Ah the joys of real estate listings. It’s always the stuff they don’t mention that catches you out. Here’s a few samples I’ve encountered recently:
A delightful 1950s brick four bedroom family home in a quiet cul de sac location so close to Chadstone Shopping Centre, Phoenix Park & the Malvern Valley Golf Course. — yeah great, but if you look at the map, it’s also a stone’s throw from both the Glen Waverley train line and the Monash freeway! Convenient for transport, but better get some good noise-proofing!
low maintenance garden — that means it’s small, folks.
light and bright spacious L shaped lounge, dining room, kitchen/meals area — this place was nice but tiny. If the lounge is L shaped, then they’ve included the dining room as part of it, and shouldn’t specify it separately. And it wasn’t so much a dining room as a dining alcove: it was tiny. The two-seater table they had displayed almost filled it. If you had a fridge in the kitchen, it couldn’t possibly count as kitchen/meals, unless you like eating off the floor, which personally, I don’t.
Delightful solid brick 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom Period home — it’s semi-detatched. Not that you can tell from the description or the pictures (and not that I’m against the concept of semis; it’s actually very nice). The plan showing a blank wall along one side gives it away. Would it kill them to mention it?
Additionally, I have formed a theory of real estate prices: a place advertised at auction for “X plus” will have a reserve price of around X + 10%. If it passes in, it’ll then be advertised for private sale at X + 20%, knowing there’ll be some haggling involved, and with some room to move if nobody shows any interest.
The whole New Year’s Eve debacle saga that I wrote about a few months ago came bubbling back up to the surface today. The trains will run all night, as well as more frequently straight after the fireworks.