So, it looks like I’m going to break the millennial trend. I’ve been skimping and saving, working two jobs and avoiding both avocado toast AND overpriced lattes. In fact, I see my fellow millennials joyfully opening their wallets and emptying their savings onto both avocado toast AND overpriced lattes. Their joy quickly turns to ashen despair as they realise all that money could SO EASILY have gone towards a home. They are a foolish mass, and I disown them.

One day they’ll all realise, and they’ll come begging at my door for advice. My beautiful, oaken door with a big brass knocker and stained glass at the top. That’s the plan, anyway, and I’m so close to making it a reality. I think I need to seek out a buyers advocate. Melbourne has experienced spikes in housing prices in the last few years, and while purchasing any old regular home- provided you abstained from avocado toast and overpriced lattes- is a thing of pathetic ease, I’m setting my sights higher. My home will have two floors at least, with the aforementioned oaken door and both a front AND back garden that are a proper size for picnics. A pergola with bluestone tiles is a necessity. Exposed aggregate for the driveway, and I want a kooky little third floor that comprises of one room plus en suite. That’ll be the guest room- or at least, one of them- and it’ll add a certain artistic slant to the house with how it rises up above the rest of the property.

Obviously I’ve planned this meticulously. After all this time spent walking past cafes, thinking wistfully of how good it would be to be in there with my frivolous friends chowing down on avocado toast…I deserve this. How many times have I wanted a sip of an overpriced latte, only to force my wallet back into my bag and wrest myself away from the delicious coffee smell.

I’ll have my Melbourne property advocate. They’ll find me something wonderful. And when it’s all done and my house is secure, I’ll eat all the avocado toast I want, ha-ha!

I need to leave the home staging business. I’ve seen things, and things have seen me sometimes, and it just got a bit too much.

That’s the thing: I love home design SO MUCH that I just can’t bear to walk into any disasters, any longer. That’s why I’ve grown interested in being a property advocate. Melbourne has homes that would stun and amaze you, and I find it to be right at the end of the spectrum. Here I am, having to enter homes where people have a cream-coloured sofa matched with grey wallpaper and I just want to rush outside and take deep breaths until the wave of nausea passes. Grey and cream; just the thought is making me lose my lunch.

I feel like I’m a vet who can’t stand to lose animals because I care about them too much. Or a teacher who can’t stand to watch her students graduate because they’ve loved teaching them so much. See, that’s what happens when you enter your field of passion: you develop a hard edge, or you love it so much you have to let it go. That’s why I think I’d suit being a buyers advocate. All the hard work and heavy lifting of making the place look good is gone before I get there, and all that’s left is the process of looking around to make sure it’s all as good as they say so I can recommend the property to the client. If it’s not up to scratch, that’s the problem of whoever wants to sell. I can walk out and cross it off the list, never to darken the doors again unless they call me back and say it’s up to scratch. And then I get to be the judge of that…

Ah, Melbourne property advocates have it so easy. So many lovely properties, all the time to walk around them and view the interiors in all their perfection. It’s a New Year’s resolution to aspire to, I suppose.

-Brighton