Project New Home: Homes Viewed = 3

With Project New Home going full steam ahead, Saturdays will become another "date" day for Jonathan and I as we embark on our exciting journey of going to open house inspections.

As at today, we have attended 4 open house inspections on 3 different properties. The Epping property we viewed last weekend was worth another look - that was how keen we were about this place - and we took my parents to see it too. Both Jonathan and I are really glad my folks came along - through their eyes, we saw a whole bunch of flaws, such as a huge lack of power points (only 1 per room - very typical of the era in which the building was constructed), and there were a whole bunch of other "defects" that would need to be fixed up as well. So really, it wouldn't have been a straight forward "move in and live" situation. Rather, it would have been "buy it, fix her up - and there's a lot to fix up, then move in".

All thanks to this second viewing, we are now not completely hooked on this property.

Last week, we also looked at a terrace on the border of Epping and Carlingford. Jonathan has always wanted to live in a terrace house, and the pictures on Domain looked fabulous. There were a few warning bells for me, the first of which was that the property was situated on Carlingford Road - which is busy 24/7.

Nevertheless, we went and had a look, and sure enough, the busy main road detracted from an otherwise quite gorgeous terrace house. The interior was all quite new and the property was quite well presented, but we couldn't get past the fact that the property was on a main road.

Today, we went to view a property in Marsfield which is very close to Epping Boys High School. The property is a townhouse in a complex of about 30 townhouses, in a nice leafy area that unfortunately wasn't well serviced by public transport. We liked a lot of things about this property - it was a double bricked townhouse with good sized courtyards (in the front and in the back), the layout in the downstairs living area is lovely and open, and the bedrooms upstairs were all decently sized, with a walk in wardrobe in the master bedroom and built ins in the other rooms. There was an internal laundry, and 2 bathrooms (both upstairs). The property came with a double lock up garage as well.

Our first impressions of the property was that it was really really really over-furnished. We walked into a tiny living area, filled with a massive lounge, a bulky entertainment unit and a bulky wooden wall unit. As we moved towards the back of the property, it became apparent that the much larger living area was being used for other purposes - like housing a massive shrine complete with a statue of Buddha. It was actually quite creepy looking - I thought it looked more like a crypt, but Jonathan insists it's a Buddhist altar table.

The exterior of the property looked well maintained enough. The interior, however, will require some work before we can move in, if we were to buy this place. At the very least, the whole place would need to be painted - the current yellow and blue colour scheme downstairs is very dated, and all the walls upstairs looked like they could do with a fresh coat or 2 as well. The carpeted stairs will need to be replaced, preferably with floor boards, and the landing on the first floor could do with some work too. The bathrooms took us all the way back to the late 70s when this property was built - those tiles were, so, um, vintage. A few doors could be eliminated, like the kitchen door and the walk in wardrobe door. But we did like the front door very much - quite possibly the best thing in the entire property!

The agent said the vendors are very keen to sell, so we've asked for a contract to be sent to us.

In the meantime, as we're now not emotionally attached to any property, we will continue to sort out our finances and hopefully, we'll get approval for a home loan before we find the perfect place.

So the count is up to 3 properties. No doubt we will see plenty more on our new and exciting journey. Let's see what next week will bring.