16. Flat Hunting in Sydney

As you might have guessed by now, a great deal of the 356 Challenge is going to be things I’ve done before only now I’m doing them in Sydney. I don’t want it to seem like a cop out; yes I’ve taken a bus before so what’s the big deal about taking a bus in Sydney?

Well, hopefully by writing it this way, those of you thinking of coming over here might glean some useful pointers for making your trip a bit smoother. Yee Haa! I feel like a frontiersman beating the trail out to… well, out to one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, but you know what I’m getting at!

Anyway, back to the flat hunting. I was out for dinner with a mate the other night and he summed up the rental situation in Sydney in five words, “Ridiculously expensive for no space.” How right he was.

The first obstacle is finding out where you want to stay. We looked at places on a map that would be a reasonable commute for both of us and then we headed out to each of them on the train and had a walk about. People in most areas were friendly enough to chat to us and tell us what their suburb had going for it and it didn’t take long to find a place that we liked.

Once we knew were we wanted to live the next hurdle was trying to see the properties. It’s a strange arrangement here in that properties are shown at specific times, usually at the weekend, and hordes of people turn up to look at them. The local papers usually contain listings as do most estate agents but phoning up mid-week and asking to see a place on your conditions seems to be a no-no. However, that didn’t stop us. Non-conformist to the end, we phoned every agent who had a property we wanted to see and a few of them were obliging.

When I’m at work I introduce myself to my patients by my first name as I hate the old paternal image that some doctors like to portray. However I was told to drop the “Doctor” title into the conversation with estate agents over here and sure enough it made all the difference. Those who said, “I’m sorry but that flat was shown on Saturday,” couldn’t wait to show us it when I said, “But, I’m starting work as an Emergency Department Registrar next week and we really need to get a place sorted out as soon as possible.” I hated doing it but it seemed to work.

Another thing we tried was simply to walk into every estate agent office we saw and explain our situation face to face. The response we got from doing that was much better and they were always willing to take time away from their coffee to show us flats we wanted to see.

The first place we looked at was a tiny one bedroom affair that was about 20 minutes out of town. The front door opened onto the living space that was about 3 metres by 4 metres which also contained the kitchenette. Off of this was a small bathroom with no bath and the bedroom which would have taken a double bed, but only if it was on it’s side! There was also a narrow, seemingly pointless, balcony the area of which should have been used to extend the living area.

I kid you not that there wasn’t enough room to swing a dead cat in there. Not even a dead mouse. In fact, on of Tolkien’s hobbits couldn’t have swung a dead micro-organism in there it was so small.

Then there was the price; A$400 PER WEEK! Can you believe it? I was shocked. My place back home is in West End of a fairly big city and my living room is 8 metres by 8 metres and this box was going to cost me more than my UK mortgage! I really didn’t know what to say but we took an application form anyway and left.

Thankfully, this was the worst of the places we saw. Things steadily improved but there was a distinct lack of space in all the flats we looked at and they were all mystifyingly expensive. One of the estate agents told us that rental prices had doubled in the last 5 years. It almost made buying a place seem more attractive than renting.