Oddly enough, I might end up managing my hunt for a new home more effectively and more cheaply by leaving the country next month. But even if that doesn’t happen, it looks like I’ll be in temporary digs for a while.

If you don’t like personal blog posts, stop reading now. Instead, read about this pro-intervention former CIA officer who runs his own private intelligence service.

If you’ve just tuned in, we were given notice to vacate the Enmore house by 3 February. The property owner refused my request to change that date or even negotiate. January is when I should be focussed on kicking off work for the year, especially given that freelance writing and production and my other billable work all but disappear during the so-called holiday season. I really should have kicked off the househunting too. But I was, erm, distracted to say the least during Artemis’ final days.

So, as I feared, the deadline approaches without the cashflows needed to cover moving house — you know, the usual annoyance of having to come up with a bond and additional rent, as well as any removalist costs. Friends have offered to help, so that’s good. But I will admit that I’m still very, very stressed. It’s affecting my productivity. Which affects my cashflows. Chicken. Egg. Etc.

Then last week a PR agency asked me whether I’d be available for a trip to San Francisco in February. I can’t say when or why or who’d be paying just yet, and in any event the offer hasn’t been confirmed. But it set me thinking. There could be another way.

If I’m out of the country for a week, and if I’m spending another couple nights away at the Kickstart Forum at the end of the month, then during those times I won’t need accommodation. I’ll be staying in hotels, and supplied with food and drink.

So why don’t I just leave the Enmore house as required, put my stuff into storage for a month, and live temporarily in a serviced apartment in between hotel stays until I’ve found the right place to live?

If I had extended the stay in the current house, I’d still have to pay the full rent now that ’Pong is gone. This way I’d only have to pay rent for about two weeks out of four, and only for a small apartment. And, since I can do most of my work from anywhere on the planet with an internet connection, there’d even be the possibility of visiting other cities for a while.

The more I look at the numbers, the more sense it makes. Plus it means I’d have a less intense schedule, which will help reduce the stress.

After more than five years in this house, I’ve accumulated a bunch of stuff. It’ll take time to sort it out. If I were househunting at the same time, it wouldn’t leave much time and energy for actual paying work. This way I can do the possession-sorting now, and then do the househunting later — with the flexibility of knowing I can wait until I find just the right place.

“The right place?”

When your home is also your workplace, choosing the right accommodation is even more critical. It’s not just about having somewhere to eat breakfast and sleep. It’s also about having a office that’s somewhere you can enjoy spending 40 or 50 hours a week. That’s why offers of “a spare room at my house”, generous though they are, aren’t as attractive as they otherwise might be. That, and us introverted types feel quite uncomfortable around strangers. Morning solitude is vital.

It’s also why I don’t think I could ever do a Paul Carr and live in hotels permanently. Apart from his emerging concerns about storing his life in the cloud, I for one need somewhere that provides a sense of home, a space that is mine and mine alone.

So here’s what I’m doing…

My focus this week is on getting rid of as much stuff as I can, selling what can be sold. This includes figuring out what to do with the things ’Pong has left here, including some of his original photographic prints.

Next week I divide everything into two parts, that which can be stored and that which is essential for day-to-day work and survival. Part A goes to the warehouse. Part B goes with me to… somewhere.

And this plan works whether I end up going to the US again or not. I think. Doesn’t it?

[Photo: Fog on San Francisco Bay, photographed on 12 December 2010 from the deck of USS Pampanito, a WWII fleet submarine moored at Fisherman's Wharf as part of the San Francisco Maritime Park Association. ©2010 Stilgherrian. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution license.]

The new guilty parties are: 3 Mangoes Thai; Arthur, a builder; Australia Wide Tax Solutions; Bus Stop Espresso; Caldo Pizza; Domino’s Pizza (yet again, twice); Chadwick Plumbing; Civic Video; Essence of India restaurant; Green Ecovations: Hot’n'Spicy Thai; James Wilson Pest Management; Just Screw It (carpenters!); L J Hooker (the real estate agent, again); Lat-Dior African Eatery; Moon Koon Chinese Restaurant; Notes Live Music Restaurant and Bar; Patrick Coughlan, electrician; Pavarotti Gourmet Pizza; Ray White Real Estate; S & W Building Services; San Remo Pizza; Smiles (a dental clinic); Stanmore Natural Health; Steve’s Budget Gutter Cleaning; Thingk Baby [sic]; Urbane Inner West (another real estate agent); Yoga To Go.

I still want to know why real estate agents figure so prominently. And I still want to know why Domino’s customer service people never reply to their emails.

First, though, a pat on the head to Broadway Shopping Centre, Franklin’s and Mountain Designs who, as reported in the comments, responded quickly.

A slap on the wrist to De Sousa Real Estate; Domino’s Pizza (again! three times now!); Marrickville First National Real Estate; Prestige Cleaning Specialists; Raine & Horne Marrickville (a real estate agent again! twice!); and Ray White Newtown (yes, another real estate agent!), none of whom even acknowledged my email. Pathetic.

Since my last update, the new batch of rude pricks includes Banana Joe’s FoodWorks Marrickville; Camperdown Fitness; Domino’s Pizza (again); L J Hooker (a real estate agent); Lat-Dior African Eatery; Magic Tree Service; McGrath (a real estate agent, of course); Pinpoint Plumbing Services; Ray White Surry Hills & Alexandria (yes, another real estate agent); St Brendan’s Church, Annandale (OK, I suppose religious organisations are exempt); Sydney Antenna Specialists; and a builder-repairer called Michael.

