Progress update: We have a house in Sydney!

On Monday night we (primarily Nicola) visited a few websites looking for flat shares etc. in the Sydney area. We mainly used Gumtree and Easyroommate and we found a few promising looking house share opportunities. We sent off five emails in total, we had trimmed down a lot of maybes and so on due to move in date and cost per week, and we created an advert outlining who we were and what we were after.

As a basic member of Easyroommate we could email premium members and they could read our message, however, if we emailed or were emailed by another basic member then we could not and they could not read our message. So that knocked two house shares of the list. We had a response from two ladies about their rooms, one fell through as she did not get back to us but we did manage to go and view a room. It was advertised as an alternative to “overpriced and over rated hostels” and the price stated $225 a week. It was located in Sydney’s CBD not far from Central Station. We thought it could be promising.

We arrived at the agreed time (12:30) and went up to the reception. We were shown around by an Italian girl and the two rooms we were shown looked okay, not great but they may have been okay to take us through the festive season when hostel and hotel prices go through the roof. After our tour of the place, which was a little grimy and rough-and-ready, we sat in the communal lounge (two sofas for a place supposedly catering for 38 people) and waited for the owner to arrive. She did, finally, at 12:55 which I wasn’t impressed with. She was late and didn’t have the decency to let us know, if the Italian girl had not shown us around we would have been twiddling our thumbs for almost half an hour. Anyway, she was useless. She knew next to nothing about the availability of the room, which room we were going to be renting or when we could move in. She also said the room was $225 per week per person. That was not advertised. I couldn’t understand how one person could rent the room for $225 per week, but if two people wanted to rent the same room they would have to pay $225 each. As soon as she said the price the house went from a maybe to a definite no. The advertised “alternative” to “overpriced and overrated” hostels was actually a hostel in all but name that had fewer facilities and was more expensive. We were a little disappointed as we had been having rotten luck on the job hunt front that day (more on that later) and headed back to our hostel.

However, not long after arriving at our hostel we had a response to our advert. We checked out the photographs of the house that the lady had sent us and decided that we would go and visit. It was located in Concord, in Inner West Sydney, a ten minute train ride from the CBD. We arrived at 18:30 and were shown around the room. It was spacious and light and the roommates seemed very friendly. The area seemed very pleasant too, a lot of shops and restaurants and a mall nearby. We were impressed. We had a tour of the area by one of the men living in the house on the way back to the train station and on the train journey back to the CBD we emailed the owner and said we’d take the room. The room, bills included, will cost us $295 a week. That seems like a lot in the UK, and it seems like a lot to us, but after searching house sites and so on we’ve actually got a bargain. So, for at least the next five weeks we’d say, we have our own address and a place to call home.

We moved in the next day and properly met the house mates who all seemed very nice and friendly. We paid the first two weeks rent and bond in advance and moved our bags into our room. We actually unpacked for the first time in ten weeks and put our rucksacks to one side, hoping not to see them for the next few months! Nicola put up some pictures to make the pace feel homely and we settled in for our first night in our first house together…