Project New Home: Homes Viewed = 7

New homes viewed count is now at 7.

Resuming our house hunting after our honeymoon, we found 2 properties to inspect this weekend. The first was in North Ryde, in the same complex as another townhouse that we had viewed when we first started looking. The second was in Boronia Gardens, a much sought after location in Epping.

The North Ryde property was on the edge of the complex, which has frontage on two roads - one busy-ish road, and one quiet road that leads to a cul-de-sac. The townhouse backs on to the quiet road. It shared one common wall with another townhouse. The "front" of the property is actually inside the complex - the back door, which seems to be utilised as the main entrance, actually opens out to the road.

The owners had obviously done a lot of work to the interior - the renovations made the place very very very well presented - totally gorgeous. Everything looked newly renovated, and clean, and well maintained. Upstairs, there were 3 good sized bedrooms, all with built in wardrobes. The smallest of the rooms had a "built in" study nook too, which was awesome. The bathroom was well laid out with plenty of room.

Downstairs was just as lovely. The open plan dining and living space was light and airy, which flowed out into an outdoor entertaining area - an enclosed courtyard that really was the "front" entrance to the property. There was a toilet in the laundry, which was great as there was no need to traipse up and down the stairs to relieve oneself. The kitchen was fab - it was a bit on the small side, but I could have lived with it!

Plenty of storage space throughout the townhouse - nice cupboard / linen press upstairs, spacious under stairs storage space, and the property came with a tandem lock up garage, although we weren't exactly sure where the garage was in comparison to the townhouse.

There really wasn't anything wrong with the townhouse. It really was the nicest one we had seen to date, and it ticked pretty much every box. Close to public transport (a short-ish walk to the station, bus stop right out the front), close to the shops (Macquarie Centre was literally just down the road), near quite a few parks, straight move in without having to do any work. It was almost perfect.

Unfortunately, our finances hadn't been approved yet, and we weren't in a position to make an offer. Plus, the strata fees were quite high, with nothing really to show for it (no pool, no gym, no elevators, and the fees were about the same as those we are paying now). On top of that, we really had no idea where the garage was - more than likely, it was a long long way away from the townhouse, which could prove to be difficult with a baby, a pram and bags of groceries.

The second place was in a complex that I had wanted to live in. Dad use to own property in this complex, and I thought it would be great to have an opportunity to live there too. After inspecting the property at North Ryde, we were hoping the standards would be on par.

Sadly, we were to be totally disappointed.

In total contrast to the North Ryde property, the Epping property was totally vacant. No expenses were spared to dress this place up - and no, we are not kidding. Not one stick of furniture was hired to make this place look presentable, which only showed up how old and tired the apartment looked. The real estate agent did himself nor the property any favours by cranking up the air conditioning to full force hot.

The property was around 30 years old, and you could really tell its age. The walls looked like it carried 30 years of wear and tear, and although the carpet looked newer, it too had seen its best years. The kitchen was so typical of the trend that was 30 years ago, and the bathrooms were hilarious! The sinks were placed so low that when Jonathan stood over them with his back straight, he couldn't reach the taps!

This was a fixer-upper-er, and we are in no way interested in buying a fixer-upper-er. So we hightailed it out of there after a 5 minute inspection.

We have now seen the almost perfect property. Almost perfect. Which we suspect will be snapped up very quickly. With our finances still to be finalised, we will keep looking for that perfect place!

Updated on August 30

The North Ryde property went for a price that was well within our reach, now that our finances have been finalised and we have conditional approval for a truckload of money. Oh well. The search continues!