Well. We almost own a house.
Today I dropped off the exchange deposit at the lawyers’ and signed the contract, which pretty much means that we’re at that No Backing Out Now stage. We were going to do it yesterday, except for the fact that we got foiled by a bank holiday (no joke) so couldn’t draw up the cheque for the deposit. Guh. But that was yesterday, and today is today. Today is the day I commit to buying the most expensive thing I have ever bought; a house.
So, here’s the story. It’s a three bedroom (“two-and-a-half bedroom” Mat calls it, since the third bedroom is quite small) two-storey town house in Weston Creek. For those of you who don’t know Canberra, the place is arranged into various ‘valleys’ consisting of a centralised shopping district circled by suburbs. There are four ‘classic’ valleys in Canberra, coming down from the north they are Belconnen, Civic, Woden and Tuggeranong. Weston Creek is — not surprisingly — just west of Woden. I spent my early childhood there in Duffy, in a house that got burnt down in the 2003 bushfires (we’d long since moved on, but it’s sad for nostalgia reasons; there’s now a massive hyper-modern rendered McMansion on the block), and later in life went to Stromlo High School, so the area is a bit of an old haunt. That aside, it’s also valuable. Westom Creek used to be considered a bit of the boondocks Back In The Day, however with the Canberra housing market being what it is, the area is getting more and more gentrified and desirable (in the six-ish months we were looking, the bottom of the market there went up by an easy $50,000). Because of the way Canberra is situated within the ACT, the new land releases are all going to be in the south rather than the north, which is having the effect of making Woden the new centre of the city (historically it’s been Civic). In fact, the next major development is allegedly going to be west again of Western Creek.
In short, the land is very central and it’s a good investment. Well, as good as you can get in the housing market right now; there’s a lot of speculation but prices are insane right now and there’s rumblings that interest rates are going to go up and a few other things that may mean the ‘bubble’ bursts. Maybe (surely the prices just can’t keep going up? Surely?). Even if it does, the location of the property will probably shield us a little from any major crashes due to the desirability of the land.
So anyway, the house has one conjoined wall and is on the corner of two streets which gives it a massive yard for what it is. It’s all original condition but has been looked after fairly well, so the kitchen and bathrooms are all serviceable. The downstairs areas and the staircase are all a type of hardwood that’s usually called Tasmanian Oak or Victorian Ash (and is actually from one of two or three different species of gum tree) which was common in old houses but is now pretty much worth its weight in gold. A quick rip up of the carpet in the living room and a re-polish and we’ve got ourselves a ten thousand dollar floor. Upstairs is full of attractive 1970s Mission Brown1 shag-pile carpet which is probably going to be ripped out and replaced before we move in; alas, underneath is raw chipboard so we’ll need to get some replacement carpet. The reason all the carpet has to go — and the curtains, and the walls have to be repainted — is that the people who previously inhabited the house were 40-a-day smokers and the place reeks, This was good for us because it meant there was less interest in the property. To be honest, I’m not at all upset that the house needs work. I’ve seen a lot of houses over the last six months and know for a fact that a shitty, ‘modern’ paint job in bright colours and a cheap kitchen renovation will instantly jack the price of a property up by about $50k. I don’t want to buy someone else’s shit-poor rennos; I’d rather do my own shit-poor rennos, have it come in cheaper, and get the place looking exactly how I’d want it.
Mum says she’ll buy me a consultation with her interior decorator for my birthday, so we can get a nice colour scheme and carpet. Mat is not so enthused.
So, that’s pretty much the property. It’s… a really good buy, I think. Great interior layout, fantastic location, okay body corporate (there’s something about a major water leak which may come back and burn us, but… it’s a risk), generous land. So I can rope mum in on the painting (she likes painting houses, allegedly) and I can learn how to garden, and we can polish the place up without worrying about overcapitalising. To be honest, we’re getting the place cheap for what it is (which is still expensive, but that’s Western Creek for you). It was supposed to go to auction on the 11th — which is coincidentally our wedding day — which is why we’ve been frantically trying to get the exchange done as fast as we can. They can’t auction it after we’ve done the exchange without major legal ramifications (the exchange is essentially their promise to sell the property to us; we don’t technically own it until about a month later during what’s called the settlement). The sellers are an elderly couple and it sounds like they might have moved into care somewhere, so I think they just want to get their cash with the minimum amount of dickery. Which is good for us, and we can play that game too.
Fingers crossed.
- ‘Mission Brown and White’ was the colour scheme of every single house built in Australia circa 1970. It’s so ubiquitous that it’s a running gag for anyone who’s ever looked at buying a house. Starting during the late 1990s, Mission Brown and White started to get replaced by a new generic default colour scheme, jokingly referred to as “Mission Green and Cream”. As of 2004, the body corporate of the place we’re trying to buy officially declared Mission Green and Cream to be the new outside colour scheme for houses in the development. There’s no escape. ^