The towns and cities in Australia by UK standards are pretty spotless.

Rubbish is kept to a minimum and there seems to be quite a large army of street cleaners that help keep the places looking nice and tidy.

This applies to the suburbs to. You don’t see blokes riding along on their ‘super sucker 2000′ street vacuum cleaners but they must exist in some form as any rubbish spied on one day is quickly tidied away by the next.

An interesting sign appeared on our street the other day. It was erected by someone from the council and simply had ‘Junk Week’ written on it in big bold letters with some simple instruction advising the local residents to leave their junk out for collection. Read the full story

Article Popularity: 8%

Well, after becoming seriously vexed with the Crapifax yesterday, I’ve finally managed to compose myself enough to take a step back and see where we are after finally getting a call back.

The buyers who had their mortgage app refused at the last minute by the Halifax when their P60 couldn’t be obtained have now completed a second mortgage application with a broker which is going to be sent off this week.

They will also be instructing a survey (once they have paid the fee’s….again) which should take place within the next couple of weeks.

Hope of all hopes that they get the mortgage this time. If they do then great, we’ve only lost a couple of weeks.

If they don’t then arse! We’ve lost months.

The house has been under offer in one way or another for the last couple of months now. If this falls through then we really need to ask the question. Is there is any real value in remaining with the Halifax?

The answer to this is a pretty big no, unless of course we can avoid paying any fees due to the astronomically poor service we’ve received so far.

Back to the waiting game…

Article Popularity: 2%

Yay, it’s seems to have taken forever but the house is finally on the market and the forsale sign us up.

We went for Halifax Estate agents in the end, not the cheapest but they seem to be doing pretty well in our local area.

They wanted us to commit to a 12 week minimum term. We cut this down to 8 weeks on the basis that I didn’t want to be stuck into a contract where, if they were rubbish, we had to wait 12 weeks before we could use a different agent.

The recruiter that I met when when did our Rekkie to Perth asking how we were doing with the move as he has ‘lots of things going on’. This is a really positive message for me as it shows 1) I’ve met a half decent recruiter who hasn;t forgotten me at the drop of a hat and 2) The job market must be keeping him busy enough to think about candidates who aren’t even in the country yet.

Lets hope that we don’t face an uphill struggle when it comes to selling the house. We just want to get there now.

Article Popularity: 2%