On Saturday we went house-hunting. We saw six places (one of them only because it was just across the road from us and we wanted to see how an auction went). One of them, while nice, was at the top end of our budget, and arguably too small for us. Two of them were ok, size-wise, but not ideal layouts (older houses with recent extensions), and not much yard space left after all the outdoor entertaining areas (cubby house, pool, etc) were included.
We turned up at one inspection to find it was the pre-auction inspection, so we decided to hang around for the auction to see how it went. It was relatively unexciting (maybe due to the rainy day we were having), but eventually reached a price the seller was happy with - a little over our budget, but not so far as to make our plans seem impossible.
Inspected another place, knowing that it was about $60k over our budget, just to see what it was like - impressive, in short. Oodles of space, very nice setting, very little work required to the place at all, convenient to transport - I could easily imagine living there quite happily.
And finally, a strange split-level place from the 60s or 70s, not for us, but I'm sure someone will like it (as
We'll try again this Saturday, concentrating more on the Box Hill area (last weekend we were around Blackburn and Nunawading), and see if anything grabs us.
Meanwhile, still enjoying the new bike - I've done 215 km on it so far, and enjoying it lots (apart from the occasional sunburn, due to forgetting what Australian sunshine is like, or simply missing some bits when applying suncream).