As you might have guessed, I found myself an apartment, but the stress wasn’t over when I got the call that my application was selected. More on that later. The application for the partly furnished apartment I mentioned wasn’t the one. I never heard back from them but based on the inspection of course I had more competition over it. I also mentioned the second application I made for an unfurnished apartment and I hoped that I would be writing my next post from it. And as it happened, I got the place and I am writing this post from there. I think this apartment will be once in a lifetime experience, since I don’t believe I’m going to live after this on 21st floor. This 2-bedroom apartment isn’t big, but I don’t need it to be any bigger. And it’s hard to beat the scenery I have every day that I can watch from floor to ceiling windows. There are suburbs, parks, sports fields and 8-lane freeway to mention a few things to see.
When I got the approval, I agreed that the rental agreement would start the next day as I thought even if I would have the Airbnb place six days, it would be good to have time to organise the move. And of course, it was good that I had place to go to sleep other than the empty apartment. First thing to do was to transfer money from my Finnish bank account to my local one. Before the agreement is finalized and rental agency could take the property out of the market, I would have to arrange the first rent and the bond to their account. I had tested out the very handy TransferWise service before to transfer some day to day money and it had been in my Australian bank account maybe in under 10 minutes. That is why I didn’t make it earlier as I should have.
For the rent and the bond, the amount of money was a bit bigger and the transfer wasn’t quite so fast. I started the transfer that evening when I got the approval and the signing and getting the keys from the real estate agency was to happen the next day. The office, which was about 30 minutes train ride away, opening hours were until 18:00 and at 15:00 I still hadn’t received the money. I sent mail to them about the situation and the landlord agreed to extend the first payment 24 hours, but I still had to deposit the first two weeks of rent to secure the apartment. Well I didn’t have even that much in my local bank account. At that point my stress levels might have been higher than normal as I didn’t want to lose the place on the get go. I even asked my colleague to lend me the money and he sent the 2 weeks deposit amount to my account. I thought that the transfer would be instant since we had the same bank. I was wrong again. Finally, just past 16 I got my own TransferWise transfer completed so I payed the first full rent and the bond and left for the real estate agency. I arrived there about 17:15 so it wasn’t even close. I signed the agreement and had the keys in my pocket so I could have a sigh of relief, for a moment.
I decided to split this post here, since it would have been too long. Still much to write about the moving. So, stay tuned for part 2. 😊
View from La Trobe Street bridge towards Southern Cross station 
View from the barbeque terrace towards the city 
Traffic island by nature 
Home building from outside.
Jone's adventures Down Under 