Will the last Englishman out of the country turn the lights out please ?

House Purchase ! and Real Estate Awards

So, you decide you are going to move to the opposite side of the world. You know you will face many challenges along the way, first of all meeting the requirements of your new country of choice, and getting a visa. Then the move itself, will the ship sink, will everything arrive broken. Then you have to get a job, find friends, all of these will be a challenge. So, out of all of these, which is going to present the biggest issue ? Answer, none of them. The real issue over in Aus is finding a house to buy !

Now, you would think, if you are well funded, and thanks to the strength of the pound at 2.5 dollars to one, you would be able to waltz over, snap up a place, and live in relative financial comfort. We, before arriving, kidded ourselves about mortgage free living. That soon changed as soon as we got here, as although we could do it, the areas we would have to buy in are not for us. Further, salaries here are bigger than we thought, so up went our estimations, and we start looking at some fairly big places. So, after a couple of months, you understand the market, you have a mortgage approved, $k's in the Bank as a deposit, its time to buy...

First obstacle, estate agents. Funny here how no agent seems to know what their vendor wants for the house. Now, if it was me, and I was an agent, I would go round, look at the house, first question out of my mouth is, what do you think it is worth. I am damn sure when I sold my house in the UK I had to give a value of what I wanted, and that value even went on the details. Here, no price on the details, which is fine, but you call an agent, ask how much, and the standard answer is "Look, I dont know what they want, I have not discussed price with them". I find this very hard to believe. The next bit is good too, as that sentence is normally followed by "They will listen to all offers before auction, or take market price at auction". This 'market price' seems to fluctuate wildly on the day, depending on how high the auction price went. If it goes well, 'market price' seems to be achieved, and if we had to put a figure on it, we would say 30% of auctions result in this phenonemum. If however things dont go well, 'market price' seems to shift on the day in question, and you get told at the auction they want $200k more. If you ask the agent how he/she got this info, as he/she previously stated they did not know how much the vendor wanted, you seem to get told "I dont know that's what they want, I just think if you give them that, it may swing it for you". So, you need to throw in another $200k for the hounour of buying a place with no price tag. Then, the houses that do sell also affect this 'market price' figure, as Doris round the corner sold hers, and she has no pool, and we do, so now its gone up another $100k on whatever is was before (Bearing in mind they did not know what it was before). No matter that Doris's house was completely modernised, and theirs is a wreck, matters not.

In honour of all the North Shore agents who have bought so much happiness to our lives over the past 6 months, with all the laughs in sheer amazement we have had, we've decided to present some awards (Names removed):

Most bullshit out of one agents mouth Award - Independent Agent, Pymble - Lied so much that even caught herself in her own lies in the end. Unless you were prepared to kiss this womans feet, you weren't buying one of her houses. Her considerable weight led us to believe we did not wish to kiss her feet, as no doubt, supporting that frame all day would make them sweat a bit.

Most Stupidist Comment Award - Well known North Shore Agency, Turramurra - When I called asking the price of a property, she replied "We are not concentrating on price this weekend". Great I said, you are giving it away then ?. She replied, "No, we are just not getting hung up on price at this stage. Why dont you tell me your top end budget, then I can tell you if you can afford it". I replied that I would not tell her anything, as she was selling the damn thing, so there must be a price. I also wagered with her that if I called next week, and it was not sold, she would tell me. The following week, she told me, I looked, we hated it. Another week of our lives we wont get back there then.

The rub your nose in it award - Another huge North Shore Agency, Wahroonga - This bloke sold a friend of ours house for a top top price. Admittedly, he does sound like one of the better agents, I quite like him, and in the case of our friend he broke the ceiling price in the road by $400k. But after that great work, what does he do ? He sticks a full page ad in the paper the following week, with his face plastered on it, declaring property sold for record price. Now, you are the buyer of that property, the ink is drying on the contract, and you open the paper to get a message that you've been sucked in, and overpaid. Great bit of PR that is. Funny thing is, we know who the buyer is through another friend, and apparently he is happy with the deal he got, so go figure that one !

Finally, the top honour of Agent least likely to ever get a job anywhere else, including cleaning the toilets in McDonalds - Same North Shore Agency as for the Most Stupidist Comment - Pymble - At an auction, managed to piss off her one and only true bidder so much, he eventually resfused to bid further. This guy is bidding strong on a property, going up in $5k chunks. He is bidding against a person who we knew would never buy the place as he was tight, and bidding in $1k's or less, and looked identical to a group of people well known for paying peanuts for property. So, she keeps stopping the auction while she badgers the miser guy for another $500.00. Eventually, he bids, the other buy whacks $5k on top straight away, and we start all over again. In the end, the auctioneer even had a go at her and said it was a total joke. She wins the award hands down, not only for this incredible display of incompetence, but also for the comedy eyebrows she sported throughout the whole debacle.

Before any of you reading this in the same boat give up all hope, let me tell you there is light at the end of the tunnel. We met a normal person, who happened to be an agent too. He sold us a house in less than 1 week from start to finish, and even gave us a bottle of champagne when we exchanged contracts. He seems a real stand up bloke, and we are over the moon with our purchase. Those of you on the pictures distribution will have already seen the place, on 1419 sqm, we now own over a 1/3 acre of prime Australian real estate. The dogs have a huge garden to run around in, and we have lemons and limes growing in the back garden. How perfect is that ?

It needs a bit of 'reno' work, but I brought all my tools over, so work starts in July. Dad and Nathan will be here for December too, right about when we want to start the extension...... Now where did I put those trowels ?