We're Moving!

Although we love where we currently live in Canberra, we think it's time for a change - and time for more living space!

Knowing our current lease was set to expire mid-April, we began looking for new places to rent in February. We visited a few homes, but found them to be way too large for our current needs. They were the size of our old home in Ottawa! But given that we only have 1/3 of our furniture here with us in Australia, it just didn't make sense renting a home that would be 2/3 empty.

The day before Stacy was set to leave for NZ for work, she stumbled upon a fantastic home and quickly emailed Blair telling him that we 'simply MUST have this home'. She was, however, realistic in knowing that it would be quite difficult to rent a place in the tight Canberra market with her leaving the country the next day.

Renting homes in Canberra has proven to be a bit tricky and quite a bit different than from back home.  For instance, in order to rent a place, it is a requirement to a) visit the rental in person and b) submit an application complete with tons of references, 100 points worth of identification, proof of employment and salary, etc. The list goes on.  The competition is also quite stiff. You are often competing for the rental with a handful of other interested applicants. Finally, it is quite similar to buying a home - most times it is the highest bidder that wins. Applicants can submit an application with a bid within the suggested price range, or they can choose to submit one with a much higher price.  All of this combined makes finding an adequate place to rent quite stressful.

So on Friday night, we scrambled to put our application together in the midst of Stacy packing. Early the next morning, Stacy flew out to NZ and passed on the ambitious task of having Blair visit the home to ensure it looked just as good in person as it did in the photos. Upon visiting the house, Blair quickly knew it would be perfect for us and submitted our application on the spot. He chatted up the realtor, explained the reason for our being in Australia, and expressed our extreme interest in renting the home. He noted that there were several other couples visiting the home, but was able to get a significant amount of time in with the realtor before departing. All in all, it was a good visit.  Then the waiting began.

By Monday, Blair had been contacted by the realtor advising him that we were the successful applicants! We were quite happy and managed to get all the lease paperwork (which required Stacy's signature) completed via email.

We don't have pictures of the house to share right now, but will post some in the coming weeks once we move in.  But we will say that our new house has a fantastic outdoor kitchen and swimming pool (complete with palm trees)!