home ownership seems like a rort

Most weekends, I’ve been picking up the Property Press and pawing over pages of real estate in desirable neighbourhoods.  It’s the most hopeless “research” ever:

1. I don't have a decent deposit together yet (see: Big Trip of 2012).
2. Nothing in the Press is priced anyway.
3. Everything in the Press is likely over a million dollars.
4. See (1) again.

The Property Press is more like far-fetched real estate porn.  I could NEVER afford that sort of tool-based reno carry-on!  Oh LOOK baby, it’s got wooden JOINERY, ooo la la!  Don’t you just want to run your fingers gently over the 100% wool carpeting?  The his’n’hers bathroom sinks get me all STEAMED (except they don’t!  I’ve never understood the ‘one bathroom, two sinks’ phenomenon.  Just one more sink to wipe crusty toothpaste off and get remnants of either whiskers or foundation all over).  I could get so Fifty Shades of Linoleum all up in here.  I think I’m a frustrated BDSM and power tools writer, or somesuch. 

It’s actually pretty frustrating.  I mean, there’s absolutely no assistance to price a bedsit in Manurewa, work out the RRP of a mostly derelict villa in Westmere or drop your jaw at the cost of a Remuera mansion.  CV is a joke here – if it’s even mentioned in the ad, which is rare, you’re looking at a large increase on that in the sale value. 

But, being me, I am always looking for the Next Big Thing.*  Previously, it was the Big Trip and move back to the Mothership, Aotearoa.  Prior to that, the wedding.  Prior to that, it was the move to London.  New York.  Career.  Etc.  It’s not that I’m in a hurry to work my way through “the steps”, it’s more that I like to have a project to look forward to but am horrendously impatient (sometimes I meet people who I swear are on a treadmill of “because that’s what’s next” and I worry that’s me, too).  We had vaguely decided that we should be working our way towards home ownership once we arrived back in NZ, amongst other things because I multitask like a mofo, of course.  So you can imagine my extreme disappointment when we hadn’t bought and renovated the exact house I want in the exact location I’d like within three weeks.  REASONABLE, no?  But with some gentle cajoling from P (“what the f is wrong with you?”), I have backed away from my turgid dreams of Having It All Right Here, Right Now.  I am learning to accept that it makes sense for us to scrape at least 20% together and look for something in a more expensive bracket (thereby requiring more time and saving). 

A friend of mine has recently purchased a home of her own and she’s scared the bejeebers out of me too, what with the scary-auction stories, people bidding well over CV and using dirty open home tactics to discourage other buyers.   Mind you, I can kind of see myself being awful and aggressive awfulness at an auction.  Side eye, huffy sniffs, waving of the auction baton thingo.  Yep, could totally buy into that behaviour, sadly. 

But it doesn’t stop my home ownership dreams totally.  At 5am when my lovely neighbour flushes the loo and runs the shower that I can hear as clear as day from my bed I’m still thinking that home ownership is the holy grail. 

 

*I would love love love a dog or a cat too as a Next Big Thing.  There’s nothing officially stopping me now, I guess (apart from the Body Corp rules), but I’ve made a promise that until I can give a pet the lifestyle they deserve, I can’t commit.  Lifestyle includes a decent backyard if P and I continue working long hours.  So I guess home ownership/pet motherhood go hand-in-hand-ish.  Would you look at that, somehow I'm more serious about getting a pet than I am about keeping a husband properly.  PRIORITIES.