House hunting

House hunting has gotten the best of me. I don't enjoy it. In fact, I'd rather keep renting my whole life… then I can take the money I've got, go to Europe and sit on gondolas and eat snails. Grumpy and I are looking for a place to buy. We decided that renting for the past 6 years hasn't been 'The way to go'… and so one day, we found an ideal place just 2 mins from where we currently live, rang our parents in Malaysia, and told them we were gonna buy an apartment. Both our parents were 101% supportive of our decision, so we rang the bank, got our mortgage approval and started counting down the days for the auction of the property…. Before we knew it, the real estate agent called a couple of days later to say the place has been sold prior to auction. We were crushed. Sons of bitches.

Oh well, maybe we weren't meant to get that place. That was back in October 2006. And so our journey began.. we continued looking. Most of the time it was ME looking up places on the Internet. Ringing up the agents. Driving to house inspections on Saturdays by myself (coz Grumpy works on Saturdays). Liaising with the agents. If I like a place (which is most likely..), I'd have to arrange for another time to have Grumpy have a look at the place. Grumpy has a tendency to dislike everything I like. And so we argue about everything there is to a house. From the places I'm looking up "How can you look at apartments? What about THE DOG?" suddenly Grumpy is so considerate over the dog's needs. "No, its too old.. its too small.. its too expensive… I don't like the kitchen… I don't like the layout… I don't want to pay $4k a year for body corporate" the arguments were endless.

And because the last time we discussed home loans was October 2006 (our budget for a place keeps going up), there was a rate increase in Nov 2006, you have to reassess your mortgage options. The mortgage broker goes "if you choose this home loan, you get THIS, THIS, THIS and THIS". "If you choose THAT home loan, you get THIS, THIS, a bit of THIS, maybe not TOO MUCH of THIS, blah blah blah blah". My view is that Australia has an inverse yield curve (higher short term rates, expectations of lower rates in the long term). But do you think Grumpy believes me? NO! I've only been studying finance for the past 6 years..

But guess what? We went to see 2 places we liked yesterday. For once, Grumpy did the homework. He looked up these places himself. The 1^st place is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathrooms. Its nice. Ideal. It's a bit steep.. but I don't like it. I don't want a big house. Hehehe Mum said most ppl want a big place, except for me. Firstly, with a 3 bedroom house, we'll definitely have a guest room. And what does that tell you? A lot of unwanted guests from Malaysia. Secondly, I struggle with the cleaning of my tiny 2 bedroom unit at the moment. We all fight over who does what housework. Most weekends, the boys are recovering from a hangover. Do they want to be cleaning the house on a Sunday morning? No. So this 3 bedroom place is OUT.

The 2^nd place is similar to my current place. Its small, its NOT too far from the city, I love it. And I've finally convinced Mum and Grumpy to agree to this smaller 2 bedroom unit. It is within our budget, we might have a little extra $$ to make the place look nice too.

That was yesterday. Guess what happens today? Mum & Grumpy start discussing how the furniture will look in this 2^nd place. Which walls to break down, new doors, etc. Typical Malaysian style-lah, u know what I mean. (What does a Malaysian do when they buy a new house? They either demolish the entire old house, build a new one over it… OR, break down half the house, and reinvent the layout of the existing place). I keep telling them to STOP talking about this place. The auction is 3 weeks away. We might not get the place. Auctions are awful. The last auction I went, the place sold for $110k more than the opening bid. I just don't want to jinx it. My friend from work MooPoo, bought all the new furniture (new bed, new sheets, new quilt, new bedside tables, u name it!) for his so-called new place… the only problem was, he hasn't found a place yet. The new furniture ended up sitting in his grandfather's house. It still is. WHY? Coz he jinxed it.

Fingers crossed.