Real Estate FAIL.

My latest addiction is neither crystal meth, nor heroin. It's not gambling or shopping channels. Nope, my latest addiction is.... real estate! How very sexy and exciting. I've been doing a lot of online real estate browsing, thinking that if/when I get the teacher librarian position I'm expecting, I could very well save enough within a year for a deposit on something simple, a first home to get myself into the market. Sadly, after a few thousand clicks of the mouse through realestate.com.au, that glorious idea has deflated like a week-old balloon dinosaur.

On a young teacher's salary, of around $50,000 or so a year, could afford a property up to around $250,000, at a stretch. There is virtually nothing - nothing - in all of Adelaide under $250,000. A search on realestate.com.au found three types of properties under that price; a) retirement village units, b) caravan park lots, and c) places in Davoren Park. Since I a) am not retiring, b) don't want to live in a caravan park, and c) don't want to be stabbed on a daily basis, those are not sound options.

Now, I wouldn't have thought it would be such a stretch for a professional person, working full-time with a decent wage, to be able to own their own home, but clearly, that's not as likely as I'd like to think. It's ridiculous. This isn't Sydney or Manhattan or Monaco we're talking about here - it's Adelaide. The same Adelaide that everyone claims is so dead and lifeless. More precisely, it's Modbury, it's Salisbury, it's Happy Valley, it's Croydon.... it's hundreds of suburbs that really, really are not especially well-to-do.

Real estate sucks.

Then again, if worse comes to worse, I could always move to Coober Pedy, where I could buy something like ten of these: