Yeah, that's right. We can afford places that we wouldn't want to live in - but hey, we apparently have the option of either making excuses to friends and relatives that it's "our first house" as though that explains why we didn't know any better ... or renting it out to a group of twelve broke uni n00bs and cashing in on Sydney's rental shortage.

Still, we have found a few nice-looking places, in the right price range, that we would actually consider admitting to living in.

Although...

Last weekend we happened to drive past an open house so we decided to drop in. When we got to the door, the bitter real estate agent - whom we've seen around before, incidentally, and always seems to look unimpressed and slightly resentful that this is what she is doing with her life - said this:

"It's a shocker. It's land value only."

We were vaguely entertained by her bluntness, but one step in the door and we understood why she decided to emphasise that at least the land was worth something. Everything was caked in dirt. There was a musty smell throughout. The place was falling apart. The wallpaper (it actually had wallpaper - and it looked as though it had been painted by hand) was peeling off the walls. I would have assumed the place had not been inhabited for years, but there were two pairs of ragged greyish underpants (why would you display your period stains to potential buyers of your squalid squat of a home?) hanging over the shower screen, and a newish fridge in the kitchen - oh, the kitchen, what a kitchen! It smelt of ammonia. If that was too subtle, I mean it smelt like pee.

Also, I must jot down that sentence in case I ever wish to write a Shakespeare-style monologue for my new play in which the lead character is talking to a grave-digger.

And to top that off, the place was about the right age to be full of asbestos. As we rushed out of the place, keen to exhale, we overheard a property developer telling the real estate agent exactly how unlikely it was that she would ever sell that place for the asking price. Poor woman. She showed us a place a few weeks ago and it was a fibro house owned by an ageing gentleman. He kept it very clean and tidy, and he had a very nice-smelling casserole on the stove while we inspected, but even that and the real estate agent's possible overuse of the words "original condition" couldn't sell us on it. Original condition? So that lino doesn't just LOOK like it's from 1956?

The place she showed us before that was actually kind of nice - it needed work but was cheap enough to allow us leftover money to do it - but it was positioned between two major roads and the sound of the traffic just went straight through the whole place. It was like Magical Reverse Feng Shui, where everything in the whole place was facing just the right way to tip your shakras off their metaphysical shelves in your otherwise calmed mind.

Anyway, I can only assume that Matron Surlypants doesn't have a lot of friends down there are Real Estate HQ, because boy has she been lumped with some awful places to sell.

So in summary, does anybody know anything about the illustrious career of database modelling or analysis?