The big news in the last six months is that myself and Jacqui have bought an apartment. After a few years of half-hearted looking we finally found somewhere that we liked enough to actually bid on.

Jacqui always wanted a bit of outdoor space, so a courtyard or garden was a must. She spotted ana apartment in Maroubra which looked great. Decent sized garden, recently renovated, move in, nothing to spend sort of place. It met all the requirements, so we got our finances in order and headed off to the auction.

The agent had quoted an expected price around $520k, so, Aussie agents being what they are, we knew that would probably be a bare minimum. Although this was our first auction, there were found being held at the venue before ours, so there was plenty of time to get a feel for how things were running. Standard procedure seemed to see lots of frantic bidding, then a pause when it appeared it was finally down to two buyers, but then the serious bidders would come in and the final stage was reached.

When our auction started I figured I’d bide my time and see what happened. Bidding started at $450k and I was hopeful of getting the apartment for a decent price, but it quickly ended up at two couples duking it out at $540k. After the “going twice” announcement, I started bidding and we ended up bowing out at $570k. Damn! I was a bit disappointed, but Jacqui was heartbroken.

Back to the drawing-board, or so we thought. A couple of days later the estate agent called us to say that the owner of the apartment next door, in the same building, wanted to sell. We went to check it out and it was identical in layout and size to the apartment we’d missed at auction. The only downside was that, while there were no structural issues, it was a rental property, so would need a complete paint, a new kitchen and a few other things done to get it up to the standard we wanted.

Luckily our bid of $525k was accepted and, after all the legalese was over with, we picked up the keys on November 23rd. Here’s a few photos of the state it was in when we bought it.

With the help of Jimmy, my builder mate, we quickly worked through the major items needing to be done so we could move in before December 10th.

• rip out carpets and built-ins in both bedrooms
• rip out carpet and lay a wooden floor in my office
• install many extra plug sockets
• sand & white-wash the floorboards throughout
• prune the trees in the garden and get rid of the weeds

Here’s a few photos of the work in progress. We’ve now moved in and had a BBQ/housewarming on NYE which went pretty well. We’ve a new kitchen on the way, plus a few final touches to sort out before the major work is finished. More photos to come!

Myself and Jacqui are doing the responsible thing and saving for a house deposit, so we’ve started paying a bit of attention to the goings on in the property market. Property crashes in the US, UK, Ireland and throughout the world gave a glimmer of hope that Australia’s over-priced property market would also deflate a little, but it hasn’t happened.

To ease their entry into the market, the Federal Government started offering between $7000 and $14000 to first home buyers, on top of the $7000 plus stamp duty concessions which have been offered by the State Governments for years. Most people think this is a great idea, but a moment’s thought shows that it’s completely stupid, as all it does is push up house prices by the amount of the handout. Sure enough, first home buyers now make up almost 30% of the market and prices in the cheaper suburbs have increased by up to $40000, so there are quite a few idiots out there paying $40000 more for a house in order to ensure they get a free $14000 from the Government!

Interest rates have been at historic lows, further encouraging first home buyers, and now that the economy looks to be on the mend, we’re being told that now is a great time to buy a house and that the main reason Australian property will never fall in price is that there’s a huge housing shortage. This adage has been repeated so often over the last few years that it’s accepted as gospel, but no-one ever provides any evidence for the claim. A financial site that I keep an eye on finally had enough, and in their daily mailout on Monday asked anyone for evidence supporting the property shortage claim.

The responses were forthcoming, and it appears that the evidence for the claim originates in the National Housing Supply Council’s State of Supply Report 2008, which claims a shortage of 85,000 houses in 2008. The funny part is when you delve into the report to find out how they came to that figure and learn that it’s based on the numbers of homeless!! They’ve added up the numbers of homeless sleeping rough, homeless sleeping with relatives or friends and unemployed people living in caravans. Then they’ve decided that the rental vacancy rate should be 3%, so have increased the ‘shortage’ to allow for it.

So there you have it. The reason Australian property prices won’t fall is because there are homeless people. Priceless!

Well it’s been quite a while since I posted anything, but things are starting to settle down now. Myself and Jacqui finally found an apartment to rent, five weeks after arriving back from Canada! We moved in two weeks ago and the place is slowly starting to take shape. It’s quite a bit smaller than our previous place in Vaucluse, so we still have to get rid of some stuff that we don’t really have any room far. Once that’s done all will be well, as the place is still a bit cluttered at the moment.

I had hoped to get iiNet’s Naked DSL installed, but it turns out that our apartment doesn’t have a phone line connected to it! In 2008!! Anyway, we could get the landlord to pay $300 to get a line installed, and then wait another 2-3 weeks to resubmit a new Naked DSL application, but since both myself and Jacqui are working from home at the moment, waiting 4-6 weeks to have internet wasn’t practical, so I signed up with BigPond’s Cable Internet instead. We should have that up and running later this week.

Also, I nearly burnt the place down a few days ago. I’d got the gas connected, so I decided to make a coffee with my stovetop coffee pot, but I forgot all about it and went off to the supermarket to meet Jacqui and do a grocery shop. I wandered around, filling up the trolley until I got to the coffee aisle and remembered “Fuck, I left the coffee pot on the gas”. Ran all the way home (just as well our new place is close to the shops, eh?) to discover coffee pot on fire. Thankfully it’s almost all metal so there wasn’t enough flammable material to cause anything serious, so all I had to do was open the windows to let the smell out and reassure the cat that things were OK.