Changed da house,
Changed da look.
BTW, my bathrobe's usually pink
and we don't have a fireplace.
Other than that,
it's pretty accurate...
Psst...click the words above to navigate.
Best viewed, unfortunately, in Internet Explorer.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
~ Our state of Real Estate ~
The day is just about to get really hectic.
This month is dedicated to House Hunting and Moving. See, it goes like this: December was Wedding Month, January is Housing Month, February is Travelling Month, March is Singapore Month, and hopefully also Job-Hunting Month. Then, we've scheduled travel to Melbourne for Sarah's wedding in early-mid April, and have pencilled in Collapsing in a Heap.
But we're only in January right now, so moving on...
Our present rental home is actually really comfortable. The kitchen is well-equipped (Dishwasher! Squirm, Singaporeans... squirm) and comes in with a walk-in pantry under the staircase. The dining and living room area is kinda combined and perhaps a little squashy, but as real estate talk goes, "I prefer to look at it as... cosy." The master bedroom takes up the whole of the second level and comes with an ensuite (bathroom). It is, to date, the biggest master bedroom I've been in. The two other bedrooms downstairs are spacious with built in wardrobes, and share a separate toilet and bathroom that comes with - check it out - a bathtub with built-in jet spa. The backyard is growing aloe vera, although it'd be more accurate to say that we haven't killed it yet. The lock-up garage has ample room for storage. It's modest enough by Canberra standards, but I love it.
Unfortunately, it's a bit of a stretch on a single income. And it's not like we actually need the extra bedroom.
We calculate that our break-even point for accommodation is anything $20 cheaper per week than our current rental rate. Tony has mainly been the one looking into new accommodation prospects, but today was my turn as he was at work, so I trotted over to the shop to get us the newspapers. Took me all of 2 minutes in total. Sigh.
I can't drive yet, so I bus it everywhere and I'm discovering that it's a pain to do so when endeavouring to run around and attend Open Houses. The way realtors do it here? They tell you the house is open for inspection for a 15-minute window, and you're expected to drop everything and run over then if you're interested to view the place. I had already missed one this morning at 11am when I read about it at half past 10, and then I called up and found out about another open house for a 4-bedroom house, GAS HEATING (non-Canberrans, you have no idea how blessed those words are), in the same street/corner as 2 church families, open for viewing at noon to twenty past 12. It was going for less than the present place we're at and it's heaps bigger. Sounds pretty good...
I was told this at 11.25am. The bus from my place comes 'round at 11.36am. The connecting bus at the interchange departs at 12.10pm. It will reach that street at 12.13pm. I have about 2 minutes from then on to run like heck to the house and beg the realtor to let me have a look, seeing how the time stated for viewing was from 12 to 12.20pm.
I did all that, and reached the house at a quarter past 12 on the dot. No one was around. Everyone had left.
It's times like these when you want to scream at Australian cabbies for being so darn expensive in the first place. You know, I wouldn't have had trouble like this in Sing. I would have just walked downstairs and stuck out my arm blindly, and a taxi would have miraculously appeared. And if that didn't happen, I could have yelled at the auntie down the street for stealing my cab.
Anyways, since they hadn't stuck around till the agreed time of 12.20pm, I decided to walk around the garden and peek into the house from the back. I liked what I saw, and they hadn't drawn the curtains so I could look riiiiight inside, but I'm still rather disappointed that my mad dash hadn't worked out.
"That's the thing about real estate, dear" Tony advised, "You've got to wake up early."
Thing is, I did wake up early today. 7.15 am. Was just too bad I couldn't start thinking until about 9.30 am.
Here's the rest of my appointments for this evening:
4.30 pm, running off to look at a house in a suburb called Cook, which is relatively near our present place.
5.10 pm, meeting another real estate agent at a house in Palmerston which is way up north.
5.30 pm, rushing back down to see another one at a suburb called Kaleen, which is again relatively near our present place.
6.15 pm, slowly driving back to Page to see the house I missed out on viewing this afternoon, and try to peek in again.
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