I feel a bit woozy

Yesterday, Mark and I offered someone a couple of hundred thousand dollars (that we don’t have) for a house that we have only seen once.

We’ve been looking for weeks, and have mainly seen “fixer uppers” in our price bracket (which is well below the average Sydney house price) because we need both a large-ish house (for the impending spawn) and a good sized yard (for the Disco Divas of Denistone, AKA the chooks). So the house we saw on saturday afternoon was somewhat of a revelation.

It is one street away from another property we have looked at, but technically in a different suburb that we hadn’t considered before. It has a manicured garden, new cladding, a security alarm system, “sparkling” floorboards (I kid you not, the real estate brochure described them that way), a new-ish kitchen, a huge living area, three big bedrooms, a spa bath, a second bathroom in the rather large laundry, a ducted air conditioning system, a lock up storage shed, and a stained glass panel with kookaburras on the front door.

And a price tag in the ballpark of what we can afford.

Unbelievable.

We wondered why it was so cheap – apparently it’s because the area is zoned as flood prone. Except that a storm water drain was put in a few years ago just behind the property, and the house is on the high side of the drain. Even with the heavy rains we’ve been having lately, the water was still many meters away from the height of the back door. We won’t be able to get flood insurance, but that is a risk I am prepared to take.

We haven’t offered the asking price, but we have offered only $10k less. We saw the house at 1pm Saturday, and by 11am Sunday when I rang the agent, there were already two other offers on the place. Saturday was it’s first showing, so we know that others are as impressed with this house as we are.

So chances are our offer won’t be accepted, but what the hell. We lose nothing by trying, right?