House Hunting is Hell

I’ve got to be honest first up and say that property ownership was actually never my dream. 

Like marriage, having children and all that Jazz it was kind of always something that’s been expected of me eventually. 

You’re an adult now, Sam, time to save for a house. 

Never mind that I can save maybe $500 a month on a good month and so as a single person that will probably take me about 100 months (8.3 years) to save $50,000 which would be a comfortable deposit. I could maybe go to $20 - $35,000 as a more attainable gateway but in the world of skyrocketing Australian house prices the higher deposit the less ridiculous the loan. 

Think about that - even a one bedroom apartment in Sydney can get up to $700 - 800,000 (and higher). 

I could go farther away from the city and have a time wasting daily commute, I could move back to Perth and give up the job I enjoy for a cheaper home, I could move back in with my parents to save money (and move back to Perth and give up my job), or I could rent for the rest of my life. No easy solution. 

At the end of the day, the biggest drive to even consider a property of my own was pet ownership. Rental properties don’t like it - and whilst I understand people don’t want their investment properties be tainted by animals, It’s someone’s life. Children are far more destructive and disruptive than animals but you can’t discriminate against renters with children. 

You could say I’m not a rental owner so I don’t understand and you’re right, but this was definitely a year that I needed the comfort of a companion animal more than ever and it was so hard to cope sometimes without it. All honesty, there were some very dark days that a dog or a cat would have really helped with. I would have paid a pet bond and been liable, of course, but my requests were always declined or ignored. 

So, I bought an apartment this year. I didn’t do it alone - I had a lot of help - and it was far from easy but I finally did it. It took 6 months of looking, spending most weekends house hunting and hours talking to agents, trawling real estate websites and disappointment after disappointment before it finally happened. 

I’m excited that I can decorate my own place, that I don’t have a landlord (except my Mum, my guarantor), and that I can finally get a goddamn puppy which is the only thing I want for Christmas this year. I’m not excited about being in debt for the next 30 years but such is life. 

Let me tell you that having bought a property is a pretty good feeling, but buying property is literal hell. It felt like it would never end, I’ve spend 6 months with most of my stuff in storage and not having a permanent address. I had to go to jury duty and tell the police I didn’t have a proper address which didn’t go down all that well. I’ve spent hours crying that I was going to end up living out of my car and the stress of it all made me gain back a big portion of the weight I worked so hard to lose in the first half of the year. I’ve been to an auction, I’ve made offers and I’ve been sure we got a place only to have the rug pulled out from under me more than once. I even got caught as an awkward bystander to other people’s relationship breakdowns. Currently I’m sleeping on a mattress on the floor and grateful that I have such good friends because I let myself be convinced to move out of my rental too soon. It’s been a rough few months and I’m so relieved to say that I finally found a place that I like, is in a good location and even though I can’t move til after Christmas I actually will be able to move in. 

I was about two minutes from actually praying. To every Pagan deity. 

I’m a millennial and I’m pretty happy to be one. I’m extremely lucky and I appreciate that as a (visibly) white person I have a lot of privilege which I am very aware of. I am very grateful and extremely fortunate that I come from a comfortable middle-class family and that I have a good support network. I could absolutely have not done it alone. 

My life is what it is - I’ve done a lot of travelling in my time and I’ve made choices that I stand by like moving across the country. I mention it because if not for the help I’ve received the thought of property ownership even would be so far from attainable it would be somewhere beyond Mars. Not impossible, just extremely far away. 

I said 8.3 years before which is not impossible and sure I could do it. But I’m 29. In 8 years I’ll be 37. That means solid saving of $500 a month on my solo wage and in that time I wouldn’t be able to have a child or a wedding or travel. Every one of those things will push back property by however many months or years. And $500 is generous. 

I really feel for the people in the property market now and the ones saving like crazy to get in the door. 

House hunting is hell, after all. 

Sam xox