Greenbackyard

So, how does it all start (part 3)

[continuing from part 2]

Our initial search for a home was focussed on Adelaide. Why? At the time I was working for Rising Sun Pictures, a great visual effects company, and our main office was located there. As a city, it has all the ammenities: good schools, parks, hills, great wine regions, good food, good coffee, great chocolate, etc. It’s still small enough that you don’t get too many traffic jams and you can cycle (except if you have to go through the Hills, then you need to be really fit). And I wouldn’t have to look for work, as I could work from our Adelaide office. Everything seemed to be perfect, right?

Well, not so. See, when we started looking for a property to buy, the “realestate boom” was starting to slow down considerably in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth. Adelaide, for some reason was behind schedule, it was picking up steam there. Our budget was getting us less and less by the month. The market was growing very fast and the properties we could afford were, of course, larger and nicer than what we could have ever dreamed in Sydney however they were not The House we were looking for. None of the houses that were in our range seduced us both at first sight.

It’s amazing, sometimes one spends more time shopping for cloths, trying them on, than looking at a house that would put us in a stupidely deep level of debt. A house, you go to the opening, if you like it, you get it inspected, etc … but you usually don’t get back there too many times. How much time did we spend on houses that we then went to auctions for? Max 1.5h in total .. maybe 2h. It’s weird. And then we are expected to bid hundreds of thousands of dollars worth.

We also had to deal with real estate agents that greeted us with: “Oh! we love you, Sydney people, coming over here full of cash” (if only he knew).

Anyway, after several months, and probably two dozen properties viewed (remember: we were living in Sydney at the time, so every time we had to check a place, we had to go to Adelaide), we selected two or three that we were really serious about (still not the dream place we had in our heads but …). We made an offer on one or two, went to auction on another one and didn’t even get close to negotiate. Maybe our offers were way low in relation to the owners expectations. Only if they knew about the sub-prime and what was to come, I am sure our offers would have been accepted. Back in May, June 2008, there was still a belief that whatever was happening in the US wouldn’t affect Australia, after all, we have the “resources boom” going on.

I have to acknowledge the generosity and warmth with which two different families (I won’t name them as I haven’t checked with them if it’s OK to put their names on my blog yet) received us every time we went to Adelaide to check places. They helped us so much, it’s a debt that we have with them and we shall treasure the beautiful moments we had with them in Adelaide.

After the last failed auction, we came back to Sydney, quite depressed frankly. We had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in travel, car rentals, inspections, fees, and still, nothing and everything seemed to be getting more expensive by the day. That night we had dinner with friends who own a property in Bellingen and had put it on the market (they need a larger home, with a kid and a second one on the way). They showed us the website of the real-estate agent and as we were browsing we saw this property, within our budget and Danielle and I looked at each other and we knew, “this is IT”. We didn’t think about what it meant to move to the country, we didn’t think about the implications, we just dreamed about a beautiful place in paradise, with enough land to allow us to drastically reduce our environmental impact, quite close to a beautiful little town in country NSW.

Many of the implications of what purchasing this place would mean, came to us later. The “tree-change” as it is known, was an after thought. We wanted a place that would allow Zeek to grow in an environment that wouldn’t be as superficial as Bondi Beach is nowadays, that would allow him to run amok and play in a park without fear of cars or needles from junkies, that we could go to work without having to drive.

We came here, inspected the property and over the following couple of days made an offer, negotiated it a little bit and it was accepted. We settled and on July 5th took possession of our place! It was very fast, very simple and straight forward.

It seems like an impulsive purchase. In a sense, I guess it was but if you come and visit us, you will see how beautiful this land is, the valley talks to you and you cannot but fall in love with this place. Everything else that’s not love and family would have to take a second order of priority.

In the next installments, I will describe what we did in order to move here. The major changes that we had to put in place, the risks that we ran and we are still running and, well, how our experience has been.

[to be continued...]