House Hunting

Ahh house hunting, everyone's favorite chore... So we're starting to become a lot more knowledgeable about Melbourne's neighborhoods, and boy are there a lot of them. Right now we're focusing on St Kilda, Prahran, Toorak, and Melbourne itself. Its still hard for me to grasp exactly how far apart these places are in relation to downtown Melbourne, we've taken the trams to all of the apartments we're viewing but if we wanted to we could probably walk to them.

So we've seen 3 apartments so far out of the five we have attempted to see. First I'll explain the process with most of these "inspections" as they like to call it. Each apartment that is being shown gets a window of 15 minutes that the agent will be there to show it. If you're late, you're out of luck. If you're early, you have to wait until they get there. The first one we tried to see yesterday, we arrived in the middle of the time period and there was a guy there with his baby that said nobody showed up to show the apartment...strike one. This morning we were late getting to the inspection...strike 2. That one stunk because we had to schlep out pretty far from where we're staying to get there. On the other hand we saw some pretty shady things on the way there so we weren't too disappointed in the end. This is a PG blog so I won't get into it here!

Third try was the charm, sort of...at least we got to see this one. What we saw wasn't very appealing though. This was advertised as a 2 bedroom, fully furnished apartment. Well it had some furnishings... 2 crappy twin beds, a couch that looked like they got it off of the street that morning, a desk and a couple chairs that looked like they would break if you sneezed on them too hard. Not what we're looking for.

The next one we saw was a studio in St Kilda this afternoon. Same 15 minute time limit but at least this one was on time. There were about 15 people there to see the apartment, all at the same time, in a studio...needless to say, it was a bit cramped in there. The view was really nice, looking at the city in the distance and over a park right below. This one was unfurnished though, and when they say unfurnished, they mean unfurnished. Not even a refrigerator is included!

After that one, we went to see one nearby that the tenants are leaving early to go back home to Ireland. This one is perfect! Its a 1 bedroom fully furnished apartment in a good location and it fits our price range. We called the real estate office to let them know we really want it so keep your fingers crossed for us! The tenants that are leaving are leaving all of their stuff too, TV, dishes, you name it, they're not taking it.

We've got a busy day on Thursday. I have an interview of sorts, they don't have any specific openings but hopefully I'll be able to blow their socks off with my charm and wit...(better keep your fingers crossed for me on this one too) After that we have several apartment inspections right in a row, just in case the one we saw today doesn't come through. Its gonna be a looooooong day, but once we're settled it'll all be worth it.

Oh and I have an Australian cell phone now if you need to get in contact with us quickly. You'll be calling on international rates so I wouldn't recommend any calls unless its an emergency. One nice thing about this number is that I don't take any charges for incoming calls so its all on you! 61 04 1588 0379