Alison Bezzina

Do congratulate me as I have recently reached stage 6.56 out of the 10 stages required move into a new home. It is now six months after I sold my first abode, and a full year after I bought this new one and believe me, it was no ride in the park. It is in fact believed that moving is one of the most stressful things you will do in your entire life. Personally I would put it up there with waiting for your thirteen your old daughter to come back home from her first date with Jack The Ripper.

I first ventured into the property market when I was a whole decade younger than today. At the time, all I wanted was that the property was practically ready to move into and that it fit my meagre budget. My first buy was a fast and practical choice based simply on my desperate need to safeguard my sanity. This time however, my overdeveloped wish list resulted into more than two years searching for the right property. I spent twenty four months scrutinizing the property pages, and calling property owners only to find that they were professional estate agents who would sell you their mother for the right price. Most of the properties that estate agents recommended where never anywhere close to what I wanted and it soon became clear that most agents keep clients’ wish lists in the lowest drawer of their imaginary desks in their non-existent offices and simply shoot in the dark.

More than three hundred property viewings later, and by far more than my patience could bear, I gave up the search. I silently resigned to the idea that I was just too difficult to please, and concluded that the property market in Malta simply does not cater for a combination of sophisticated tastes and practical needs. But low and behold, the moment I told all the estate agents where to shove it, suddenly, the right property, in the right location, at the right price and a good sized terrace, appeared out of nowhere. It was like one of those baby stories where couples who have been trying to have a baby for years finally give up, adopt twins from Zimbabwe, and start having sex for fun again; and Bang!

This was not simply a stroke of good luck, but more like a thunderbolt of good karma thrown my way for some good deed I did in the past. To start off with I found this property when I was browsing through somebody else’s newspaper; I had deliberately skipped the property pages altogether when one of the real estate pages fell out and landed on the floor; out of 12 pages of property, the house in question was advertised on the part of the paper that fell to the ground and which I later picked up to throw away; and finally it was advertised on the side facing up and unbeknown to me carried a wrong location. If it wasn’t for the page falling out of the rest of the paper and the gross mistake made by the advertising agency in its description, I would never have picked up the phone and enquired about the property, and twenty four hours later I would not have been the proud owner of two small homes and one mammoth sized home loan!

Once I got over the initial shock of what I had just got myself into, more colloquially translated into the commitment of having to work for ten more years than my body will allow, then the real fun began. First I had to deal with emotionally letting go of my first home, then I had to deal with the legalities that go into buying and selling property, and the pleasure of dealing with banks in general. The whole process involved obscene amounts of paper and for months after I had signed on the deadly dotted line, I was still going to the bank on a weekly basis to tie up the ‘last’ knot, sign the ‘last’ piece of paper and get the ‘last’ bit out of the way. At this point I had become so annoyed and so bored with the whole bank saga that whatever they needed me to sign I signed blindly, and had they asked me for a stool sample I would have easily obliged. But unfortunately no amount of DNA (which I offered by the way) was going to stop them from destroying at least three oaks and a pine to get all my paperwork done.

Now, at stage 6.56 I’m dealing with workmen. There might not be a lot of paper work involved at this stage but the nightmare just got hairier. From plumbers to electricians, carpenters to tile layers, installers to builders - you name it and I’ve seen the hairy crack of their backside, I’ve smelt their reeking furry armpits, and resisted assaulting quite a few of them. Hopefully stage ten will involve the throwing of some form of house warming event, and not the throwing of a plasterer off the roof!

First published on The Sunday Times - July 2008