>- housing prices are extremely high. I don't understand that, there is plenty of space everywhere (maybe except Wellington) and somehow they manage to not use this advantage...
Housing prices aren't that high outside of Auckland. Auckland housing prices are high for all the reasons you can think of: no capital gains tax, tax incentives to own property, no restrictions on foreign ownership (not even a register of foreign ownership!), very liberal immigration laws, and lots of NIMBYism about increasing housing density.
Almost all immigrants go to Auckland and stay in Auckland, because they see it as where most of the jobs are (and that's true, but only because of what I just said: it's a self-fulfilling prophecy).
>- housing quality is really poor (comparing to Europe)
Older houses are definitely poor. Newer houses certainly aren't. New Zealand houses are built in a different style to those in the UK, or Europe, or the US: they're open-plan, they're built using timber framing, etc. Until a couple of decades ago, double-glazed windows and full insulation weren't mandatory.
>- prices are generally quite high
They are and they aren't. They probably seem higher than they really are because of the exchange rates. A lot of retailers sell imported stuff for way more than they should, because exchange rate has moved in our favour compared to the US in recent years but they haven't adjusted their prices.
Steam games are ridiculously cheap compared to games from a retailer for example.
>- internet connectivity feels like we're 10 years back
Um, no, really it does not. Internet connectivity in NZ is excellent. We have fibre-to-the-door everywhere, or at least will do when the rollout finishes in two years.
>- outside of Wellington and Auckland, I didn't feel like there were any interesting opportunities in IT (that's a subjective and based on a very limited evidence from discussions with local / personal observations)
There are probably more IT jobs in Christchurch than Wellington, honestly. New Zealand is a small country, there aren't going to be a lot of jobs when you discount the three biggest cities, obviously.
>- food quality is good, but eating habits don't seem to follow. Obesity seems to be a huge problem there (we have kids so will need to pay double attention to that). We were pretty much shocked because we naively thought that in such a beautiful and clean country everybody is running / biking all the time.
This is going to be controversial, but I'm going to say it anyway. Obesity is much less a problem if you are white and wealthy. Obesity is a problem in New Zealand if you look at the aggregate statistics for everyone, but that problem is concentrated very highly in poor communities, and mainly poor Maori and Pacific communities. I think that contrasts rather from the US. When I went to the US I noticed that everyone seemed huge. Average-looking people for the population would be considered rather chunky in NZ, and the fat people were enormous. Of course there were people that would be considered normal/healthy in NZ, but they were much less common.
But yes, obesity is a problem, from a government/health-services/etc. perspective. But there isn't some magical chemical in the air that makes everyone fat, and if you are in IT your kids will likely go to a school full of other upper-middle-class kids (which unfortunately translates to the demographics being rather a lot.. lighter), and obesity will be low there.
There is a big push from Government, as they are rebuilding Christchurch, to encourage walking and biking in the city over driving. For environmental reasons, for shop foot traffic reasons, for health reasons, etc.