melvania

And for $13,000 over our asking price. Big thanks to our agent, Andrew Harvey, for putting in all the hard work.

I gotta say, I was worried for a while. After the first open last Tuesday (12th October), when he said all 6 groups who came through said it was too expensive, I was wondering if we'd have to drop the price. But the agent said he was quietly confident (his words) that we'd get more buyers on Saturday.

Sunday afternoon, he contacted me and said he hadn't had any offers yet, but that he knew at least two were very interested, so he was going to follow up with them and let me know.

Later Sunday night, he messaged me saying we had an offer for $10k over asking price, and had to decide whether to take a 45 day settlement with a rent back option of $250/week, or a 60 day settlement without that. After discussing it a bit, we asked if we could go for the 45 day settlement, and then have the option to extend it if we didn't find anything in time.

He messaged back the next day asking if a 60 day settlement was ok, with two optional 30 day extensions. We agreed to that. He finished drafting the contract and went to see the buyer that evening.

After he saw the buyer and had them sign, he came to see us, and told us he managed to get us an extra $3k. Cool! So we signed, and it's all in motion, and we're currently waiting for the 48 hour cooling off period to finish (which will be finished by the time I actually post this - we've told a few people, but won't make it public till that's all finalised).

All going well, if we can find a house in time, we'll settle on 18th December and be in a new house before Christmas. Which is what I've been hoping for all along.

So...I've done the numbers and worked out how much we can afford to spend on a new house. Although we do want to keep it lower than the max if at all possible, so that we can have a buffer in case we need to do any work in the first week (like if it's 40 degrees outside and the air conditioner dies on us....)

I've already been looking at houses, been to several opens, we've offered on 3 but got turned down. Our agent said our buyer doesn't need finance, so making offers from here on is just like having money in the bank, giving us an advantage.

This is so different to when we bought this house. Back then, this was the first and only house we offered on. The market wasn't nearly as crazy as it is now.

So now we keep house hunting, and pray that the right house at the right price comes up at the right time.

So, I suppose you're all waiting with bated breath to hear something about our house. And you will, soon. But for now, I wanted to talk about something else we've been dealing with lately.

If you've been following along since September, you'll know that we were told our gas line has too many leaks to be safely left on. So it's off, which means our oven can't be used, nor can our lounge room heater (although it's getting warmer so we don't need it as much anyway), and we have to use a temporary electric water heater which is half the size of our normal one and half the pressure (or less).

So one of the most significant ways this has impacted us is how we cook. We can't cook anything on the stove top, and we can't cook anything in the oven either. So I've had to get creative with the meal planning.

Thermomix

The Thermomix is a fancy shmancy blender that also cooks and steams. Brand new, they run about $2300 AUD. I bought mine when Chuckie was a baby. So I'm pretty used to cooking in this already. I make taco meat in here, rice, soups, and my homemade chocolate. I steam veggies in it. I've also had to start using it to boil water for my cup of tea in the morning, since my stove top whistling kettle is now unusable.

Electronic pressure cooker

This one's great. I use it as a slow cooker, pressure cooker, and big saucepan. I can cook a roast in there. I can make cheeseburger mac in there (a family favourite). I can make spaghetti bolognaise, butter chicken, boil eggs, and a plethora of other foods.

Air fryer

After I got an air fryer for Christmas a couple years ago, I decided I liked it enough to get an even bigger one. So that's what I did. My air fryer has 5 functions: air fry, bake, convection, pizza, and...I forget the last one because I never use it.

Grill! That's it. I should try that sometime.

So anyway...in the air fryer, we do anything that we normally do in the oven, because that's basically what it is - a mini oven. Pies, sausage rolls, pizza, chicken nuggets, roast potatoes. Air fryers do the BEST steak. I baked brownies in there for mum's night last week. We heat taco shells in there on Taco Tuesday. It's much smaller, but it's still quite usable. I've also used it to reheat food on occasion.

Big electric frying pan

Generally, this is Darrin & Caleb's domain. They use it to cook sausages, chops, burgers, schnitzels. But I've used it in the past to make pancakes and fry bacon.

Microwave

Thawing & reheating food. Just like always. Ours is a small, low wattage one, so if I want to cook veggies in there, it does take a long time. Probably easier & quicker to steam them in the Thermomix.

