Sydney Apartment

View from Circular Quay, Sydney

Apartment hunting in Sydney is a bit different than anything I have experienced in any of the other countries I have lived.  The real estate agents show an apartment by appointment but try and get you to come to the scheduled showing (normally on Saturday).  This is all normal.  The difference is that the scheduled showings are 20-30 minutes...yep that is correct...20-30 min to get in and see the place.  Some of the showings were a mad house with people waiting outside and all rushing in at once.  Then they race to the next appointment in the next part of the city and hopefully you have a car or public transit on your side. We ran around one Saturday and luckily found 2 great places.

The other challenge was getting the money down to Sydney in Australian Dollars.  We learned by living in Europe but it takes time.  You can ATM it for a while but most US ATMs charge you a Visa/MC charge of 1-3% on top of the exchange rate (which some banks do not tell you about) and you have to watch what the different charges.  Some banks are pretty good about the fees but it takes lots of looking.  All wire transfers take time.  So you have to balance amount and time.  Luckily in Australia, it is easy to set up a bank account.  We found that XE was a great way to transfer money down...again...just takes time.  You book in a rate and that is the exchange rate (no extra fees)...then it is just a waiting game for them to get the money out of your account, hold it and deposit it into your other account in the local currency.  The good thing is that you know exactly what you are going to get.

Anyway...once the money arrived.  We were able to move in.  The view from our apartment is amazing.  I had never visited North Sydney when visiting but there are fabulous views of Sydney Harbour and the Harbour Bridge / Opera House from McMahon's Point (Harbour spelled the Australian way).