I’m quite sure that most people here have thought that my lack of comments lately have been due to my playing with my new toy. And that is, in part true. I think I know what every button and icon does. It’s a great machine – and I am well pleased with it.
However, that is not all that Bearsy and I have been doing. I read Christina’s post ‘Tales of the Holy Ghost‘ yesterday with some amusement.
Some few weeks ago, I revived the idea of moving. Bearsy’s grandfather always said “Call in A Man” when there were jobs to be done – and I took his advice. So we Called in A Woman to thoroughly spring-clean the house, and A Man to wash the outside of the house and clean the driveway, paths and patio.
Two weeks ago, today, the agent sent in the photographers and the internet advertisement went ‘live’ on Wednesday evening. We decided not to have an open house on the Saturday – it was Jubilee Weekend here in Queensland and we didn’t reckon that too many people would be around.
Late Friday afternoon, the agent called to ask if we would open the house to an interested party the following day. By 11.30 Saturday morning, just over two days after putting the house on the market, we had sold. The buyers wanted a 14 day settlement – no chance – we hadn’t even looked at any houses in the area we want to move to – expecting a long, slow process in selling.
Today our contract went ‘Unconditional’ For those who don’t know the Australian system – all house purchases may be made ‘conditional’ upon such things as finance and building and pest inspection. The buyer has just seven days to sort out his finance and inspections and can withdraw if there are problems – the purchase then becomes ‘unconditional’ and there are hefty penalties for failure to fulfil the contract or not settle on the agreed date…
We are on the move – the sewing machine must be put away while we concentrate on the next phase of putting a roof over our heads after 12th of July. Watch this space!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Good grief, sounds like you’re in for a hectic time, good luck.
Well done, both of you! What a surprisingly swift sale!
Very best wishes on the sale. Better get your skates on!
Best get packing 🙂
Blimey.
Well done, and best of luck with the house hunting!
Soutie
So far it has been almost hassle-free. I say ‘almost’ because I really don’t want to tempt fate! But we intend to make as ‘unhectic’ as we can.
Janus
There are very few houses on the market at the moment, and a lot of them are an absolute disgrace – Last week I asked the agent of a house whether the ‘asking’ price was so high because we were expected to pay extra for the dirt! Bearsy told me that I shouldn’t be so rude – but I think it does no harm to give agents some feed-back for their clients…
We were extremely lucky that the ‘interested parties’ are from a mining town and can only get into Brisbane occasionally. They have been looking for some time and have lost several houses because they tried to negotiate down – and down is the way most house prices here are going. However good houses go very, very quickly and one has to be around to grab them as soon as they appear.
It would seem that this couple walked in, decided that the place ticked most of their boxes and offered nearly as much as we wanted – and a great deal more than the agent thought we might get in the present climate – so that they could be sure of getting the house. Needless to say, we didn’t argue too much!
PG & Araminta
As I said – watch this space…. I don’t want to tempt fate!
Bravo
I learnt long ago that it was far easier, and in the long run, cheaper to ‘get in’ the ‘experts’. It may cost more to get the removers to pack, but if anything gets broken they are responsible and must compensate…it really isn’t worth the hassle of trying to ‘do-it-ourselves’. So I will not be packing!
Is it a case of a switch in time?
Well done! Sometimes it goes like that.
If so many of the houses are crap what will you do if you can’t find one?
Re the movers, don’t be too sure as to the idea they know what they are doing, not in my experience. At least not if you don’t stand over them. I once had an outfit that tried to fob me off with domestic packing when the stuff was coming here. Export packing being quite different.
If you have any decent furniture with french polish finish don’t allow bubble wrap near it in your heat.
It is all very well replacing stuff but a lot of things are irreplaceable anyway!
And it is virtually impossible to get antiques repaired satisfactorily in these far flung colonial outposts!!!
One bright thought for you with your hatred of gardening at least you won’t have to move any plants! I have the hideous thought that I am going to need a bigger pantechnicon to move the ceramic pots and refugees than that required for the bloody furniture. There is a 25′ greenhouse out there to empty!!
Fortunately all has gone quiescent at the moment , may we be left in sloth with no GOATS on the horizon, she hasn’t come back Thank God!
You are very frustrating and only tell half the tale, being a nosy bitch I always want to know why. So I will ask, why do you want to move and why do you want to go to wherever you wish to go? Tell me to mind my own business if it is a state secret! (It’s the Welsh bit, the whole country is as nosy as buggery.)
Pseu – 🙂
Christina – You are quite right, I haven’t told the whole of the tale! We have found one eminently suitable house – but are awaiting the results of the building and pest inspection before breaking open the champagne, On the principle that if it sounds and looks too good to be true – then it probably isn’t good – I’m not tempting fate by celebrating too early. If it falls through then we will have to rent for a while – something we are loathe to do.
