I got home on Monday afternoon to find wall-to-wall BMWs parked outside. Which could only mean one thing: inspection time. My landlady is bowing out of the real estate game. Evidently at 81 years old she has better things to do with her time and money. A fair bit of money apparently – a word to the real estate agent revealed he was expecting an amount of somewhere around $1.2 million to be changing hands. Which made me rather cynical when she relayed her last whinge about repair costs as she explained why she was selling.
Sold! |
Apart from the agent, who naturally drives a BMW, a gaggle of developers, all of whom also drive BMWs (at least one convertible), were snooping about the place. What is it about BMWs? Okay, so they appear to be undeniably nice cars, but surely one of the points of having an expensive car is that there’s not lots of them all over the place. If you’re going to spend a fortune on a car, wouldn’t you want it to be something comparatively obscure? Every second European car seems to be a BM. Even the people next door drive one, and they are complete yobs.
Maybe I don’t understand the prestige of… um… prestige cars. My aging Magna turns 10 years old later this year. It can go at the speed limit as good as anything else, and apart from the squeak in the drivers seat (which causes a little noise every time I depress the clutch to change gears) I think it’s fine. Well, it should be, after the small fortune I spent on maintenance on it last year.
But I digress. The agent also said I’d need to have my flat open for inspection before the auction on Thursday. Panic! 72 hours to get my flat tidy enough that I wouldn’t feel embarrassed letting strangers in to poke around! I’d have to do some major tidying up. A big cleanout. I immediately made plans to take all of Thursday off – to spend the morning mucking the place out in time for inspection at 1:30, then to sit on the balcony, a cool drink in hand, and watch the auction from above.
This morning, a change of plan. He rang me to say the auction is off, because the place sold last night. He also told me it went to a developer (who I bet drives a BMW), who planned to refurbish, and they’d be requiring vacant possession. Which means I have not escaped the fate of so many other Melbourne bloggers this year – I’m going to have to move. According to the
Renters’ Rights book I should get at least 60 days notice, and the agent said this would be organised in the next few weeks.
What a pain in the arse. Oh well. What can you do?
