Mysterious Ways

It would not be ridiculous to suggest that my last post was a little light on for content. This is probably because I was too busy drinking Baileys and eating caramel glazed cream filled donuts to write a detailed post about anything much.

So, just before I never write another post about real estate ever ever ever again, here’s a few moré details of my attempting-to-buy-a-house experience.

The current emotional rollercoaster got started when we checked out a nice four bedroom place in a suburb that was roughly halfway between Melbourne’s CBD and, say, Wonthaggi. It was quite new, very pleasant, big enough, within a day’s hike of the nearest public transport (a vitally important criteria for any one-car family), close enough to where we live now that we may still see our irl peeps from time to time, and altogether pretty well ideal for us, apart from the smallish back yard and truly bizarre white sink in the kitchen. Oh, and the loungeroom was oddly proportioned and we prefer gas stoves to electric, but my point is that these are not big issues.

So, we asked the agent what he thought it would sell for at auction. He gave us a range, the top end of which was $30,000 less than we were willing and able to spend. We thought we had a shot at it. In fact, we thought it would be surprising if anyone was willing to bid more than we could afford for that house.

So, we organised a reasonably priced but still fairly expensive building inspection, we frantically shuffled money between accounts so we could write a cheque for the deposit on auction day, we got quite nervous thinking about how devastatingly disappointing it would be not to get the house, we organised for the children to spend some quality time with my parents, and we headed off to the auction.

And we watched, with a measure of disbelief, as in the space of around 2 minute and 38 seconds, the bidding increased by $230,000 from the initial bid, merrily sailing past the range estimated by the agent and all the way to a ridiculous price that was around $80,000 above the maximum estimated, and, as a result, $50,000 more than we could possibly afford to pay.

So, we took ourselves off to a local café, where we ate a large bowl of wedges with sour cream, accompanied by a large mug of coffee for the guy who was driving and a glass of chardonnay for his wife who was not.

The rest of the weekend was a not unpleasant round of taking children to parks, church, spending more time with my parents before they headed interstate, and wondering at length how in the world we would ever manage to buy anything bigger than a caravan on half a vacant block somewhere just to the north of Lakes Entrance.

Also, more drinking.

Which didn’t help either.

So, in the end we decided to forget the whole thing for a few weeks, focus on the forthcoming birthday party for Bundle and visit of mother in law, and start again when a few more houses came onto the market.

We were not pleased. At all.

Then, four days later, the phone rang.

*Ring ring*

*Ring ring*

*Ring ring*

*Ring ring*

No one was home. Fortunately, they rang my mobile next

*weird new age style sounds possibly originally recorded by John Tesh*

It was a real estate agent, ringing to tell me that the truly awesome house that we had seen about six weeks earlier and which we had not been able to afford at the time was suddenly back on the market, the owners needed to sell really quickly and they would sell it to us for a surprisingly good price if we were quick.

We were quick. In fact, six hours later we were at the agent’s office and eight hours later the deal was done.

I still can’t quite believe it but in a bit less than four weeks we will be moving into a freaking amazing two storey four bedroom house with a large backyard which is in every sense exactly the ideal house for our family and nearly a week later I still can’t believe that just happened.

Sometimes things are just good. Other times they are stunningly, unbelievably sensationally good.

Blogging may continue to be on the infrequent side for the next few weeks as I will be very busy organizing a rather large loan, gardening, cleaning, hiring a truck and taking every other available moment to marvel at my good fortune.