When we moved from Adelaide to Brisbane we down-sized – a foolish mistake. When one is used to rattling around in a reasonable sized house it is very difficult not too feel cramped in something smaller – although I suspect that many wouldn’t find our present house small! We put the house on the market last year to get ‘one more’ room – but got nowhere.
One of the principle reasons for moving from Adelaide to Brisbane was to be in the same State as my daughter. She followed me to Australia – but we’ve never managed to live anywhere remotely near to each other. We are, at the moment, about an hour’s round trip away from her.
When Bearsy was ill, she was quite distraught that she couldn’t help me more and finally convinced me that she really wanted us nearer. To be fair, where we are is a bit of a distance from Brisbane itself, so I’m not at all unhappy about moving closer to the city. The area she lives in is on the edge of Brisbane – so it’s not as if we will be moving into the inner city.
I’m not so foolish as to think we will see considerably more of each other – neither of us want to live in the other’s pockets – but we do share interests that none of the rest of her family or Bearsy are remotely interested in. She’s delighted that, at last, she will have someone near who knows how to pin the hem of a dress properly!
Aah, an excellent reason. It takes something like an illness to realise sometimes that its better to have someone nearby, yes you have mentioned before your joint interest in sewing.
I know what you mean about having room, if one is used to a certain size house and has acquired the things to fill it or the hobbies it can be very difficult and frustrating losing those extra rooms.
Spousal unit is a dreadful pack rat, keeps junk in my opinion. When we moved from Dallas to WA I threw God know’s what away or to the charity shops and he never even missed it! However we are now reduced to a core mass of junk that he knows he owns, that mainly ‘lives’ in the garage, ouch! That Dallas house was considerably larger than here.
So when we move next time it will be a right problem to find anywhere, he has gone off that ‘tardis’ house I liked in Lynden and showed here. I’m not mentioning my plants or the greenhouse I intend to erect wherever before unpacking!
Interestingly this morning have just received a good offer on my house in Wales. So hopefully that has gone.
We progress, we progress fortunately without GOATS!! Talk about the sublime and the bloody ridiculous, the house in Wales was my commercial premises that I converted and has no garden at all, all under a warehouse covering the whole site. GOATS, had there been any would have been hanging in the cold store, literally.
Thank you for satisfying my curiosity. Hope all goes well on the new house and it has not been eaten by termites which I presume are the putative problem? As they are in Dallas, one moment you have a house, the next it collapses into a heap of sawdust!!! (Marginal hyperbole, but only marginal.)
I look at some of the newer houses and wonder just how people are expected to live in them. There is plenty of room to sit and watch the TV, but if one wants do do anything else there really is no space. How anyone with children cope in open-plan homes with tiny bedrooms is beyond my understanding.
Congratulations on the sale of your Welsh property.
Termites are a problem here – we won’t contemplate a wooden house – they are very beautiful, but far too much upkeep and cold in the winter. The house we are looking at should be OK, it is only about three years old and brick – although, of course, there’s a fair bit of wood in it!
What has amazed us both is that very few houses have ducted heating / cooling – even the newly built ones. My daughter’s house, a fairly large rambling home, only has a wood burner – which is a nightmare since by the time they light it when they get from work and it has warmed one room it’s just about time to go to bed.
Just at the moment it’s freezing here – I’ve had to dig out my UK winter coat – but at least we are warm in the house!
How absolutely extraordinary to have no central air in such a hot climate, it is not as if it is a poor country.
Especially where it is so hot in the North, how do you manage? Individual air conditioning units in each window? You couldn’t give these places away here in the USA with the one exception here in WA state. We are the only place in the whole country which does not need air conditioning, it very rarely gets above 80F. Very few properties have air, never seen it anywhere except commercial buildings like theatres and good department stores.
Memphis was a hell hole 110 plus, couldn’t get upstairs below 90 and wet heat with it, seriously beastly jungle heat!
Everywhere here has ducted heat and generally a wood stove too in the country as the electricity can be dodgy in the winter snow falls on trees that fall on power lines, when we are out it can take 5 days or so to get it back, not amusing if the roads are impassable with snow. We have a stove in the den and an open fireplace in the living room, plus oil fired ducted heating, no gas out here in the county.
Is there a proper reason for not having modern heating and cooling? Like insufficient power in the city to supply homes?
Do they have marble floors instead that you chuck a bucket of water down and evaporates?
No termites here at all, one of the most curious sights in Dallas was when they had a serious infestation they would empty the house, build a monster tent right over the whole caboodle and gas the house for three days or so, kills all the little buggers wherever they are!
PS from pictures I have seen most houses in Australia look small but then you can never really tell whether they have live in basements and rooms in the roof, so it is always hard to tell. Most don’t look bigger than about 1200-1500 sq feet if that.
Don’t get me wrong, Christina. Air-con is available – the unit we put in this house is pretty good – cools us down or heats us up pretty quickly and efficiently. It’s just that so many homes don’t have it as standard. Most houses have reverse-cycle units in the main rooms – the kids can freeze or fry in their rooms!
