be very quiet, we're hunting houses
Apr. 11th, 2006 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darren_strangerDon't think i've mentioned it in here yet, but we're looking into the possibility of buying a house now that Morris is looking to sell this one out from under us. We've checked out how much we can borrow and how painful (!) the repayments would be and are scouting around for possible houses. We already know we can't afford anything anywhere that isn't an outer suburb, so we're looking into houses in suburbs out in the east, like Ringwood, Bayswater or Boronia. It's a long way out, but at least i know the area and it's not too ugly (unlike the northern suburbs, which was our first, brief thought) and i can imagine living there, and even though i may not always be working around here, at least it's on the same train line as Camberwell so i can stay at the same place for Taekwondo, which i don't want to change (though Doncaster on Saturdays will be more difficult).
We came out here on Sunday to look at a rare house that was actually under the $200k mark, just to see what has to be wrong with a place to be that 'cheap'. The answer is 'plenty' - it was a nice enough style, but it was filthy, small, there were cracks in the walls and the room added on at the rear was sinking away from the rest of the house. A real money pit, as we feared.
On the off chance of not wasting the trip, Elaine asked the sales guy if they had any other properties in the low $200s around the area, and he said there was one a few blocks away going for $245k. So we hopped in the van and followed him to another place in an out of the way cul-de-sac. It was much more modern ('60s or '70s at a guess) and Elaine hated it from the outside, but i'd spent more time looking at ugly modern houses and trying to imagine us in them, so it didn't seem as bad to me as some i'd seen. Inside though, it was very nice. Everything was painted off-white in most rooms, making it look a much older style of house (aside from the low ceilings) and some elements like sliding glass doors actually gave it a 1930s deco feel, which i quite liked. The yard was small enough to manage and big enough to swing a sword in, and i could really see how we could make it 'us', even though it was at the very top of our price range and a fair walk to the station. More to the point, it was big inside, and i really warmed to the idea of having room to move without tripping over our stuff every other step. After the agent left we went back and i explained how the outside could be de-modernised a little and, to my surprise, i found myself actually talking Elaine around to it (who would ever have imagined i'd be pushing the idea of paying quarter of a million to live in a brick veneer in effing Bayswater?). But since the idea of selling our souls to the banks and being forever in debt and poverty has raised its head, and since we're in the ridiculous situation where a quarter of a million dollars is somehow a very reasonable price for a house in effing Bayswater, it might as well be somewhere i could imagine us making our own.
But that's where it gets complicated. The young sales guy told us they were asking $245k, but on the website they'd added the sinister '+' to the end of it, and when Elaine rang the agents someone else there told her that they're really looking for maybe 10-20% more, which is a bit of bad luck as $245k is our absolute limit and will probably break us as it is. But we're going to put in an offer and see what they say.*
(*Edit - of course we didn't get that one, in fact the agents refused to even waste their time writing up an offer contract for $248k. While i know that's how the game goes, it still astounds me that it can even be legal to advertise something at a price for which you're not even willing to look at an offer. It's a bit like a milk bar advertising a loaf of bread for $2, then when you take it to the counter they say "nah, i was thinking more like $2.75". And they wonder why people rate real estate agents down there with credit card scammers and politicians.)
The big trouble is that now i've sold Elaine on the idea of getting a house with more room, and that a more modern house could be made to look less ugly, that's opened up another range of possibilities that tends to come with a higher price tag, and i'm really worried that i've now let a genie out of the bottle that's going to see us spending some ridiculous amount (as if quarter of a million isn't ridiculous enough!). As it is, my position is that i'm not interested in setting foot in anything that's advertised at more than $240k-ish and don't wish to even go along to look if that's the case but, knowing me, i'm worried that i'll end up agreeing to something stupid just to make the whole thing go away (which of course would really be just the start of the stress, not the end).
And rest assured, i'm really looking forward to joining the "i'd like to help but i've got a mortgage to worry about" club and fretting about interest rates for the next 30 years, in order to pursue the Great Austrayan Dream of a 3 bedroom brick veneer in the suburbs.
Gah, somebody kill me now.
We came out here on Sunday to look at a rare house that was actually under the $200k mark, just to see what has to be wrong with a place to be that 'cheap'. The answer is 'plenty' - it was a nice enough style, but it was filthy, small, there were cracks in the walls and the room added on at the rear was sinking away from the rest of the house. A real money pit, as we feared.
On the off chance of not wasting the trip, Elaine asked the sales guy if they had any other properties in the low $200s around the area, and he said there was one a few blocks away going for $245k. So we hopped in the van and followed him to another place in an out of the way cul-de-sac. It was much more modern ('60s or '70s at a guess) and Elaine hated it from the outside, but i'd spent more time looking at ugly modern houses and trying to imagine us in them, so it didn't seem as bad to me as some i'd seen. Inside though, it was very nice. Everything was painted off-white in most rooms, making it look a much older style of house (aside from the low ceilings) and some elements like sliding glass doors actually gave it a 1930s deco feel, which i quite liked. The yard was small enough to manage and big enough to swing a sword in, and i could really see how we could make it 'us', even though it was at the very top of our price range and a fair walk to the station. More to the point, it was big inside, and i really warmed to the idea of having room to move without tripping over our stuff every other step. After the agent left we went back and i explained how the outside could be de-modernised a little and, to my surprise, i found myself actually talking Elaine around to it (who would ever have imagined i'd be pushing the idea of paying quarter of a million to live in a brick veneer in effing Bayswater?). But since the idea of selling our souls to the banks and being forever in debt and poverty has raised its head, and since we're in the ridiculous situation where a quarter of a million dollars is somehow a very reasonable price for a house in effing Bayswater, it might as well be somewhere i could imagine us making our own.
But that's where it gets complicated. The young sales guy told us they were asking $245k, but on the website they'd added the sinister '+' to the end of it, and when Elaine rang the agents someone else there told her that they're really looking for maybe 10-20% more, which is a bit of bad luck as $245k is our absolute limit and will probably break us as it is. But we're going to put in an offer and see what they say.*
(*Edit - of course we didn't get that one, in fact the agents refused to even waste their time writing up an offer contract for $248k. While i know that's how the game goes, it still astounds me that it can even be legal to advertise something at a price for which you're not even willing to look at an offer. It's a bit like a milk bar advertising a loaf of bread for $2, then when you take it to the counter they say "nah, i was thinking more like $2.75". And they wonder why people rate real estate agents down there with credit card scammers and politicians.)
The big trouble is that now i've sold Elaine on the idea of getting a house with more room, and that a more modern house could be made to look less ugly, that's opened up another range of possibilities that tends to come with a higher price tag, and i'm really worried that i've now let a genie out of the bottle that's going to see us spending some ridiculous amount (as if quarter of a million isn't ridiculous enough!). As it is, my position is that i'm not interested in setting foot in anything that's advertised at more than $240k-ish and don't wish to even go along to look if that's the case but, knowing me, i'm worried that i'll end up agreeing to something stupid just to make the whole thing go away (which of course would really be just the start of the stress, not the end).
And rest assured, i'm really looking forward to joining the "i'd like to help but i've got a mortgage to worry about" club and fretting about interest rates for the next 30 years, in order to pursue the Great Austrayan Dream of a 3 bedroom brick veneer in the suburbs.
Gah, somebody kill me now.
