(Past Your) Prime Real Estate

I haven't officially moved back to Sydney yet, but that doesn't stop me from planning what my perfect life is going to look like when I do.

And the perfect life requires the perfect apartment.

For awhile there, I had this delusional idea that I could live by myself in a studio. After watching too many episodes of Sex And The City and developing an unrealistic idea of the world, I thought I could be single and fabulous ala Carrie Bradshaw in a art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst. I could have a gigantuous walk-in closet, I could sit on the kitchen counter to eat take out and could walk around the apartment naked. It was all going to be so perfect.

But once again, I am faced with the sad realisation that Sex And The City is girl-porn but nothing like real life.

As I  was trawling through the online property listings, it started to become clear. If you're a struggling 20-something on a base salary on $40,000, you're only accommodation option is to live in a share house (or at home, but really? Really?) Even if you were to find a studio which was under $300 a week, add on top of that your utilities and an addiction to expensive cheese and you're looking at a large chunk of your weekly pay disappearing to living expenses.

Plus, I have picky requirements regarding studios. I don't like the idea of cooking curry in the same room as my bed. That smell travels. And clings.

And it's not that I have any issues living in a sharehouse. As long as you can stomach my sarcasm, unashamed addiction to trashy television and lazy habit of leaving used teabags in the sink, I'm everybody's dream roomie.

But when you've spent the last 15 months either living in a camp bunk with 14 teenagers, in a share-room with three other girls or a hostel room with God-knows who and what, personal space becomes a relished term.

Hence, the desire to flat with me, myself and I.

However, the Sydney real estate market is stubborn and unwilling. A clean, fairly fashionable studio apartment with a seperate bedroom/living space and a kitchen with a stove-top is in the range of $400 to $500 a week. Can a struggling 20-something on a base salary of $40,000 afford that?

Yes, if I never eat, shop or get my nails done ever again. And I walk every where. And I join a nudist colony on the weekends. That way I'll never need to buy clothes or a bikini. Or get a spray-tan.

This discovery made me realise that the only time I am ever going to be able to live by myself in an art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst is when I am making upwards of $60,000 a year. And for a creative-type, the only time I'm going to be making that kind of money is when I've been in the industry for a few decades and they have to pay me on experience. So, when I'm 40.

Which made me realise, the only time I can ever live by myself in my dream studio apartment in Darlinghust is when I am 40. And still single.

Gulp.

This seems somehow unfair (not to mention, terrifying) . Just because I am young and single, the real estate market is forcing me to slum it in a share house? And when (IF! I mean IF!) I am 40 and still single, only then I can have my own walk-in closet?

I guess this must be the perk of being 40 and unattached. One gets to sit on the kitchen counter, naked, eating take out in their swanky, art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst.

Well, if it's good enough for Carrie Bradshaw....

KH.