidden' charges like modem courier fees)

Comparison sites are generally inaccurate, out of date, or biased (one of them is actually owned by an ISP!).
Generally I would reccomend checking the pricing out on each provider, then check their facebook page reviews, comments, and other social media to see what the reviews and comments are like (you'll see what I mean about VF if you do that!)

ScuL

NonprayingMantis