Barbecue

sigh I still haven't been able to convince anyone to clean it so it can be used. Sad, really, because it's twice the size of the electric frying pan, so burgers could all be done in one hit. And we bought it for EXACTLY THIS PURPOSE! We were talking about emergency preparedness back when Covid first started, and decided we needed a barbecue, so that if the gas & electricity were both off, we could still cook. And nobody's used it in over a year.

Sandwich press

I never saw these in the States. Think George Foreman grill, but without the lines. We've made toasted sandwiches a few times in this. I've also done sausages once, but it was such a pain in the neck to clean it after, I haven't bothered since.

Overall, I've realised we need to stick with simple meals - frozen stuff we can cook in the air fryer, or one pot meals we can make in the Thermomix/pressure cooker, or stuff we can fry up in the frying pan. Things that need multiple steps - not really an option for us right now. Your basic 'meat & 3 veg' meal works well - I cook the meat in the air fryer, and the veggies in the Thermomix.

It's working. It's not ideal, but we're eating decent food. Mostly.

So the house is officially on the market, it's online, and we have a sign out front and everything.

[caption id="attachment_119164" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Micah doing his usual thing trying to read every word he sees...everywhere.[/caption]

Thursday around lunchtime, when I was (what else?) cooking lunch, I had a brother and sister come to the door to ask about buying the house before the first open next Tuesday. I said they should probably go through the agent, and the sister (the extrovert of the two) said they'd tried ringing him, but he was busy. So they came directly to the owner because they thought that might give them a better foot in the door.

Now, if you know anything about me at all, you know that I'm an introvert - I don't like being surprised by people on my doorstep unless they're delivering a package to me. And I'm not a big fan of things being sprung on me all of a sudden.

So here's the deal: they offered $10k over what's being advertised on the listing. So it's a good offer. But their story didn't add up.

See, one minute they said they wanted to live here, and the next they said 'you can stay as long as you like till you find another house.'

And they didn't want to see the inside of the house - they didn't care about that, they just wanted to buy before the open. But if they wanted to live here, why wouldn't they want to see the inside?

They also dropped this gem: that if I told the agent we were friends (!) I could pay less commission when the house sold. I'm not even sure if that's true.

To shut them up, I told them I'd have to check with my husband and think it over. They asked for my mobile number (which in retrospect I wish I hadn't given) and I went back to making lunch, and they walked away.

I emailed the agent to let him know they showed up, and he wasn't happy about it. He'd been in meetings all morning so hadn't got their message earlier. One thing he said was that people new to the country don't always understand the etiquette (which I can thoroughly understand!) so that might be why they thought it was ok to come talk to me instead of going through him. So for the moment, I assumed that was the case and went on with my life.

Then that evening, the sister texted me a long explanation reiterating what they'd said when they came to see me. That they wanted to buy it before the open, and they don't care how it looks inside, and we can stay as long as we need, and it's a good offer. And she said if I didn't accept their offer within 48 hours, they'd withdraw it because 'Hope you know there are so many other properties that can give me hips [sic] better rental income which I don't want to miss on while waiting for your response to my offer.'

Okay...so first they said they want to live here, then they said we can stay as long as we like, and now she's saying they want the rental income? Huh? All sounds a bit suspicious to me.

Friday morning at about 9:30, I got a text saying that if I didn't accept the offer in 1 hour, they'd withdraw it.

Okay, so Thursday night you said 48 hours, and Friday morning you said 1 hour. You want to live here, but you want the rental income. You want me to lie to the agent, tell them we're friends, and accept your offer which you brought to me unannounced, uninvited AT MY HOUSE while I was cooking lunch for my kids, and getting ready to go to a friend's house.

All of this left me feeling harassed and slightly threatened. So I replied back that they should withdraw their offer and stop contacting me.

We'll see if that's the end of it...

Link here

So long story short...the friend we thought we were selling to, we aren't anymore. I won't go into the details here, but don't worry, we're all still friends.

Been packing, decluttering, cleaning, searching properties, going to open inspections...it's busy around here right now.

And I have one decent sized box left that I can pack things in, and then I'll have to go hunting for boxes.

I give you exhibit A.

https://notthebee.com/article/this-facebook-outage-is-huge-its-their-worst-since-2008-when-they-only-had-80m-users/