Perils of Real Estate
Today, having secured a new buyer after the last one bailed over whether or not he could be sure of having access to the AFL events on Foxtel - no, really, although also because all the bankruptcy foreclosures we've had over the last year made him think our flat was overpriced - I went to look at my first potential rental after 10 years, all up, of being an owner (if you count having massive mortgages being "an owner"). It was a 3-bedroom terrace up at Taylor Square, tucked back in a lane and so away from the hedonism of that particular corner of Oxford Street. Very nice from the outside, it was an entirely different matter when the estate agent opened the front door.

The first thing I noticed was that it smelled musty. Not just old dust, but that underlying mould-under-the-carpet smell, which made perfect sense, because this place hasn't seen carpet since wall-to-wall became available. It's possible I might have overlooked this, although the next thing I noticed was that the entrance hall was uncarpeted, and the exposed floorboards hadn't been sanded in at least a century, let alone polished and sealed. I got splinters enough on old wood floors as a kid, and didn't relish more. It's not like I was going to take my shoes off even to walk on the carpets, though, so maybe I could overlook that, too.

The kitchen was large and L-shaped, and its linoleum was the kind that goes down in one big sheet, cut to fit around the cabinets and so forth. It was also bubbling up all over, not to mention ugly.

The two front rooms were dark, dingy and built for a race of humans who never exceeded four feet in height before becoming extinct. This also probably explains how they would have navigated the stairs to the two upper rooms, each much more light, though no less mouldy, than the downstairs rooms. I'd probably have to close one of them off, though, and use it for storage, if just to avoid that much extra cleaning effort, but it couldn't be the one at the front, because it was the better of the two, and if it was the one at the back, there'd be no place safe to end up having come to the top of the stairs.

Out back was a paved-over courtyard that could, with minimal effort, be made perfect for two young cats who can probably never be trusted to roam on their own, and looking around, I discovered the "internal laundry." Underneath the house. In a space about three feet high. With no hook-ups for a washer, let alone power outlets, but a nice tub to do everything by hand. Drying racks would have to serve, as no Hills Hoist was available, to say nothing of where I'd put a dryer.

The bathroom - and there was only one (admittedly my preference; as a single man, I'd rather not have to clean two) - was the final touch. The shower was set in the corner and the thought of touching bare anything to the tiles there induced a crawling sensation, as if the fungus was actively at work already. The toilet was the cheapest plastic, and the basin nearly invisible, set about two feet off the ground behind the door.

I could live here, I thought, and took an application. It took the rest of the day, a day spent ringing agents to hear them say "no pets" over and over again, when they didn't say the property I asked after had been snapped up already, to convince myself that I have at least 5 weeks to find a place and move, and that's assuming these buyers weren't so spooked by the stock market "correction" on Wednesday that they hang in and go to settlement.

Tomorrow, I've got two places to look at, in Newtown and Camperdown, both houses, so at least I can have a place to keep Felix & Theo.