Gracie’s Life Experiment

10 Things We’re Looking for in a House March 19, 2009

It’s been a while since my last 10 things post. This week’s 10 things are 10 things we’re looking for in our next house. The first 5 are necessary, the last 5 are wish list but not deal breakers.

1. Less than $600,000
2. At least 3 bedrooms
3. Family area (not rough)
4. At least some garden (not courtyard style)
5. Easy access (i.e. not having to abseil to get to the front door) and safe for baby
6. Two floors
7. Close to train line
8. Garaging and storage space for hubby’s model railway
9. Near water (beach, river, or reserve etc)
10. Ensuite to master

We’ve been looking for about 2 months and have put offers in on 4 houses so far. Disappointingly none have come to fruition. I think the problem is we have too much choice so dither about and every week there are yet more houses to see within our range. Back when we bought our first place it was easy as we had such a limited budget we were restricted to very few houses and when the right one came along we offered and got – all done on the same day over the phone with the estate agent and vendor. Here it’s a joke. The first house we wanted the vendors wanted far more and had 4 other offers on the table whilst they waited. The second house was odd as it was never publicly advertised and ended up being something like a private auction where they drove everyone up 5k at a time from 550 up to 570s. We got p**sed off around the 571 mark and stopped. Last we heard ours was the second highest offer and that the vendors haven’t accepted any offers (funny that… I wonder if we’re the only bidder and they are just holding out for more). The third house was in a worse area, but closer to hubby’s work. Asking price 575, we offered 570 – they didn’t even bother getting back to us. The last place was simply “by negotiation”.. turns out they want 620+ but seeing as we have seen at least 3 similar houses in the same area all go for 570-580 they are dreaming (and they only had a courtyard garden when others had pools). So we’re gonna change tack a bit and perhaps look at something cheaper but where we can spend the extra money on an extension/doing it up. Buying a house in the UK was simple. The vendor decides the asking price and everyone offers lower (unless u really want it and go all out for asking price, or a little more if others also want it). Here it’s a bloody minefield. First you have auctions – you have no idea what kind of price they want, the vendor can bid (at their own auction??), there’s usually some shenanigans going on with relatives/friends bidding to up things. Secondly there are price ranges – say the house is up for sale 520-550, now what does that mean?? Of course you’ll want it at the lower range, the vendor will want it at upper range why bother giving a range, just say what you want! Thirdly you have offers over – this is a joke as they seem to put them so low in some cases even if you bid 30k over they still want more, why not just say what you want! Yet looking at the statistics it would seem that most houses tend to be sold approx 20-50k under their asking price – funny this statistic hasn’t applied to any of the houses we’ve offered on. I think for the next offer we’re going to say we’ll give them X amount only, they have 48 hours to respond (yes or no, not silence, not um hang on indefinitely while we wait to see if any mug will pay more) and we wanna be in within 4 weeks. We have cash, we have no chain and we can move straight away yet this seems to hold no sway even though everyone says it’s a buyer’s market (obv not in Sydney it isn’t). It’s exacerbated by the first home buyers grant being doubled will June so every man and his dog is looking. Although I have noticed that last weekend there were far less people viewing than previous weekends.