“That email comes: “we regret to inform you that the landlord does not wish to renew the lease”.

So cold and unfeeling, their ‘regrets’ mean nothing in the face of becoming unhoused.

The anxiety of what this means for the future washes over you, you suppress the urge to panic.

Straight away you begin gathering all the necessary documents and making sure your housemates do as well, there’s always something missing.

Within a day or two of starting the house hunt you’re making backup plans, who’s couch will you be surfing on? Where will your pets go?

Scrolling through the available properties on rental apps and websites only increases your feelings of hopelessness. How is rent so much more expensive than even just a year ago?

You filter by ‘pets allowed’ and watch the availabilities drastically go down, you then realise there’s property ads that haven’t even bothered adding this to their search terms and just put ‘pets allowed’ in their descriptions

Collecting boxes becomes a passtime, you’re already cursing yourself for how much stuff you own.

You get less and less picky as you realise just how limited your options are, could this living room be converted into a bedroom?

And the open house inspections start, racing to get to various different suburbs before, after, in between work, sometimes you have to miss work altogether, how do people with full-time jobs and childcare responsibilities manage to do this?

Who can go to this one? Can you get from one inspection to the next in time?

The inspections are as bleak as the search was, how can they even call this broom closet a bedroom? Why is this bathroom so poorly ventilated? There’ll be mold within a week.

And yet there’s so many people looking, so many people applying.

Online application systems are tedious and soul-crushing but hey, at least they’ll actually notify you when your offer has been rejected.

The real estate agent calls and asks if you’ll offer more than the asking price, you already did that in your application but they want more.

Offering above asking price is just standard, your desperation drives you to the limits of affordability.

And affordability becomes a more and more nebulous concept, How much is really too much? Just how far are you willing to travel for work?

Finally, you’ve been approved for a property! The fact that they want the bond and two weeks rent in advance basically right away really highlights the feeling that houses are being held at ransom by landlords.

You scramble to get the money together, it’s all sent so why haven’t you received the lease to sign yet?

Third email, still no lease. I bet they don’t keep the landlords waiting for paperwork this long.

Ok, finally the lease is signed, you’ve got the keys.

Time to take photos of every chip in the wall paint and obvious mold damage, wouldn’t want it to look like you’ve actually lived in this house when you eventually leave.

Still no ingoing inspection report from the real estate agent but hey, at least you’re going to have a roof over your head!

Now the heavy lifting starts, moving day sucks about as much as the house hunting did.

How did we manage this last time? It takes longer than you estimated to move everything out and you are beyond exhausted.

So grateful your friend with a towbar and trailer was able to help out, who can afford a moving truck?

The mad scramble to get everything off of the property just so the end of lease clean can be done, you leave the place looking better than when you moved in.

Congratulations! You’re in your new home! But it won’t feel like home until you’re done living out of boxes and squeezing past furniture that has no place yet.

Unpacking is a lengthy process but the rearrangement is the least stressful part of all of this.

Traumatised from the experience you pack down all the salvageable boxes and store them away, just in case.

But now your house is liveable, it finally feels like home.

You breathe a sigh of relief, it’s over…at least for the next 10 months.” – Snailz*.

*Not their real name.

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