I won’t contact these businesses his time, as some of the problems date back more than two months, and, quite frankly, I couldn’t be bothered. But I will get back into a routine of a roughly monthly post — for my own reference if nothing else.

OK, some time on the weekend someone broke the brick wall which supports our letterbox. It wasn’t us. But given the poor behaviour of the junk mail merchants, who could blame us?

Despite the presence of a “No Junk Mail” sticker and the more recent addition of Marrickville council’s own “No Advertising Material” sticker, advertisers continue to shove their things into our box. So I’ve decided to name and shame.

This week’s advertisers who failed to follow this basic piece of etiquette are: Cavellis Woodfire Pizzeria; Cut & Save Tree Service; David Jones; Domino’s Pizza; Go Green Insulation; Kmart; MiniMovers; Papaya Thai Eatery; Raine & Horne Marrickville.

Now I do know that in Australia these stickers have no legal force — unlike online, where the Spam Act 2003 provides stricter rules. But if someone communicates a polite request not to receive a catalog, and the first thing you do is give them the catalog anyway… well, is that really a good marketing message?

I’ve also noticed over time that real estate agents are particularly prominent in our junk mail. What is it about these overpaid pricks?

I’ll be inviting each of these advertisers to respond.

[Update 9.15am: Missed one: Marrickville Metro (AMP Capital Shopping Centres). They're another company that's big enough to know better.]

This photograph is going strange things to me. And I think I like it. I found it at It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It! #antlers

Yesterday it was how we’re stuck with the Super Hornets thanks to “a lack of sound, long-term… planning decisions by the former Government over the course of the last decade”. Today let’s look at Chairman Rudd’s theme of the week, housing affordability.

It’s now more expensive to live in Sydney than in New York.

[P]roperty prices have jumped 400 per cent since 1986, while income has increased by only 120 per cent.

The mysterious but awesomely-brained Possum Comitatus explains how he ran the numbers, leading to this graph.

It’s worth reading the full analysis, but his conclusion is blunt:

[R]eal house prices remained virtually frozen over the period from 1990 through to 2000. It wasn’t until Howard started stuffing around with halving the capital gains rate and things like the first home buyers grant that real house prices started to accelerate…

It also highlights in real terms just how much the NSW market has dropped over the last couple of years.

Possum’s going to look at our policy options in part 2, coming soon. However The Australian‘s George Megalogenis has already started down that path — from the suitably cynical viewpoint of which options generate the most votes for whom.

In the must-read piece Making housing more affordable, Mr Meganomics agrees with the Possum about one key point — it really isn’t about interest rates.

Rudd has nominated the second half of 2010 — when the next election is due to be held — as the time zone when inflation is meant to come back under 3 per cent. While he can’t make any promises on monetary policy, because that’s really the job of the Reserve Bank, lower inflation should, other things being equal, mean lower interest rates. Yet that won’t fix the problem of housing affordability.

The well-briefed Rudd would appreciate that house prices, not interest rates, are the main driver of housing affordability. So lower interest rates may mean housing becomes even less affordable by the next election.

Possum’s version of that statement is that “the two key metrics that are the foundation of housing affordability are income and house prices, with interest rates floating around as a third lesser order, though still important issue.”.

This demonstrates Howard’s (short-term) propaganda genius. Of the three key numbers only the least important, interest rates, was moving in his favour. By concentrating on that number through two elections, he made himself look good.

Megalogenis runs through the political angles and concludes:

In the short run, that is until the next election, the social goal of making housing more affordable is incompatible with the economic and political goals of staying sweet with the mortgage belt. In the long run, however, Rudd has no choice but to deflate the property price bubble.

He should view this challenge in the same terms as he does climate change: a project necessary to keep Australia viable. Housing should, pardon the pun, become truly freestanding by Rudd’s stated date for paradise: 2020. That is, bricks-and-mortar should lose its taxpayer supports.

Presently, voters expect a handout to enter the housing market and another to buy a second property. These tax breaks make housing less affordable than it would otherwise be.

He then discusses how you might achieve that — and I won’t butcher his arguments but instead encourage you to read the whole thing, including the comments, and think for yourself. Mr Meganomics takes part in the discussion, too. Fun.

I’ll link to Possum’s policy discussion when it appears. However for now he notes:

There is very simple root cause to the lack of housing affordability in Australia, but it is also a cause that has virtually no easy solution — Australia simply has too few large cities for the proportion of our population that chooses to live in an urban environment. As a result, the supply of desirable urban locations to live — be they inner city or hilltop or hinterland or bayside locations relatively near a city centre — is swamped by the enormous demand. Desirable locations lead the charge in house price growth which pulls the price of all suburbs up with it, generally in decreasing amounts the further away one gets from the suburbs with a high desirability premium.

But since we can’t really change this situation over any time frame shorter than the very long term, even if we were to attempt to, the policy options left to address housing affordability issues become more complex as a result of our policy options being forced to try and affect the affordability ends from policy angles that aren’t necessarily the root cause of the affordability means.

John Howard was never good at “the very long term”, of course. Unless it was looking backwards to Gallipoli. Will Kevin Rudd prove any better?

[Update 7 August 2009: Alas, the website has now disappeared. What a shame.]