Ripped-off or homeless
- Looking for a 2 bedroom unit in the current real estate market
- Starting a new job
- Arranging a wedding
- Completing a novel to a deadline
- Completing a thesis proposal to a deadline
- Dealing with the on-going effects of a chronic illness
Does the list above contain:
A) not one thing you would care to do yourself,
B) a secret terrorist code or
C) six things that Mele and I must accomplish with style within the next two months.
If you answered A or C you were probably correct. If you answered B you’re probably on the right track to why I will probably bomb the supreme court just to loosen the stress knots in my shoulders.
Looking for houses blows donkeys nuts. I don’t think I mentioned our last house-hunting adventure on this blog because it took us exactly one day to secure the beautiful share-house we all live in now. Which we are now leaving because the landlords decided they just wanted to put the rent up. By another $20 a week. Mortgages may have gone up, but the owners own it outright. They just want more cash. For no increase in service. In fact, so poorly managed is this property that when our toilet broke and 327 called Smallacock Real Estate to ask them to fix it, four days later, nothing had been done. I know that because four days later I called Don the Handyman direct and asked when the fuck he was going to come and fix our dodgy fucking toilet and he replied that he didn’t know it was broken. That he’d come right away.
Don: efficient, friendly, easily-contactable, big, strong hands, swears appropriately. Excellent all round.
Smallacombe Property Management: always out of the office, slow-to-no reactions, shifty, poor communication, inflexible. Useless.
So we went around to Smallacombe today to see our property manager and hand over the legal “We are leaving your house now” form. She thought we were just going to drop the form off. We had other ideas.
Well, I had other ideas.
We did want to ask her about application forms and confirm what happens with references, but when we asked her if she knew of other properties, here’s what happened:
‘Great! You’re looking to buy?’
‘Rent.’
Spring leaves stride. Friendly demeanour vanishes. ‘Well, here’s a list of our available properties.’ Hands us already out-of-date brochure and starts turning back towards her office.
It might be a stressful time for me. I could blame it on genetics (thanks, Dad). Maybe I’m just a bit vindictive when someone doesn’t treat you with the help and respect that they perhaps have been denying you in the past (say, by not fixing your toilet quickly). Perhaps I’m just immature.
I asked her more questions. I ummed and ahhed and asked Mele if she could think of anything else she possibly wanted to say and then I suddenly remembered that I had something else I wanted to ask and then I forgot what that was, but fortunately remembered two other things I wanted to ask.
Don’t complain, cost money.
I did find out something interesting though.
There’s a bit of a story behind it:
When we moved into this place it was advertised at $300 per week. Bargain. We’re super-keen. We fill out application forms. A woman calls us back and informs us that there has been an error in the advertisement of the property and the owners actually wanted $320. Did we still want it?
Pricks. Shady, shady pricks. We paid the damn money. We couldn’t really afford it, but we paid it. Nowhere else was even close to measuring up. Now the price has gone up again.
Cut to today.
I ask our Very Busy property manager what the legality was with agents calling you individually to offer the property at a higher than advertised price. She told us that there had been much discussion of this very issue at the Real Estate Institute and the opinion seemed to be that if that kind of thing were to happen, while it isn’t illegal, the property should still have been advertised as negotiable or within a certain price-range. But what, I asked, could we as consumers do about this kind of tactic?
‘Well, you don’t have to take the property.’
Ripped-off or homeless.
Hell of a choice.