We didn't get the cat-lady house and that's okay. Saves me about 300 hours of cleaning while wearing rubber gloves (they always spring a leak and then I'm just marinading in the mess I'm trying to protect myself from), and endless days of scraping, sanding, priming, and repainting room after room of internal wood slat walls. Sigh.
Buying a house in Australia is a distinctly different experience than buying one back home. To a certain extent it is apples to mangoes since we moved from a small city to a major city and the whole market is different in that regard, but there are fundamental differences in real estate as well. This is really interesting to you, isn't it? I can tell.
In America you have real estate agents to work on behalf of the buyer, right? You tell them the neighborhood(s) you are interested and they can help you compare and contrast the neighborhoods. Then, they go out and find houses that meet your search criteria and drive you around you look at the best candidates. They also negotiate on your behalf when you are actually pursuing a purchase. I never thought twice about it before...now I think about it all of the time.
In Australia real estate agents work for the seller only (unless you have an agent helping you as part of a major expat resettlement package or you're a movie star or some other kind of $$$$). No one I've met has ever used a buying agent.
Sydney is known as the city of villages and literally, about every one or two kilometers, you are entering another distinct village. Each village has its own real estate offices. In between three and ten different firms represent the real estate in that little village.
So you're on your own, researching neighborhoods, schools, land values, property rates, etc. The wider your search area, the more work you're doing.
Many houses never even make it onto the market. Real estate agents have extensive databases of buyers with cash in hand, waiting to grab up properties. In the neighborhood I live in, properties usually only last about two weeks on the market.
In America most houses are listed with a sale price and then buyers make offers and the seller and buyer negotiate until an agreed price is reached. They sign contracts and have a cooling off period.
In Australia houses are sold through private treaties, or auctions. Lots and lots of auctions. If you buy in a private treaty there is a cooling off period to have building inspections and contract evaluations carried out. With an auction you need to do those things before you bid at auction because once the hammer falls, if you've won it, there is no backing out, even if it falls into a heap of dust before you get the keys.
But building inspections cost about $500 and having the contract reviewed by your lawyer is another $100, so you want to have some level of confidence in your ability to secure a property before you start flinging money around.
But that confidence? Well, it is hard to muster. Because in Australia it is hard to get a price to stick onto a property. Many properties are advertised with no price, or with a $80k spread, or "offers from" a suggested starting point. Oh, and the auctions, they are the worst! I've heard of properties selling $200k in excess of the reserve price, and it is not unusual for properties to go $100k beyond the starting bid price.
I can't tell you how many times I've inquired for a "price guide" for a property and the agent has returned with "well what is your budget?", "what would YOU pay for this property?", or "we are letting the market determine the value of this property", which means they'll ask those questions to as many people as will answer and price it from there.
Now I don't throw my southern roots around all the time, but to me those questions are plain rude. Even though I know it is common practice here, I still sputter and flounder to compose an answer. Call me old fashioned or simple, but I think real estate should have an actual value based on location, type of property, condition, etc. Here in Sydney, it seems much more ephemeral. It is you against the crowd of hungry buyers and the highest bidder wins.
The way we lost this last house was especially irritating. In New South Wales (the state where we live), in a private treaty, you make a verbal offer and the agent tells you whether or not it is a good enough offer to continue. If it is, you get the property inspected, la de da, and you sign the contract. Then, if the owner still agrees, they sign the contract. Seems straightforward, no? No. Both parties have signed, but there is one more step. The signed contracts are then "exchanged". Until they are exchanged, the agreement is not legally binding and other parties can submit their signed contracts, and the seller can sign and exchange with them.
That's right, the seller can delay by holding onto your signed contract. They can delay by holding onto their signed contract, just waiting for a better offer. And in our case, they can let another party in, exchange contracts with them, and push you out of the running altogether. That's where bidding wars break out, which is another pile of manure.
Another difference is showing houses. In America, if you see a house you like, and you want to see it, you can ring up the agent and request to see it and they will show you the house within a couple hours. They may have open houses on the weekend as well. In Australia, they have open inspections typically on Saturdays (sometimes midweek). After months of looking, I have only just found out that you can request a private inspection. I kept showing up to the first open inspection to have the house already under contract!
The whole thing is so exasperating. If I wasn't so sick of the whole process I would consider opening a U.S. style buyers agent firm. When you talk about house hunting here, everyone groans. It is a complete pain, a huge time-suck, expensive, and potentially unrewarding. On the list of things I would like to outsource in my life, it is currently at the top!
You must be so bored reading that. I think I got bored writing it. The fact that this process is taking up hours and hours of my life every week...may it be over soon (although most people with ample budgets say it takes 6-12 months).
So, you may begin to see why a cat-lady cottage that needs renovations sounded like just the thing to put me out of my house-hunting misery.