Funny  how things change. At the start of the year I spent every spare moment looking at rentals online, in the paper, going to view houses and running around trying to work out whether each place was within 5 minutes of a bus stop and not in the ghettos. Incidentally, house hunting is not easy without a car. Plus agents look at you like you’re poor, crazy or both if they click that you don’t actually own a vehicle and rely on dirty, disgusting public transport.

Now it’s all doom and gloom and properties sitting empty for weeks or months, and tenants actually getting their rent reduced because the owners know they won’t be able to sustain the price if their tenant leaves.

But I think decent family type homes on nice streets are always going to be in demand. I saw a beautiful house for rent on Owairaka Ave at the start of this week. By today a big fat ‘Rented’ was slapped all over the sign.  Now I only saw it from the outside, in passing, but it was well maintained, is close to almost everything, isn’t on a super busy street and has some measure of privacy from the road. And I’m willng to bet it had a garden and quality fittings inside.

So maybe I live in a somewhat damp house around the corner from the local ghettos, but the thought of moving makes me break out in itches.