Haven't been great at updating this recently, but I'm currently home sick so thought now would be a good time to do so.
iCal just reminded me that I'm supposed to be at a Melbourne Cup afternoon tea at work shortly, but my TPH (tissues per hour) rate is a bit high to be at work right now. I don't care about the race myself, but I bought a ticket in a raffle for a TV, which would be nice to win - our current TV has substantially less screen real estate than my Powerbook.
Liz and I have been doing some house hunting over the last couple of weekends. It's interesting to see just how much the prices are diving.
Just Listed, our primary source of info, sends me emails whenever something which matches our criteria either changes or is newly added. This is
far superior to the Old Media method where each agent puts out an ad with all their properties, which are aggregated in a local paper such as ours
The Leader, sorted by agent.
I don't care who is selling the property, I care about things like location and price, and want to be able to search by these criteria regardless of agent. This is where Just Listed works so well.
Just Listed recently sent me three updates on one such place over the course of a week or so - first dropping the price to $500k or so, then to $455, then to $425. That's what I call a buyers market, and once again I'm glad that something is finally swinging in our favour.
We are looking mainly in the South-Sydney suburbs of Mortdale and Penshurst. We like the small village atmosphere that the centre of these places have (and the other key factor - a train station), and a short walk from the centre there are plenty of places currently for sale within our budget. Still, we aren't blind to other suburbs such as Peakhurst, Riverwood, and in the other direction Kogarah, Carlton and Allawah. It's a bit scary to realise that the prices we need to pay to get a free-standing house in these suburbs would buy us two or even three such properties way out in western Sydney somewhere. Still, we are viewing it partly as an investment in our futures and partly as somewhere to live for a while.
According to the computer of the
Mortgage Choice rep who came over a couple of weeks ago, some banks are willing to lend us up to $800k!! No thanks! Would like to be out of debt sometime before we die.
Those sort of figures were on one hand nice to hear, but on another they reminded us just how serious the financial commitment we are moving towards is.