We’re on the move…
At the height of the pandemic in 2020 another winter loomed, and under lockdown conditions was out of the question for me. We all felt a sense of disconnect and loneliness during that period, and that coupled with a long, grey winter ahead in Toronto it was just too much to bear.
So, I decided to buy a house in Queensland, Australia. Fortunately, for me as a dual citizen I wasn’t difficult to do and after selling my house in Toronto purchased a tropical retreat on the coast east of Brisbane. It’s hard to believe that it’s coming up on five years of living here and truly blessed with a great climate, lots of sun and a temperate climate all year round.
Yes, it’s shorts weather all-year round!
However, now that both Zach and Sam are living overseas and unlikely to spend much time here Judy and I decided to sell our five-bedroom home and downsize to an apartment. This has two distinct benefits (1) small home to clean and maintain, (2) provides a lock and leave situation so that we can travel more.
You’ll be glad to know that the final sale of our house went through today and now we effectively have 45 days to find a new place to live… Tick, tock!
The beauty is that we can literally live anywhere we want and have flirted with living in Sydney, the Central Coast of NSW, Adelaide and even Perth. Now, although they all sound awesome and indeed there are some great apartments within our price range, the one thing that I kept in the back of my mind and voiced to Judy was that I moved intentionally back to Australia for a sunny and temperate climate of Queensland.
As always, she is super supportive and so we’ve also been looking locally as well and have toured a few open houses and been on a couple of inspections. We saw an apartment last weekend that we liked and only 10 minutes from where we currently live, just a block back from the beach.
We made an offer; however, it’s been an interesting week as the builder has gone into receivership and now the selling agent has to work with the bank, the administrators and valuation company to agree on our offer…
Seemingly, a titanic task with lots of back and forth between the various parties but still no agreement… Now, even though it may still work out we’re not letting grass grow under our feet and have additional property inspections booked in the coming days.
Of course, finding and securing a place is just the beginning of our new adventure, with having to sell a significant number of items from our current five-bedroom to fit into a three-bedroom home. Identifying these items can really only happen once we find a new place so it’s a bit of a wait and see situation.
Yes, I know – all first world problems, right.
I’m not too worried about it honestly and been through many moves over the course of my lifetime and I know it may become a little bumpy along the way but confident everything will turn out the way it is supposed to. As long as we have some storage space with our new place it will be just fine.
The other benefit of downsizing is that Judy will be able to pare back her work to a part-time or remote role which provides us a significant amount of flexibility in terms of our ability to travel more. In addition, my photography business can be scaled up or down as I need so that is great for us. As for Jude, well she has lots of options all of which she is still considering and although much of time in Australia has been spent in the talent acquisition space, she is multi-talented and could definitely broaden her horizons into something she’s more passionate about.
She is also eligible to apply for her Australian citizenship in February after gaining her permanent residence two years ago, so in many ways we need to finalize this before we set off for overseas.
Ideally, at some point next year we’ll spend a prolonged period overseas visiting family and friends with a stay in Italy definitely on the cards. We’d love to visit Judy’s parents and family in New York, but unlikely under the current political climate…
Perhaps we’ll have to meet on neutral ground so to speak, either in Canada or maybe in the Dominican Republic as Judy has family there as well as on other Caribbean islandsn. Not a bad place to meet if you ask me.
Our new found flexibility will also enable us to see more of Australia, and although Judy has likely explored more places in Australia than most Australians, we still have some exploring to do in this beautiful country. Far North Queensland, Darwin, Alice Springs and of course Broome for starters.
We’re excited about this next chapter of our lives but know that for at least the next few months it’ll be hectic to say the least.
Until next week
Ciao!
Prologue: Well, our initial offer wasn’t rejected per see, they just didn’t respond to the offer… I guess that is an answer unto itself, so we continued our home hunting and settled on a townhouse close to the beach in Scarborough. This week we signed the contracts and have a move in date scheduled for the end of October.
Now to begin the packing process!