Saturday, March 23, 2013

The Sound of Settling


After four months and countless places to live, Emily and I have finally found a place to call home in Sydney.  We subleased in Elizabeth Bay for two months ending January 29th.  We spent the entire month of February homeless.  We had a sublease in Kings Cross for five days directly after we left Elizabeth Bay. We rented from Emily’s friend for two weeks after that in Maroubra, then spent around 10 days living in hotels and lodges before finally getting approved for a very nice apartment in Darling Point. 

 Inner Sydney must have one of the hardest real estate markets in the world.  We started looking for a place in the middle of January.  The first place we picked out was in Elizabeth Bay in the building next to us. It was a perfect location and price, but the owner wanted us to lease right away, abut we had already paid for the last two weeks where we were.  Not wanting to pay for two places at once, the decision was pretty much made up for us.  The same week we were due to leave Elizabeth Bay my car registration was due, and that had to be taken care of (more on that later).  I work every Saturday morning, making it almost impossible to make the scheduled inspection times for open flats.  When we called agents to look at specific places we were always given the run around and told to just show up at the scheduled inspection time.  On one rare day off I walked to a real estate office to request an inspection in person, when I called, they always said that they were too busy.  I walked to the office and approached the guy in the doorway who was not actually working there, but just watching over the door, smoking at the same time.  When the agents finally showed up, I tried unsuccessfully to convince them that I could leave my passport and take the keys to look at a place 10 minutes’ walk from the office.  One agent finally agreed to show me but the problem of finding the keys was still at large.  The keys were never found.  The agent’s excuse was because it was the first day back from a long weekend, another agent who had the Saturday inspection did not have time to return the keys to the office so he could leave for his holiday early.  He suggested that I left $400 with him to hold the property for a week until I could look at it.  I was not about to fork any money to anyone in that office.  

After this Emily and I decided to never look at properties that were offered by that company, but everywhere we looked, the best places were managed by this dodgy company!  When we did make an inspection, an average of 10 other people were waiting with us to see any given property.  The real estate agents were almost always late, never answered their phone, and were rude.  Agents never showed features of apartments, they just unlocked the door, asked for a phone number and email, and made it looked like it was a painful experience to deal with the public.  I don’t know much about dealing with apartments in the US, but I would expect that there is at least some customer service, even if someone will not be taking a place.  

On February 16th, we did finally find a place offered by an owner, but he turned us down the day we were going to move in for reasons that we will never know.  We had to book a hotel that night and subsequently stayed in hotels for the next several days. We changed hotels every three days because of rate changes, bookings, ect.  We even spent a weekend 20km out of Sydney in Parramatta during the Sydney Marti Gras, a massive LGBT gathering that made logging prices skyrocket.  We had strict guidelines for a place: Near transport, bathtub, light, airy, and not danky and old like our old place.  Not too much to ask for.  The problem with many places in the city is that price for a crappy moldy studio would be the same as a two bedroom house in the suburbs.  One inspection Emily went to had people bidding against themselves, with the apartment finally going for $485 a week.  

We finally decided on a beautiful place in Darling Point, close to where we lived before.  As we had to do with many properties before, we submitted an application which took about two hours, involving everything from work contacts to character references.  We had applied for about seven places before, but had not been approved before.  I had to pester the agent before he processed out application and we were quickly approved.  The place is a beautiful large one bedroom apartment with huge windows overlooking Double Bay. The carpet is a bit old, but that is likely why the price was lower than other units in the building.  

We moved in as quickly as we could on a Wednesday.  Emily had found a perfectly good bed in the street near her work that we put in right away, spending only one night on an air mattress.  Because I have been working so much, I left all the decorating up to Emily and she has done an amazing job.  She found all of the furniture off of Gumtree, Australia’s Craig’s List.  She found a free dining table, $10 for 4 dining chairs, $200 flat screen TV and entertainment center, $80 sofa bed, and everything we could possibly need for a kitchen for about $80.  She has gone above and beyond my expectations outfitting out place I am now proud to call home.  It’s so nice to finally have a place where we can relax and not worry about rebooking anything and we don’t have to clean up if we don’t feel like it. My mom is visiting in about two months and I can’t wait for her to see it.  Things are not slowing down for us as we are leaving for Byron Bay this Easter weekend for the annual blues festival.