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This is my series about trying to find our footing in Australia. It will no doubt be a series of joy and sadness and struggle... Things will turn out alright? Won't they?

Part 1: Settling In and Adjusting
Part 2: Checking In...
Part 3: House Hunting
Part 4: Best and Final
Part 5: Gazumped!
Part 6: School Worries...

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Wow... we actually managed to close a house purchase earlier this week! It is such a relief to have that part of the big move finally sorted and settled. We were leaving a red-hot seller's market in the Netherlands and jumping into an even redder and hotter housing market in Australia! I mean, just in the last few months the price jumps have been eye-watering... which is great I guess if you are selling... but we were buying!

So, when a market is this hot.... it just invites people to be less than ethical and honest. This was our experience when we were gazumped with a house offer and acceptance just a few weeks ago. Thankfully, this time around... the sellers and real-estate were much better people. When they agreed, they agreed and turned down other offers and made sure that the whole thing was stitched up quickly.

It was a house that we were really interested in... and we managed to put in an offer pre-auction that was accepted. In the end, it was at the top of what we wanted to spend at the moment... but still within our budget. Of course, it could be quite possible that a few months down the track that we would have to increase our budget or start making concessions on what we were able to purchase for the same price.

Already, houses that we were looking into that were supposed to be within our budget were selling at auction for significantly more than that. So, we were starting to feel like we had missed the boat for that particular price segment. Of course, there is the potential for a correction as the Australian Reserve Bank indicated that sometime later in the year interest rates could rise a little... that would make people think twice about taking such huge mortgages out, and potentially make others default into a forced sale. That said, that would be a year or two out before any of that would happen... and as we were looking in the Canberra region, most of the people here would have relatively secure public service jobs. So, the pain of forced sales and a re-correction of house prices to a more believable level would be felt much less here...

So, with that in mind... we had kept the house search going.

... and early this week, it paid off! We still have a longish settlement time (45 days)... we would have preferred earlier (30 days) and had offered that to the sellers, but it appears that they are looking to downsize in Canberra and wanted a bit more time to find a smaller place.

So, hopefully this will be the last time that we move. This will be our final home... that sort of knowledge also builds into the psychology of buying. There is no need to keep in mind a potential house flip, profit or upsizing... So, we only needed to look at what we wanted... rather than keeping an eye out on possible resale.

That said.. a very large block, high energy rating... a lovely native garden... in a good suburb in the area that we wanted to live in. All the boxes were ticked!

Enough space for pianos and harpsichords... with the potential to further renovate a studio and library! I think we are going to be really very happy here!

The real estate was talking to us after we signed... and he said that all buyers have that sense of relief that it is all over. That weekends are no longer booked up with appointments with open houses and auctions... and that there will no longer be an endless experience of disappointments as offers are made and rejected... and as houses sell for more than you would ever expect.

... interestingly enough, we just got an email from a house that we had visited that was taking offers by negotiation. They had settled on a last purchase offer (we weren't interested and had not put in an offer, the house wasn't quite right... and the real estate felt dodgy).... and they listed the price as (blah) plus, and then invited us to make a higher offer! See... I told you, dodgy people with very loose ethics. This is what wiped us out the first time... Shitty people doing shitty things. I think we must have pissed off the real-estate and seller when we refused to match the gazumping offer and play the game... it would have spiralled the price up... so, because we refused to pay... they weren't able to inflate the bids! SUCK!

I'm glad to be out of the game now! Too many shitty people for me to be around is not fun...

I can also be found cross-posting at:
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