Well, I've just had 5 days off, and I feel much better for it. Saturday was a busy one; we went to 2 auctions (more on those in a minute), and then I went in and watched Collingwood put up 3/4 of a fight against Port Adelaide at the MCG. The trip to the footy was courtesy of Connex, and their corporate box - and it was an excellent experience (well, except for the final scores obviously).

We did go to 2 auctions that pretty much blew our socks off. Both places were within 3 minutes walk of our place. THe first auction was for a place we'd had our eye on for a little while - pretty much THE candidate if we were ever to pack up and move. Basically a nicer, slightly bigger (had a living room) version of our house. Originally it was listed at $550K+ (which to begin with was out of our price range). Then it was revised to $570K+. There was virtually a mob at the auction, and the agent said that they had shown 200 groups through in the past 4 weeks (he also said 30 to 40 groups was a successful campaign). Opening bid was $570K... and from there just went up. Ended up selling for $726K. We spoke to "the locals" afterwards, who said that the vendor was hoping for $600K. I'm sure they slept well on Saturday night... The next auction was, to put it simply, for a the land + a token house on top of it. The house was abysmal. It would've been better if they hadn't have tried to renovate it (but they did, badly). It was a tiny place, it was terribly laid out, it just looked DODGY. Anyway, a lot of people walking through prior to the auction with raised eyebrows and looks of horror. It was listed for $370K. Even the auctioneer knew it wasn't the best and tried a few tricks, such as "NORTH FACING... (on the side)". Anyway, it took a good 3 or 4 minutes to get the opening bid, which was $350K. I figured that this auction might be a bit more like reality compared to the earlier events of the morning... but it turns out I was wrong. After a slow start, the bids started coming in. The auctioneer probably spent a good 6 or 7 minutes taking $500 increments. The property ended up going for... wait for it... $474K. Ridiculous. Had you seen this property, you would be as amazed as I was (and still am). Anyway, hasn't helped any in thinking what we might do with our place (that's another blog entry for later).

The rest of the weekend was spent well; a 21st lunch for my cousin, walks around Blackburn lake, an attempt at clothes shopping at Chadstone, a lot of guitar playing yesterday, and of course my birthday on Tuesday (a reasonably subdued event this year). Anyway, was good to have some time off - now back into it BIG TIME!

Labels: House