Melbourne

Its been a while since I last posted - a combination of busyness and laziness. I had started on a draft post for our roadtrip finances last week but haven't updated it since. I thought about updating that and posting it but decided against it as quite a lot has happened over the past 12 days and so the executive decision has been made to first post about our time in Melbourne thus far.

A month ago in August, I had asked my uncle (who lives in Melbourne) about renting a place here in Melbourne. We wanted to find out whether our budget could afford us a similar accoms to that in Perth. Also, Melbourne being much bigger than Perth, we thought it would be a good idea to check in on where the 'nicer' suburbs were. With that in mind, we went about our housing search. Similar to Perth, our lease duration was not going to be long (6 months - better than Perth though) and so that counted against us. We searched for accoms all over - from FB marketplace (private renters) to domain.com.au to realestate.com.au. However, one of largest stumbling block when looking for a place during the 2 weeks roadtrip over here was the inability to arrange for viewings. With the housing market at its hottest in years, apartments are usually on the market for less than a week before they are snapped up. So we thought we would do what we did in Perth 2 months ago, book an Airbnb location for a week, spend the week settling in and doing house viewings and such.

A week before arriving in Melbourne, my uncle kindly suggested that his family could host us until we found a more permanent place. It was a nice gesture which, on hindsight, worked out quite well for us - because it took us more than a week to find a permanent place and so it took a worry off our minds about having to find a place and settle in within a week or if not, having to quickly find last minute accommodation as we go along. This period also gave me the opportunity to reconnect with my uncle and his family (young cousins!) whom we only usually see once a year during CNY (actually we haven't met for 3 years due to COVID). One thing that struck me during our conversations on one of the nights was that if they had lived in Singapore instead of Melbourne, we might not have connected beyond the superficial level that is CNY visitations. The concept of them hosting us and therefore connecting, could only have come about through the fact that they lived at a faraway land. It made me think about all the relatives in Singapore I have, and how despite living literally a maximum of an hour or so away, our connection is simply that of CNY.

Anyway, we finally found a place that somewhat suited our requirements and budget. We even offered a higher price than what was listed to secure the place - such is the impetus of not imposing on my uncle's family beyond what was necessary. The whole rental process feels much like a cat and mouse game. You contact the agent who then offers you a viewing. You go for the viewing only to realise there are upwards of 10+ other applicants also at the viewing. It then becomes somewhat like a auction except money is not all that matters. Money is simply one of the components for which the landlord assesses. We had to submit documents proving our finances - payslips, bank statements etc. Coming from Singapore, this was a little iffy since all of this money was overseas. It didn't help that we had no rental history and therefore no references and we had only stayed in Perth for slightly less than 2 months. And so we tried to one-up any potential applicants by offering $20/week more than the asking price. That apparently wasn't enough. Since we had no local proof of funds, we were asked to pay the rent of 3 out of a 6 months lease plus a 1 month bond - totalling 4 months worth of rent at one go. At this point, I'm not even sure if the landlord is simply seeing an prey and going for the kill. But then again, beggars can't be choosers. As a wise friend of mine once said, in many cases, problems that can be solved by money generally isn't really a problem - there are many other problems out there that even with money, we cannot resolve no matter how hard we try. And so here I am, sitting in our new apartment (3 days new) typing this post.

Lastly, while we are expending money by the truckload, we needed to find some income. Blueberry/ Raspberry season does not start until December here and so as a temporary measure to sustain our above budget rental, I auditioned and got the part as a scare actor at a Haunted House at the Royal Melbourne Show. And that, is another post by itself.