Moving to Canberra & possibly Finding Our Dream Home? Part 2 🇦🇺

This is it!

Ahmed 2020

Hey Beautiful people, welcome back to the Jalloh family blog. Pull up a pew and stay for a while; We have some things to tell you. Be sure to read to the end so you can see the video of the day we moved in.

During our first viewing, Ahmed and I were in the house for about two hours. We saw the other properties in the compound and we were impressed with the price and what you get but none of them were… IT. So it was great when we found the one.

Ringing in my ears were Ahmed’s words! My eyes lifted from the impressive front door to the main living area and it was big, clean and open. It was a super long room with three double windows along the left wall, a triple window at the end of the room looking out onto our ‘side garden’ and our open plan kitchen on the right hand side, leading to a laundry room and small toilet. The back door was also located in the laundry room. The kitchen has a high floor to ceiling window and a panel behind the oven, almost where you would expect a backsplash to be. The window looked out over the back garden. It was super different to the two houses we had just seen, it looked quite similar from the outside (same type of design and colours etc.) but unlike the other two, the main difference was that it did not have a separate living and family room. It was what they call ‘open plan’. On reflection, that was probably what made it feel like home. In London, we were living in an open plan three bedroom flat and something about the downstairs of this property felt familiar.

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Even though my spirit took to the house, I wasn’t too sure about the downstairs at first view, because it looked suuuuuuper long. Brent, the realtor, had also set up office in the house, so had random carpet pieces to help save the floor during viewings and his table. This meant, we couldn’t see the the empty shell. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it when I first walked in, but I just could not picture our furniture in the downstairs space. Downstairs was also home to the master bedroom which had a walk-in closet and an ensuite. Ok, this part definitely peaked my interest. Show me more.

Upstairs hosts three double bedrooms and the family bathroom. One bedroom is our daughters, she chose the one at the top of the stairs (closest to the stairs) whilst our son chose one of the rooms at the other end and closer to the bathroom. We gave him the opportunity of a small bedroom and bigger game room or vise versa. Neither room is small though, just a little smaller than the other. He decided that he wanted to have a bigger game room, which would also double up as my office and filming room.

As I saw more of the house, I just kept falling in love with it. So much so in fact, 2 hours after viewing, we had gone back home to get the kids so they could have a look. They approved!We got the kids to come and have look around all 3 houses, but didn’t tell them which one was our preference. We wanted to see what they thought of each house and to see if they had a preference. As we walked around each property, I was trying to gauge from their faces and expressions which was their favourite. As we looked around the final house, we asked them what their thoughts were, both said that they liked all three houses but that their favourite was the third house. That was our choice too…

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Meanwhile, we were having the second look of the day and the realtor informed us that it was nearly 4:00pm which is when his shift is over and LJ Hooker (large property firm) begins theirs. Once the clock struck 4, LJ Hooker, were then on the clock, They had their own clients coming to view the house and he could not do anything to stop them selling it unless we could put down a $1,000 deposit to take the house off the market. Usually, we are cynical of these types of situations however, as we exited “our” house, we saw the agent from LJ Hooker approaching and putting down his A-boards and signage, followed by a prospective couple. We looked at each other and knew exactly what the other person was thinking. 3:55! we had to act fast because we had to transfer money between accounts and usually it takes long. Phew… a sigh of relief because at 3:59 transaction went through and, the house was taken off the market. Now for the hard part!

We had found it! 12 months of searching; open houses; land viewings; driving the kids and putting our thoughts out to the universe and we had found our dream home (without J’s pool though). The icing on the cake was that it was $80,000 under our maximum limit.

Thanks you for keeping up with the Jalloh family and for your continued support.