Cupcake Memories: Life in Sydney, Australia

It is funny how I never really knew how to read cad drawings eventhough I have worked in a construction firm for a couple of years before. I see them everyday at all of the engineers’ tables including the ED’s ie my boss!

It was only when we built our house that I learned to read every detail of it to ensure everything wss right where we wanted and to make changes here and there several times before we finalized the drawings.

I am sure that if we do get a chance to go over a cad drawing for another home, we would be able to read it more thoroughly and reduce the number of times we have to change things around. But the question is, will that second chance come around?

News has it that property prices are going to hit the roof again. Sometimes I do wish we have access funds so we could build another house, then sell it for profit, build another one, sell it and so on. There are many, many new plots of land for sale at our neighbouring suburb and houses there get snapped up pretty quickly so it is a guarantee that you will be able to sell off a new property with a profit.

Anyway, I think this benefits tradesman or those who have experience in house renovation and DIY. If you build a house and do many things yourself, it is a huge savings not only on labour but also on items like you could get some discount kitchen sink compared to paying a princely sum to the builder to get it for you as the builder would mark up the price so they get to pocket in some profit too.

Alas that is just an idea, we are in no circumstance to build another home. It would have been fun though, if we could afford it as I love painting walls and decorating little bits and especially now that we have experienced the various stages of building a house from scratch.

Many a times greed gets to me. First I wanted a home of our own. Now that we have got one, I wish to have a larger one, a double storey to be precise. Better still, a beachside holiday home like those Outer Banks homes as an investment property would be ideal. Wow talk about impossible aspirations!

I tend to get too carried away. Fortunately I have a good friend who would always bring me back to my feet and put some sense into me. What she said was right. We should be thankful and contented just to own a home.

We often get flyers from real estate agencies promoting and suggesting to sell our properties. These flyers never stopped coming into our mailbox since the day we moved in. Well, I guess that is how the real estate agents make money – aggressive marketing with free property appraisal every now and then.

Sometimes we are tempted to have them appraise our home just to find out how much it is worth now. But seeing the state of our house, messy and incomplete, we would prolly get the lower end of the market price. Moreover we can’t afford to move to a better home, so I guess we’re stuck here for good.

I wonder if property agents elsewhere in the world such as the Wilmington NC real estate in the USA promotes their services aggressively like how our local ones are.