Apartments

So, as Ben found out the hard way, real estate is a little different in Sydney than elsewhere in the world. In the mid-90's, house prices jumped up and have been rising steadily ever since then. A 3-bedroom home in the Sydney suburbs (not even the expensive northern burbs along the coast) could easily cost a >750,000 AUD (australian dollars). So if you got into the housing market before the mid 90's, you probably own your house, and if you got into it afterwards, you probably rent. Ben's advisor was recently looking for a house and the mortgage would be 1200/wk; he decided to keep renting for a while. As a result of the high prices, there's really high demand in the rental market, too, so prices are not cheap.

And the process of going about getting an apartment is different, too. Realtors schedule these 30-60 min "showings" at random times of the day, and if you're interested in the apartment, you have to be present at the showing. It's a first-come, first-serve basis, so there's this mad rush to get in, and then a drag-race over to the realty office to get your paperwork submitted. Places frequently go within the first several minutes of the showing. And they require a ton of paperwork for your application. One of Ben's lab-mates just submitted a 19-page application for a little apartment!

So now that you have an idea of the time and money that this entails, you'll appreciate it even more when we say:
"We have a home!!"

It is a 1 bedroom, brick house, with a nice size yard. It is ~3 miles west of the uni and about 1 mile from downtown Epping, which has some shopping, restaurants, and a city rail station (Epping to downtown Sydney is about 25min). Unfortunately, Ben cannot move in until July 18th.

Kerry continues to run assays...