The crazy Brisbane rental market

Today we went apartment hunting with our realtor, who is provided by Santos.  This is not like apartment hunting in Calgary (at least neither of us remember it this way), because we had to make appointments at every place we saw and there was another realtor there to let us in.
We went to 6 places in 4 hours.  We saw apartments and condos, we saw magnificent views with perfect privacy and we also patio saw spa tubs that were looked over by 100 other apartments from high density housing, and we saw our target neigbourhoods from entirely new perspectives.  At the end of the day, once we had seen all of our choices and the realtors choices, we came down to two places.  Our initial first choice, based on internet searching, fell to the bottom of the pile as we found out that pictures do not really tell the whole story.  The very first place we looked at, that neither of us thought would be appealing, really captured both our imaginations.  While we were looking at it, the lessor realtor brought in another client, so we knew there was potential for competition.  The more we looked at other places, the more we realized that the first place felt like our place.   After spending more than an hour filling out applications, including multiple copies of ID, we found out that there is another bid!  We have never been through this for an apartment.  Now we have one or two sleepless nights until we hear whether we are successful or not.
Neither one of us has ever been in a rental market like this.  It is has really opened our eyes to what renters in Calgary were going through in 2007 - 2009.  The one thing we can say about the place that we applied for is that the current tenant is one of the most disgusting, piggy renters that either of us have ever seen.  There were clothes everywhere, toys everywhere, dishes everywhere and a general stink throughout.  Luckily, the tenant is responsible for a tip-to-toe steam cleaning.  If the owner makes the smart shoice and accepts us as tenants for the next year, we will definitely be taking better care than the current renter!

City Cat

Our first few days here have been spent doing some non-touristy things: we have explored several neighbourhoods where we could potentially rent a home and we spent at least an hour on four separate days getting our cell phones set up (that's right, four days: the Blackberry handsets that we brought with us had to be converted over to accept a SIM card from any provider; we had to provide copies of our passports and visas; we had to get copies of our "welcome" letters from the bank showing that we had a bank account, then we had to go back and get another letter with a temporary Australian address on it...the list goes on and, now that we finally have phone numbers, we still need to go back and get them to trouble shoot a few things!)

Today, Sunday, we decided to take the City Cat on a tour of the Brisbane river. The City Cat is part of the Brisbane public transportation system. It is a catamaran (actually, they are a number of catamarans) that go from the University in the South to Brett's Wharf in the North. We took a trip from outside of our condo to the University, then back to the Eagle St Pier. The entire trip took about an hour, and we had a great view of the city from the river. The City Cat is a fantastic way for people who live far outside of the CBD (Central Business District, the same thing as a downtown) to get to work. It was also quite well used by both tourists and locals (we fall into both camps now) on a mild Sunday at the end of winter. It is warm enough to sit out on the deck of the boat, but not nice enough to welcome the wind.

Many locals choose to recreate on the Brisbane River despite being in the middle of winter. Today there were many jet-ski's and even a wakeboarder and water skiier...so much for the bull sharks scaring them away!

Bull Sharks!

We had dinner last night with some of Jim's new workmates and we asked them if many people swam in the Brisbane River. They told us that no one does because there are bull sharks in the river! A big, beautiful river and it is FULL of sharks (although it has been years since anyone has been killed by one, it is not comforting to think of them just lurking below the surface, waiting for the white and juicy Canadians to get in the water.)

We have spent the last 2 days walking around the city and trying to figure out where we want to live. Everything looks so close on the map, but once we start walking we run into hills or floating pathways that take us to beautiful spots that are nowhere near where we had intended to be, or we just get distracted by something new, like the gigantic vulture/buzzard/turkey bird that we saw walking on someone's front lawn...everything is new, it's like we are babies!

New Beginnings

We have landed in Brisbane! It took about 24 hours with 18 hours of flight time, but we (and our luggage!), made it safely to Brisbane. We have spent our first day here getting familiar with the city and exploring neighbourhoods where we might want to live. We have also found a fantastic wine store, thanks to an Aussie working at one of our favourite wine stores, Bin 905, in Calgary.

We start our jobs September 6, so in the next 10 days we will be meeting with a realtor to continue our search for a "permanent" rental, and meeting with some folks from Santos to get us ready for our new jobs. Sadly, our days of leisure are about to come to an end, but at least we have the Aussie summer to look forward to.

The photos are the view from our balcony, looking over the Brisbane River.