Melbourne Real Estate
When I lived in Singapore I was visited by a friend who had restarted business in Real Estate. That was in the early 90’s. I was working as a Senior Lecturer and earning a good salary. It made sense to buy an investment property in Melbourne, a city I have always enjoyed – even in the depths of winter. Having been used to living in North Melbourne, I felt that Kensington was about as far as I could go in terms of distance from the Melbourne CBD.
The house I bought is a two storey single fronted Victorian terrace house, new in 1995 or thereabouts, meaning it has the charm of the houses it copied, but without the maintenance headaches of a 100 year old home.
A week ago, standing in the park opposite our house with good friends and family watching the auction of an identical house two doors down, I was amazed at the price achieved by the sale.
The auctioneer extolled the virtues of the location which I can’t deny – proximity to restaurants, shops, transport, sporting facilities, parks and the centre of Melbourne make it a great place to live. I couldn’t disagree.
We took back occupancy of our property from a tenant on February 13 and immediately set about preparing for our move.
For those who don’t move that often, the internet has made life a lot easier. There is a service called MyConnect which will take your details and assist in ensuring that you are connected to power, gas, water, internet and probably a few other things. This service is for free and when I completed my details, I was called within an hour. The service takes a commission from the services you choose, but you as the customer pay no more.
There is a certain level of excitement in our family as we have wanted to move into this house since Joe first decided he wanted to try out for Melbourne High. Now that we have the house back we have a number of tasks in motion like recarpeting, purchasing whitegoods and arranging for some of our items to be shipped down from Darwin. Our new fridge, washing machine and dryer arrive tomorrow and internet will be connected in a day or two. We have been pouring over the IKEA catalogue as we consider how to furnish the house simply and practically.
The house has ducted heating and we have been exploring add on airconditioning systems although we may be able to wait until the end of this year before undertaking that project.
Meanwhile back at the auction, after all was done we met both the successful bidders and one of the long term owners of one of the properties. In all the years we have owned the property this was the first time we had met an owner.
I am looking forward to hosting a barbeque in the park, or even in our small backyard.
So for a small guided tour of our place, check out the video…
