We recently move again, for the second time in three years. It’s bloody irritating.
The first time, we were living in an apartment in the middle eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Very affluent area. Not perfect by any stretch, but we had community of a sort and some very lovely gardens.
Getting close to lease renewal time, no word from the landlord, so A. starts looking at alternatives. Turns out the landlord wants to sell up. We can buy if we like, for a ludicrously-inflated price. Had the place valued anyway, to help guide our decision-making.
Agent claimed owner wasn’t interested in anything under his initial asking price. We moved. They got what we’d offered, a full $150k under the initial asking.
Second place, nice McMansion in the outer western suburbs. Four bedrooms plus two living rooms and a spare kitchen in the laundry. Clearly intended as an inter-generational home. A. made some friends, found some community again, basically all good.
This time after two years the owner turned out to be in serious financial difficulty, having over-extended on property speculation. We had another year to run on the lease, and legally we could’ve been dicks about it, but:
- living where you’re not wanted is gonna be stressful, so why do it if you have other options?
- consumer protections are good, but of limited assistance when there’s a big power imbalance: as there is between renters and rental agents. Sure, the law says they can’t kick us out until the end of the lease, but good luck with rental references going forward…
Anyway. We started looking again. Then A. poses the question: “why don’t we buy?”.
Now, I’ve assumed for a long time that this was beyond reach. I make pretty good money – nothing compared to the Silicon Valley startup types, despite the similar risk profile in my employment – but I’m over 50 now, and while we’re mostly debt-free houses in Australia are stupidly expensive. But we took a look, and I ran some numbers, and hm, maybe?
A colleague referred me to a mortgage broker to chat with, we figured out a budget – pretty low for Melbourne but with some compromises doable on the very outer western fringe – and it looks doable!
From there, loan application in, inspected some places, none really grabbed us except for one that looked awesome but had very narrow hallways so had to be excluded for accessibility reasons (for the record, we couldn’t have bought it anyway, asking price range was in budget but it went to auction and sold for something like an extra $100k). Found this house a few klicks from where we had been living, liked it, made an offer, all good.
We’re as far west as you can go in Melbourne and still technically be in Melbourne. The local train station is on the Geelong line, V/Line services to the city but no metro trains. There’s a bus service from a block away to both the local station and the nearest metro line station.
Much to my surprise there’s a lot of local bird life, which is lovely. It’s a relatively new estate, I think they started building here about ten years ago? But the developers put in a bit of effort with parks and other public spaces, and there are enough mature-enough trees for the birds.
Only real complaint right now is that the back of the house gets direct sunlight all afternoon, and that’s where my office is. Gotta find some money to put in some awnings…
But hey, we can put in some awnings.
