melvania

When Darrin was driving city buses, he always dreaded driving through certain areas. One of those areas was Davoren Park, about 15 minutes north of where we live now. A lot of the houses there are semi-detached/duplexes, built by the South Australia Housing Trust in the 1960s for low income families.

In theory, it's a good idea. However, in practice, it ends up attracting people who not just can't work, but won't work. People who live on government payments, and have more babies so they get more money. People who don't see a way out of the bad situation they're in, because they're surrounded by people in the same situation.

All through our house hunting, I've been avoiding the houses I've seen in Davoren Park. I did go see one that had 5 bedrooms, because the layout looked promising. It was a nice, big house with 2 living areas. Of the 5 bedrooms it claimed to have, one was basically a pathway to two other bedrooms (that's the one we were thinking of using as a play room or school room). I drove past it one day and it looked like a decent neighbourhood, so I thought I'd go to the open.

But...when I walked in, it smelled like a pot smoker's house. (Yes, I know what that smells like, because I've been in the home of someone who smoked it. It took me a minute to remember what it was, and then...oh yeah, this smells like his house.)

And one of the back bedrooms was full of car parts and tools. The front porch/entry was falling apart. It was just not ideal at all.

So I kept looking. After my drive through that day, I realised that some areas of Davoren Park might not be that bad. Single family houses, some with nice gardens, not too many cars up on blocks in some streets, etc. So I wasn't quite as negative to the suburb as I had been, but I still preferred to look at houses in the Elizabeth Downs/Elizabeth East kind of area.

But you know where this is going, don't you? We're totally moving to Davoren Park now.

Here's how it happened. The night we signed the contract to sell our current house, I went out to look at a semi in Elizabeth Downs. I hadn't wanted to look at any till then, because I thought they were all 3 bedrooms. But this one had 4! So I contacted the agent, and he said he was going to be there for a while, so did I want to look at it now? And I basically got in the car and drove straight there.

It wasn't big, but it was well maintained. And it was definitely bigger than where we live now. And it had 4 bedrooms. The back yard was pretty much empty, so we could do whatever we wanted with it. It looked like it had potential, and the price range was good for us.

We made an offer. And waited. And waited. And caught gastro. And waited some more. And by the end of the next week, I heard back from the agent, who said that someone had put in a cash offer that was much more than the rest of the offers, so we didn't get it. (Update: it sold for about $11k more than we offered, after the first offer apparently fell through and I saw it back on the market for a few days.)

By this time I kind of expected that was the answer, so I'd stopped wishing and hoping, and was just hoping to hear SOMETHING either way. So I was glad to at least know.

Another week passed. I hadn't been to any houses because I was starting to get discouraged. Plus I had a cold, and I didn't want agents yelling at me for not wearing a mask when I was sneezing and coughing. All the houses were either at the top end of our price range, or at the bottom of our price range and needed a LOT of work. I was starting to think, crap, maybe we'll have to rent for a while. Which we'd be in a good position to do with a huge pile of cash left over from selling our house...but it's not what we wanted to do.

But I was still looking online. And one day, I saw two semis in Davoren park - two halves built together. Four bedrooms. Exactly the same layout as the other one I'd looked at (mirror images of each other). And then I saw that they were only for Homeseeker SA clients and thought...dang. But in the next second, I thought, hang on, we might actually qualify for something like that. So I had a look at the requirements, and...yup, yup, yup, yeah probably, yup, yup.... We met the requirement for every single item.

Better yet? Fixed price. No investors allowed to offer. We knew if we offered, and were accepted, that's the price we would pay. And the price was low enough that we could afford it, AND finish our emergency fund, AND have still have some money to play with to do things like install air conditioning, put up a shed, all those little things that come up after you buy a house.

So I went to look at it on the Sunday, with two little kids (Darrin was taking the bigger ones to visit a friend). They had a blast running through the empty house with all the echoes. The agent said that two other people were supposed to come that day too, but they never showed up.

She left, and promised to email me the intention to purchase form once she got back to the office (which turned out to be around 5 pm that evening). I sent it back pretty much right away. Waited a few days. Thursday she contacted me and said the vendor had accepted our offer. Party time!

But...not quite yet. Because it was built as one allotment, it was all on one title that had to be split. That happened about a week later.

But we still couldn't sign the contract. They had to run some final searches...which took another week and a half. Yesterday, Wednesday 1 December, we finally signed the contract. Cooling off will be for the 2 business days after we receive a copy of the contract. I'm thinking that will be two days next week.

But after waiting for nearly a month already and not changing our mind, why would we now?

We were able to get the same settlement date as we did for selling this house, so everything is happening on the same day. And it's the same conveyancing office handling both transactions. We have a week to get all our stuff out of here, which will help a lot.

Our buyer is going to knock down the house and subdivide. We're not surprised at that. Not in the slightest. There was another offer when we bought this house from a developer who would have done the same thing. We got another 15 years out of it.

I've already arranged power & gas connection, and home & contents insurance. I'm getting quotes on air conditioning (because it's December and it could be 45 the day we move). And I've already contacted a plumber to look at a few things the building inspector found.

So. We'll have Christmas in a new house. With stuff that actually works!

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...