The last 6 months...

The last 6 months have been stressful. There's no other way to put it. Entering the housing market has been a very steep learning curve for Tom and me.

We began the journey, as with most things we do, by researching. Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au became an obsession. Every night, every lunch hour, most waking moments on weekends was spent pouring over websites. We did on average 4 to 8 house inspections each weekend in the hope of securing our dream home.

There's an excellent ad out there for Domain.com.au. It features a bright young couple wanting to put in offer in on a house, only two have two "Wing Bats" in "Matching Boat Shoes" appear out of nowhere and try to swoop in on their house offer.

This was our first experience with the property market. It did not end well. We had found the perfect house. Enough room for everything, a shed, water tank, area for chooks, cute dogs next door, in a really nice neighbourhood, with a lovely kitchen and polished wood floors. We were out gunned.

After a bit of distress on my part, we moved on. The next house was beautiful too. Located in Geebung, near the train line, polished wood floors, great kitchen, but no pantry (??), and car accommodation that would need to be expanded to fit the bus, sorry Magna. There were a few issues, and thus we offer $10k under the asking price. Our offer was rejected. Rejection is not a nice taste to swallow. More distress for both of us this time. Thankfully though no one else made an better offer either and the house was taken off the market.

We moved on.

Next was a "townhome" complex. This was a disaster! Whilst we didn't lose money, and we learnt a great deal, it was not a fun period in our lives. I have one piece of advice for anyone out of our experience here... if it doesn't feel good today, it won't feel good tomorrow. The contract, with it's utter lack of plans and list of inclusions, relied too heavily on the builder being a nice bloke. Too many caveats for our liking and so we bid farewell again.

By now you may be thinking we're being too picky. Surely there's something wrong with them, if they can't find a house in downward market. And you would be right. We are too picky. Sure we could find houses that we liked and we did put in offers. However, a house of us right now it's a 3 year plan. It isn't a 5 year plan. We're looking to stay in this house for the next 10 to 15 years. We've lived in a lot of houses, in a variety of cities. We know exactly what we like. We just couldn't find one that satisfied us both, or when we did we missed out anyway.

And this is where the story really begins. We decided to build. To make our first real home together something that was truly ours, that we truly felt passionate for. It has become our labour of love over last few weeks. We have tried on 14 different plans,  2 building companies and 3 blocks of land. And now we have our perfect fit. It meets my criteria of being close to family, not too far from shops and not too far from either of our jobs. It meets Tom's criteria for enough space to have a vege patch and a garage he can tinker in.

We're building a Long Beach Q2 Plantation Home in Brisbane's Far Northern Suburbs.