Diary of a new home owner - February 2001

Well, I'm finally buying a house! I've been thinking about it for years now, but events conspired against me and I just never made the decision to go ahead and do it. In the first week of January, I broke up with my boyfriend (Ren) of six years, and I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with my weekends. Why not buy a house, I thought! I wouldn't normally recommend this as therapy, but it has kept me very busy. Ren who?

I started out by looking at the house next door to my rented two bedroom unit. The price was right, it had an airconditioner, and it would be really easy to move there. What else matters? The agent listed it as,
"This affordable 3 bedroom home with l-shaped lounge/dining, two gas heaters, ceiling fan and airconditioner. Roomy kitchen and the bathroom has separate bath and shower. A carport and large garage are ideal for the home handy person."
The reference to the "home handy person" should have warned me off straight away. You would have to be very handy to replace the windows, replace the torn curtains, repaint inside and out, fix the heaters, replace the guttering, and re-stump. I swear one side of the lounge room was a foot lower than the other side! Ok, so that wasn't the house for me after all.

This one's better! Sounds great in the advertisement, let's have a look... I turned up at the appointed time, and the agent turned up 15 minutes later. He admitted that he had never seen the house and he didn't have any information about it, but he still managed to dazzle me with insights about the house. Such as "this double garage door is really easy to open", as his face is going red with exertion. My favourite was, "Oh you can ignore the huge cracks in the walls - all houses have them". Strike two...

By this time I was a bit wary, but this next house was a definite possibility. It even had a dishwasher and a cat door for my darling Rocky! I arranged for a builder's inspection, and was prepared to make an offer... that is, until I received the builder's report. I don't know about you, but there's something about gas leaks and $16k of repairs that bothers me... I'm starting to think that I'll never find something decent within my price range.

Then I stumbled across this ad. in the local paper:

"Polished floor boards, new carpet in lounge, tiled entry, new bathroom, new hot water service, central heating, hideaway laundry, heat lamps, separate toilet, separate dining, brilliant paint, BBQ area, garden shed."

It sounded too good to be true, so I guessed that it probably was. There was an open day the next Saturday, but I was on a roll, so I arranged to see it two days before the open day. Imagine my surprise when everything in the ad. was actually true, and more. This place had character, and the current owner was a builder who had recently renovated it. It was love at first sight! Bugger it, I thought, this place is going to be snapped up at the open day or at auction. So I made an offer on the spot, subject to a builder's inspection, of course. The builder's inspection turned up trumps. The builder who did the inspection for me, Bob (we're on a first name basis by now), seemed as surprised as I was, considering the last place I asked him to look at. I don't need to lift a finger with this house. My own house - what a buzz!