I would occasionally call my mum on evenings when Dylan was off playing badminton until very late. Honestly, I only ever do it if there’s any major changes in my life and for the past couple of weekends it was just all about house-hunting. This weekend was no different. If thirty days was all that’s needed to build a habit…well, I still have to wean myself off real estate websites and recorded auctions on Youtube.

TLDR: I am still in the thick of it.

“Hi mommy! Are you working right now?” I asked when she picked up my last call.

“No, I’ve been putting up christmas decorations today.”

“Okay, that’s good. Well, everything is done now,” I updated her. “Paperwork and all! All that’s left is to wait.”

“Everything is done? It’s paid already?”

I explained how settlement works in Australia. “But today I was waiting for auction results to come out. There’s some houses that I liked and I wanted to know if I was just dreaming or if we had any chance at all,” I paused.

“Turns out I was just dreaming!”

I was never as good as Dylan when it came to estimating how much houses sold. For the most part I knew there was a bigger statistical chance that a property would go above our budget, but I would still kind-of hope that we maaaaybe could get lucky.

I’m more hope-ium than sense.

In reality we wouldn’t have afforded them anyway.

“I guess,” I continued. “I’m just trying to validate our decision to buy the house that we did. At the end of the day, they were all above our budget!” I laughed in the way that you could only laugh at the realistic choices life sometimes forced upon you.

I didn’t even like this other house that sold above our budget that much. I didn’t like it enough to take a photo on the only time we inspected it. It was just an objectively better purchase to make because it was in the “better school zone” of a suburb we liked. The numbers worked out: land size, location was okay, renovation quality was landlord-grade (on the low end) but it was at least a bit more modern and move-in ready. Public transport wasn’t convenient but I can live with it. My other gripes about the property were all fixable with money, nothing urgent and can just be spread across over time. The main upside was the family-safe, potentially hot suburb, but most importantly the school zone.

We didn’t even have kids.

All potential, no emotion, and objectively good on paper.

It was no great loss not bidding on that property in the end because hope was misleading and it’s gone above what we wanted to spend. And there were quite a few of them that I’ve kept track because I wonder, and because I want to know. Some passed in, some still on the market, and even one that’s been taken off-market and leased instead.

It took us between two to three months to find a house this time around and among the houses we inspected and offered for, there’s just one other house that drifts into the back of my mind once in a while.

It’s the first house we both quite liked: a 60-year old home in a suburb we wouldn’t normally be able to afford if not for the smaller cut of land and a worn, outdated interior and exterior. It was a very charming home in a location that was incredibly convenient. Trams, lots of public transport options, walking distance to the shopping centre, near a park, within an excellent school zone, and not that far from the city.

All good things until the Building and Pest report. There were more categorically “major” structural issues than we were comfortable with. The house isn’t a safety risk; the roof won’t fall over our heads, sure, but it’s fifty years overdue for proper maintenance. All problems can be fixed with money but it’s extra money we didn’t have.

It would have been a purely-for-location purchase but even now I’m still not sure if all the stress, time, money, and few-years-worth of pains we would need to sink into that house would have been worth it for us.

I still think about the location of that house sometimes. Not in a sad way, just an imaginary what-if. It would be nice to walk to the cinemas. Or have frequent trams running through the hood. Or drive thirty minutes to work. Or even just be poorest house surrounded by expensive homes.

Would the extra hundreds of thousands of dollars of mortgage interest been worth it? Was the location really that amazing?

That’s the best thing about dreaming: you’re not always forced to face reality.

More often these days I’d draw and re-draw on the floor plan of the new house. How might we extend this bath, or add an ensuite, or maybe put up a small outdoor studio for a home office, or extend for a fourth bedroom? What can I do with this feature wall, this old fireplace? Should I put up beautiful cabinetry along this wall?

I dream about many things. It’s a free creative exercise.

What I should really be doing is packing. Summer will roll around and go before we’d even notice, time flying fast as it usually does these days. And I tried. I tried to start a few days ago. I opened one of the closets, pulled out some boxes, realised I needed packing tape which we ran out of, and then promptly gave up. I crawled back into bed to call my mum instead.

“Dylan’s mum and grandma might be coming for Chinese New Year. In case you want to come. They wanted to help with the moving.”

“Oh no, my project wraps up in March, but I can visit after.” She is not my mum if she wasn’t busy, after all.

“That’s okay,” I said. “March is still autumn. The weather will be nice. It’ll be the perfect time to visit.” I think of the things she can look forward to. “The house has too many plants. I don’t like it but I think you will like it, maybe you can help us arrange the garden stuff.”

“Oh, I like that.”

I ended the call with my mum not long after. I calmed the dogs so they can get ready for bed with me and pulled up the duvet as they snuggled close. I pulled up the real estate website on my phone, as I’ve always done in the past fifty evenings.

Stop!

I closed the browser and looked at interior design photos on Instagram instead.