Random musings

I wonder if B, the Flynn real estate agent, would have been so casual (no deposit requested, no contract signed) over the sale of the house, in this honour arrangement she seemed to have embarked upon, had we arrived at the property when we first inspected the place in my smoky old EXA rather than S’s sleek MR2 sports car (some refer to the MR2 as a baby Ferrari), and had she taken S’s name as Ms rather than Dr. Impressions can be influential.

Very early in our acquaintance B had asked if we were genuinely interested in buying, and I said yes. She confirmed again, orally I must emphasize, that if we might back out of the deal to say so, and I said we wouldn’t do that. From that point it was as though we were honour bound to go through with it.

I had checked out a few other lenders. Virgin seems better than Aussie. Virgin claims no fees, but there are some. They guy I had been speaking to at Westpac mentioned the annual fee, but didn’t say a word of the Application Fee. I only discovered this from the infochoice web site.

I find it difficult to compare the offerings as each institution tends to use different terminology. What is a ‘legal documentation fee’? Is this another name for an establishment fee? What’s the difference between an annual fee, a service fee, and a maintenance fee; all Westpac terms for different loan types. I’ll must talk to someone from Virgin tomorrow.

In Warrandyte, S noticed some dampness in one of the kitchen cabinets. Water from the skylight, not begin deflected by the plastic sheet we had removed from the top of the kitchen cupboards, had been running inside the cupboards. There was a sheet of plastic running along the top of the kitchen cabinets. It had been there since we bought the house, and not sure what it was there for. It was a bit untidy looking so we removed it.

It seems that the skylight above the kitchen leaks a little water. The plastic caught the occasional drip during rain storms, and allowing it to evaporate later. I guess the absence of the plastic sheet caused the water to get straight into the cabinets. It’s strange the things you discover about a place when you are about to leave.