At the age of 21 with a small deposit saved up from casual jobs during school holidays and while at university, I eagerly searched for my first property.  I was living in Melbourne at the time, having moved there for my first job out of university, and spent the better part of a year getting to know the inner city suburbs while on my search. I ended up finding an old, unrenovated but decent two bedroom, one bathroom, no carspace apartment in a 70’s brick building in North Melbourne. I negotiated the price to $210,000 and with my 10% deposit approached my bank. In hindsight I should have tackled that process the other way round. My bank refused to provide me a mortgage with the advice to “find something cheaper”. Not very helpful.

Needless to say I was a little put off. Being a fatalist, in hindsight it wasn’t the right time for me to buy. I then went on to rent for the next seven years, moving country and cities twice. I ended up in Sydney with a nice deposit saved from a few years living in London converted to AUD with a very favourable exchange rate. I then repeated the same process that I had done in Melbourne, getting to know the inner city suburbs of Sydney, looking at houses and apartments, renovated and in badly need of, in a broad price range and across many suburbs, up to 12 properties every Saturday for seven months until finally I found a house I wanted to buy, could afford and wasn’t swiped out from under me at a heated auction. The house was pretty dated but in a “growth” suburb and after much negotiation on price with a real estate agent who was quite frankly sexist (its not the 60’s anymore mate) I finally became a proud homeowner, settling the day after my 29^th birthday.

I then spent the next 18 months slowly renovating my new home. I had bought a 100 year old Victorian terrace that had been stripped of all its beautiful period features, was stuck in the 70’s and was, shall we say, very “Mediterranean”. I had the front facade rendered (over the stucco, nice) & repainted, the porch retiled, the backyard landscaped (previously entirely concreted), a new kitchen relocated and installed, the upstairs bathroom redone, and repainting inside (mostly to remove the 40 years of smoke stains and smell).  In addition, I and my then boyfriend, now husband (now that’s love!), painstakingly stripped the staircase of carpet, carpet nails, vinyl treads and some sort of tar-like glue, metal kick plates and three layers of paint. What a nightmare! Where I could save money I (and my family and boyfriend) did as much of the work as we could.

My boyfriend then bought a fabulous warehouse apartment in a very trendy part of Sydney and I moved in with him, leaving my house partially renovated and leased to tenants. Being a landlord can be an interesting experience, but that is a discussion for another post!

After getting married and having our first baby we find we need more space so are moving back to our house, but not before we finally complete the renovations. We’re in the process of tendering for a builder now so I expect many a funny, trying, learning and/or just plain crazy anecdote to come out of that process!