You can’t go through life being too precious about things. That’s my philosophy, anyway. Well, actually, it’s more my grandma’s philosophy, but I’ve adopted it as my own because it seems to work pretty well. I mean, if it saw her through the Great Depression, a world war and immigrating to the other side of the world to escape Berlin, it’s got to have something going for it.
For my part, it’s seeing me quite well through the process of buying property. I have a pretty good idea of what I’m looking for, but finding it is easier said than done. Every time I think I’m onto something, it turns out to have a major structural flaw, or a weird council overlay on it, or one less room than advertised (no, a broom closet is not a bedroom). Or it’s in the wrong state, or already has an offer on it, or is out of my price range.
That’s the thing, though – hardly any of the properties I see have more than one of these issues. That means they’re so close to being on point. I was finding this pretty infuriating, getting more frustrated with every near-perfect Section 32. Vendor’s statement preparation, it seems, is a bit of a fine art, and I can’t help but appreciate the precision and elegance with which a whole property can be reflected in an ostensibly dry legal document.
As you might be able to guess, I was going pretty far down the path of getting overly precious about things, albeit in a weird kind of way. I even went so far as to start grilling my conveyancer for property transfer expertise to see if I could twist things to my advantage when meeting with a seller (he was none too happy about that).
Then I remembered my grandma’s pearl of wisdom. In that moment, I realised that I was never going to find the perfect property. Suddenly, I stopped feeling so tense about it all. It’s not like it solved the problem, but it made it feel like much less of an issue in my mind.