Standard of living

I have been dreading finding a place to live in Canberra. Unlike other places we have lived it is a complete landlords' market. Tenants are really at the whims of the third party real estate agents who are about as sincere as used car salesmen or American politicians. This is anything but an empowering situation but we can't go on living on the loose and the time has come to unpack our suitcases. So here we are dragging our troops from house showing to house showing. We have been hoping to stay close by Aurora's school but unfortunately for us her school shares its locality with the federal government and is one of the most expensive areas of Canberra. We are fine paying for location but it seems a shame to invest too much in a home as we don't want to feel obliged to stay in our house too often when there is a world of wonder out the door.  After months of often all camping out in a single room, two bedrooms seems very spacious. Even if we had a third bedroom we would likely put all three girls in one bedroom together. Too bad our personal views on housing are aberrant. 

By Australian standards our family should be living on the fringes of town on larger plot of land with a larger house containing at least four bedrooms? By Australian standards we have sized out of most appartments and townhouses. We get very odd looks from the agents when we parade into a flat for a viewing. The nicer ones are cheery about it and keep their thoughts to themselves. The normal ones smile and make gentle comments about innapropriateness - Seems too small doesn't it? And the brusque ones are more direct " You are way too many people for this place"

I was very taken aback when we came upon a brusque agent at a three bedroom town house. He let us know the place wasn't appropriate for our family size as soon as we walked in the door. We all walked around in awe thinking 'this place is the biggest place we would have ever lived in, what would we even do with the third bedroom' while he smirked. While the kids were exploring he explained that it was unreasonable for our family to live in a place with one bathroom. I thought is this guy for real!? But he was. And while I am happy we have landed in a country with such good quality of life I am also sad to be part of such privilege. Who do we think we are? Why do we need so much to raise our families and live our lives? Most families around the world feel fortunate to have a second bedroom or even a toilet in their home and we can no longer fathom living in a situation where we have to wait five minutes to pee or where we have to share one car. Unfortunately, our family of six can't compete with all the young couple corporates and we stand a slim chance of getting a two bedroom appartment where we want. We offered more rent on a place we liked and the landlord still preferred the lesser amount of money to the large family. So it is possible we will have to flee the core to live as large families should.

I'd much rather be climbing a sticky waterfall than be in this sticky housing situation!

We hope she never becomes a real estate agent

Their new Mom