There’s plenty of power – expensive – but no shortage. Mind you a few years ago, the electricity supplier in Adelaide told everyone that they should ration their use of electricity and switch their air-con units off at peak periods. The Premier got rather irate and informed the company that it was the 21st C and people had the right to be as warm or as cold as they wanted. The suggestion died a very quick death!
I don’t know what houses you have been looking at. They are, generally, a great deal larger than those in the UK. I’m not sure what the area of this house is, the one we are looking at is just over 34 square metres.
The standard block for a detached home used to be a quarter of an acre – and most homes were single story. Needless to say that is no longer the case – and land developers are squeezing houses (rabbit hutches) onto smaller and smaller blocks and building up.
Yes that is quite a big house by any standards. Most of the stuff I have casually looked at has been older places which always tend to be smaller most places. A quarter acre is generous especially for suburbs, that all sound about the same as Dallas. Here on the whole houses are a lot smaller, there are an awful lot about 2000sq ft. In Bellingham itself the old part of the town which was a conglomeration of 5 logging villages there are many very charming tiny houses about 1000-1200 sq ft but beautifully painted and done up with gingerbread woodwork. There are no brick houses here at all, only commercial buildings and not all of them by a long chalk.
The UK has got quite stupid, the modern places are miniscule. How they expect anyone to bring up a family in 1000sq ft without killing each other is quite beyond me.
It really does seem so strange to build large modern houses with all mod cons and forget the most important bit, a central cooling system. Must be a bugger to put in all the ducts subsequently.
I always think it so strange that countries have so many differing ways of dealing with these things. I’m sure it would all be a lot cheaper if they standardised some of the manufacture.
Must away to bed, spinning club tomorrow, good night.
PS I think we’ve lost something in translation! Maybe the living room is that size.
34 sq meter=about 40 sq yards x 9=360 sq ft.
It would be the teensiest house surely? I’m tired will check back in the morning.
Cheers.
Boa, here the ‘comfortable’ house has about 100 squ.m. – usually meaning it has 3 beds and a couple of living spaces – but bigger than the British semi.
Australian house sizes are frequently quoted in “squares”.
A “square” is defined as 100 square feet (or 9.29 square meters). So a “34 squares” house is 3,400 sq. ft.
Our prospective new house is 344.41 sq. m. (= 37 squares) overall (including garage and porch) and has a living space of 304.8 sq.m. (= 32.8 squares), or 3,280 sq. feet. According to the builder’s plan.
Strange, innit? 🙂
Wiki says we don’t use the “square” any more, but I assure you we do!
Hello Boadicea and Bearsy,
Hope all goes well and the bubbly wil be flowing soon. It’s a pity I’m 9,621 miles away; I could have helped with the moving. Moving things from A to B is an honest day’s labor.
Best wishes.
Thank you for the decoding Bearsy, that is a big house for two people, you will need megaphones!
Janus are you sure that is right, that is only 1000sq’, my son’s two bed flat in Brum is that size? Most three bed houses are somewhere in the region of 16-1700 sq’ here.
My house in Wales is 1700 sq ft. 4 bed but only one living room ,dining room and kitchen, (not eat in)
God, I wish they would standardise this sort of crap!
Christina – It is a big house and we may well need megaphones… but at least we’ll have space to move. The block is also quite large – 1,300 square metres – but about half of that has been left to ‘bush’ – suits me!
Has the Queensland real estate market moved on from ‘stumped’ yet? I do rather hope not. 🙂
OZ
“Stumped”? 😕
A Queenslander – tin roof, wooden walls, enclosed veranda, etc., delivered whole and by road to the plot of your choice and set on tree-stumps for you, all inclusive.
OZ
I did wonder if that’s what you meant, OZ, but I’m afraid you’re a bit behind the times. 😦
Stumps are no longer approved. It’s all metal and concrete these days. In fact, because of the extensive flooding recently, the stilts are being made much taller than they used to be, and quite a few houses are being ‘raised’. It’s a big business at the moment. 🙂
Well of course Queensland has moved on since I left at the end of 2003 and quite right too. Only a Sydneysider would think otherwise. By the way, this being our first direct contact since when, I’m genuinely delighted to see you up and about. 😀
OZ
Odd: Roofing materials and siding (metal and PVC) are sold by the “square ” here, 100 sq ft each but houses are still listed by the sq ft, basement and garage not included. House lots are by the acre, almost always fractional in towns. Metric measure has been tried several times without success. House moving and “lifting” is also big business in the coastal areas.
OZ – Many thanks, much appreciated. There’s still a way to go before I can uncross my fingers and toes, but I’m getting there. 🙂
LW – We are officially metric, but most people are still happy and familiar with Imperial and squares. And acres and hectares co-exist in peaceful harmony. 🙂
The Building and Pest inspection went well… so we’re on the move – again.:-)