Common boundry fence - WWYD

Who gets to dictate what sort of fence is chosen for a common boundry!

Problem is (short version).
Our fence was pulled out between us signing up for our house and posession by our now neighbour. We have been resonable and since then have pulled up several more meters with them so the new fence will run the whole length of their new driveway (will worry about the remainder of the fence later).
We have been out every weekend doing posts and putting up rails, (so far we have beeing going 50/50 for the wood) they had some coloured iron left over from doing the other side, several years ago, that has been put up but it only covers about 5m. They got back to us yesterday with a quote for the rest of the iron of $900- That is a heck of alot more than we would have liked (we can afford it, but we have only just moved to our new house and wanted to spend some money painthing up our interior).
I want to suggest they get a price for plain iron and maybe run with that as it will be cheaper. We don't need a flash fence, we have the plainer side and rails on our side anyway (which was at my suggestion as they have it along a drive and it would be more athesthetically pleasing for them).
My hubby got into a bit of an argument with the lady of the house yesterday so I wonder if I should tackle her with the plain iron. WWYD!!

Search for the Fencing Act and similar threads but, as I recall, both parties need to agree and fancy doesn't come into it so plain will do.

try a number 5 iron

If it was me, I'd rather have the same iron all the way along. I assume the coloured iron is colour steel! Which would last alot longer than unpaintediron, plus look a hell of a lot better.

You would probably save about $100 going for unpainted iron. What lengths are the sheets! alot of the roll formers sell fencing grade sheets which are 1.8m long and if you can wait they will sometimes bundle the correct colour for you.

Get a quote for plain iron and tell them you will pay half of that if they want colour steel they pay the extra and that is fair and should stand up in small claims court.

isn't the standard boundary fence in the act meant to be pailings.! I thought anything above will have to be agreed by the 2 parties.

Fencing act doesn't apply since they didn't serve the correct notice on you before removing the old fence. Also they won't have been able to serve a notice on you since you are only the owner of your house after the possession date. Therefore if you don't agree they can't force you to pay anything. If they had served a fencing act notice on the seller of your property you can claim the costs of complying with the notice off the seller.

Its tricky.Depends on if you ever want to speak with the neighbour again.IMHO the law requires an agreement.As it stands you dont agree.If you only want plain galv iron then price that and offer to pay half.Is there more than one place local you can get the iron, if so get quotes from all.

At the end of the day the colour is only on their side so they can paint the plain iron if they want it coloured.

I've been pricing some fencing lately and its not hard to spend serious money if you want to do things properly.

Seems simple.Either pay the whole thing, and keep neighbourly relations . although as you've already been arguing, it's probably too late for that, in which case find out the cost for the basic version, and pay for half of that, if the neighbours want to get a better one, then they pay the difference.