When luck precedes hard work

The house hunt is finally over, albeit not on paper, and with it has brought a sense of accomplishment which I cant remember when I felt last. Two harrowing months of house hunting within two months of house hunting have made me realise the important part that luck plays in finding a house that you may deem fit to live in, forget good.

This is possibly the only task on earth where luck comes way before the quality and quantity of hard work you are willing to put in. I discovered it the hard way. I have been given to understand that anything can be achieved with a will to work hard and the action to back that will but such a rude shock?

I started 2 months in advance, armed with my arsenal of the house hunting xls, video camera to shoot and share 'home videos' with beloved and a large appetite for risk. In a market desperately and tightly controlled by brokers it is near impossible to find a good deal forget land one without the services of a broker. Even the multitude of real estate websites that promise you the moon fail to deliver. What may look like an owner's contact on the website will in all likelihood greet you with a rude, unempathetic and almost unreal inhuman voice when called. These voices and the faces these voices are the only bridge between a potential landlord and a tenant.

There are only two kinds of brokers - the ones who bug you and the ones you bug. Sadly, oddly and curiously enough, there are many more of the latter variety than there are of the former. In a market defined by killer competition, you would believe in follow-up more than you would believe in farming.

I finally got something to my quasi-liking after scanning 23 houses through 7 brokers in 2 months. I have no sense of the relative greatness of this phenomenon but at an absolute level it turned out to be an eye-opener.

So if you are one whose luck has always failed to reach on time, be prepared to work really hard for a compromise!