When Life Imitates Economics
The white elephant apartment is all but sold now, contracts exchanged and the buyer on the hook after Monday, so in addition to pulling all the books and records out of the bookshelves and into boxes, I've begun the daily review of Domain.com for an over-priced one- to two-bedroom flat somewhere between "Sydney,", that is, Darlinghurst, Surry Hills, the CBD, etc., and the Inner West, i.e, Newtown, Glebe, et al. No way am I going past Erskineville, though.

Meanwhile, I'd like to know what's really meant by a "New York style" apartment. I think it means a slightly-bigger-than-usual studio. Probably it just means a studio. I've also discovered that having two cats is going to put me out of the running for most apartments. Please note, however, that this seems largely due to the reluctance of real estate agents to bother the landlords for more details than whether or not they'd like to get $450 per week or $500 for a unit that hasn't seen fresh paint in better than five years or new carpet (let alone a steam-clean) in ten.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Cats: no. Mildew: I'll start finding out this weekend, when I start attending open inspections. Meanwhile, I'm running two parallel searches: one for any housing, and one for houses. The stand-alone rentals have fewer problems with pets.

Update: it's awful to say, mere hours from putting this post up, but the buyer's pulled out. While we keep a portion of his earnest money (which will defray some of our advertising costs), that he's done so as late as this leaves us little hope of a quick turn-around re-advertising and having another open inspection by the weekend. It cools my search off, too, although that could yet be a timing problem, since I know there's some nice stuff opening up in mid-March. I'm also sorry I packed up as many of the books and records as I did, since the built-in bookshelves look enormous without their stock. Maybe one of the other interesteds from Saturday will still want it, probably for a lot less than asking-price.