A house is a house is a house. That’s what I always thought, up until now – and I mean literally just now. I’ve spent the morning going down a rabbit hole of mid-century modern architecture, with the unexpected outcome that I’m now seriously pining for a place with an expansive floor plan, warm wooden joinery and unusual circular flourishes, all housed in an unobtrusive prism on a large block surrounded by woods. Not that we even have ‘woods’ in Australia, per se, but that’s the vibe if I’m not mistaken.
So, where do I go from here? Do I sell up my trusty 2010s apartment in the inner suburbs and swap it out for a country gem with a price tag to match? Would it be worth it, going to all that trouble for a bit of vintage character? Would it really change things all that much? Maybe not. On the other hand, maybe it would infuse my whole being with a Mod Man type of swagger that you simply can’t put a price cap on.
Look at it this way. No one likes dealing with real estate agents, the nail-biting changeover period betweening buying and selling, or selling and buying, or paying for conveyancing services. St Kilda, to be fair, isn’t exactly a hard place to sell an apartment, so in theory it should be possible to find that rare out-of-town jewel and make it mine before palming off my current place. In any case, this is what I pay all those financial advisors, buyers’ agents, conveyancing solicitors and the like to worry about.
Still, I keep coming back to the question of whether a house really is just a house. I should probably mull this over for a while longer, shouldn’t I? I mean, just in case I’m getting overly excited about the life-changing potential of particular types of niche real estate.