Location, Location

I signed a new lease on The Grotto the other day, and I feel good about the situation. Well, mostly. I feel good about having a place to live sorted for the next six months, and despite some worrying early impressions the real estate dude seems like he knows what he'd doing. He probably has me utterly fooled, and at the end of my lease I'll probably end up losing my bond, punching his lights out and going to jail, so we'll just have to see. The Grotto is in a good suburb, has plenty of space and is reasonably cheap for Sydney ($1500 a month), but in the negative column it's old, crumbly and right now it needs a really good clean. It also has a rather sickening pale peach paint job throughout, which would be the second thing I'd fix if I owned the place, right after replacing the carpets and shitty kitchen lino, which is falling apart. I can literally pick up pieces of lino tile right now and fling them off the balcony at passing crows if I like, but that probably won't help.

The positive angle to living in a bit of a dump is that it's easy to improve things. My mind is overflowing with ways to spruce the place up, although they're all suspiciously hazy and non-specific. This allows me to get all pumped about making a difference without those pesky factors like money, effort, spatial limitations and rules of the lease. I can get some wood from Bunnings and... do something! I can go and buy a couch and... put it somewhere! I can clear the stuff off the balcony and... get some more stuff! It'll be like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, except... not gay! I really hope that I actually get around to doing something with the place that makes a real difference, because there's always a chance I get dis - oooh! Shiny thing!

I'm also reaching a stage where I'd like to own my own place. I'd much rather pay $1500 a month (which is about the equivalent of a $240K loan) to slowly purchase a place of my own, instead of subsidising some someone's kid's university fees. Of course in Sydney $240K buys an apartment about the size of my left foot, so I'm not sure how that works. Maybe I need to sell a kidney or two. Owning my own joint would also free me from the annoyance of leases, inspections and other people's horrible paint ideas, as well as allow me to improve the place where it needs it. The current curtains all through The Grotto are bloody awful, but they're part of the place, so I just have to live with them. Perhaps they could be accidentally dissolved in acid, or arrested as enemy combatants and interned in Guantanamo Bay.

I was reminded how silly Sydney real estate is the other day by the mighty Gobe sending me a link to a nice Brisbane property he's looking at with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a two car garage, air conditioning and an inground pool for a tad under $600K. It's in Sinnamon Park, which is about 30min from the centre of Brisbane, but it's crazy huge! That sort of place in Sydney would cost millions, and have neighbours that would stand on their heads just to look down their noses at you. It gets one thinking about whether Sydney, with its restaurants, clubs, cafes, shopping, harbour, work opportunities, events, people and mild weather is really worth paying that kind of money. Okay, it probably is.