Kotaku
To: Crecente
From: Luke
Today=excitement! It was the drawing day for our local land ballot. Confused? Let me explain. Me and the girl are looking at buying house. Well, building a house (so we get it juuuust right). Thing is, for every block of vacant land that goes on sale in the Australian Capital Territory, there's 4-6 people who want to buy it. Our local territory government's solution? Land ballots. You put your name down, you get a number, the number's put on a ball, the ball's put in a barrel with hundreds of other balls (they do big plots of land all at once), and winners are chosen. Just like the lottery. If you're picked, you get to buy a block of land (you know, typing it out like this makes it seem crazy). Anyway, the drawing was today, and the results are published on Wednesday. My fingers are well and truly crossed.
Here's what you missed last night:
EA forgot to put MP in an Aussie Wii game, I am unaffected
There's a new Mortal Kombat Movie treading in its forebear's footsteps
Did you know there are 94 SKUs for FIFA 08? Madness
Pre-installed Linux for lazy PS3 owners
Comments
Good luck! What happens if you dont win? Will we have "Lukes homeless hobo updates" from now on?
Just the solution to territorial desputes - balls!
We americans used the same thing during the conquest/genocide/enslavement of the native americans, except we loaded those balls into muskets and... well, you know the rest !
=(
Good luck with your balls!
Good luck! I hope to be able to build a house in the future. It's a lot of work, but knowing that you live in a place that is one of a kind and not some cookie cutter house is well worth it, at least in my eyes.
@magically_delicious:
And don't forget the rulers to "divide" the new land.
"Isn't Texas a big ...eh...spacey? - Na, we texans like it that way!"
Your life depends on chosen balls. Best of luck to you and your girl!
Good luck, Luke. Reminds me of that film (Far and Away?) when people were rushing to lay a claim on a piece of land. I think your version of the process is more humane.
sounds similar to a system used just several years ago here in AZ. Real Estate was in such demand, drawings were held to see who got the right to purchase homes in new developments.
Good luck, Luke!
@pandorasbox: As opposed to auctions? ._.
If it were done auction style the richest people around the world would immediately outbid anybody with a normal job and create an artificially inflated real estate market... which is exactly why the US is fucked now.
Woot lucky # ME!!!
Best of luck! Exciting stuff.
@magically_delicious: You know Americans don't have a monopoly on that whole killing native peoples thing right? The Australians did quite a bit of it too. (it actually happened pretty much anywhere where colonization took place)
Anyway, are all land dealings in Australia this crazy? It seems like no one just buys land, there is either that crazy lotto or an auction or something. When I was in Sydney I noticed that there were always articles in the paper about how to do well at auction in the real estate section.
@Mommar: Yeah I dont think we were discussing politics in this thread. Kinda like you're looking for an arguement here or just looking for an opportunity to bash america. If you dont have something to add to the thread please dont post.
@Mommar: They do use auctions in parts of Australia at least...
Canberra is just crazy.
What a stupid, stupid system. Would you rather hope in vain for a possible piece of land, or would you put your money where your mouth is and spend money on the limited resource? I know where I'd stand...
@SirGecko: I doubt you killed anywhere near as many as we did =)
Yes, the Convicts who settled 'Queensland' were a rather merry bunch!
slip a couple hundreds under the table...
Wow ... wait since when was Australia short on land for homes? You guys havn't adopted mass suburb construction like we have in Canada? We got empty homes all over place here but builders keep building em ....
Is there a reference to Mr. Burns' Casino here?
Good luck my friend!
mmm lottery for land, sounds like fun to me. good luck man
Dub dub dub dubdudub dub
Vivaaaaa, vivaaaaaaaa, Australian Capital Territoryyyyy!
Dub dub dub dubdudub dub
/Elvis
Good luck, Luke!
Maybe you should buy some lottery tickets, too, and hedge your bets.
They could prevent this all by picking one (un)lucky person at the end of the drawing to get stoned...
The Lottery
See how many people scramble for empty land after that!
good luck man! buying a house is crazy grown up and stressful, i can't imagine combining that with a game of chance.
it's frigging life bingo man!
it reminds me the way here in mexico all the guys that turn 18 go to the military service office at their local town (in mexico all men over 18 is mandatory to go to their military service papers) and they set up a lottery and the guys that get a black ball they dont do nothing (i got a black ball) and the unlucky ones that get white ball they report to the nearest military HQ to march and do stuff that is very tiring by the way...
@Turkina: That story is messed up. Seriously.
good luck!!!
Last I checked, Australia was mostly empty... It's not like it's Tokyo... where such demand?
@Deadeyereborn: I had to read that story in high school, along with The Jungle.
Ya know, it's a good thing that Australia doesn't have this immense empty space in the middle, or else that story would just seem ludicrous.
@Deadeyereborn: Mommar's comment is germane to a couple of comments preceding his in this thread. Sorry, you might want to go police something else.
@1gunners4: Haha! I lol'd
Good Luck Luke!
goodluck! and congrats on looking to buy a house!
Good luck with that Luke, I think Canberra is a really cool place to live. Hopefully you get to build a house there.
@SchoolBusDriver: Australia in general? Not so much. If you put your hands together side-by-side, though, and think of that as Australia, the ACT is about the size of your thumbnail, if not smaller (you might have really big thumbs)
Good luck, Luke - or, alternately, I know of a land auction going on a /bit/ further north next weekend you might like to try. ;) It's very affordable, and all that. >.>
@magically_delicious: I dunno, we more-or-less annihilated 95% of a race, if I remember my statistics correctly. Admittedly a lot of that was with segregation, alcohol, and disease, but we did our fair share of slaughter as well.
@brandonf:
A lot of that empty space can hardly support human life.
Good luck Luke
Good luck man. Hope you win. :x
@KnightRider:
Last I checked the empty space is all desert.
Good luck Luke.
Yeah, there's not much habitable land in Australia apart from the East Coast unless you really like the desert so this works out pretty well, it's as fair as you can get and it prevents the rich bastards from owning the whole country by whomping the lower-middle class in auctions, which would screw up our economy even more (doing the opposite of the U.S. at the moment, where most everything is overpriced anyway). We do sell houses normally of course, I know we do here in Queensland where houses and land are aplenty.
Mucho Luck to you Luke.
Wow I had no idea land was so hard to get in the ACT. In Tasmania property is cheap as and land is everywhere!
Good luck chief!
Well isn't the ACT really regulated and planned in the way it is allowed to grow? I believe I read that somewhere, may have been in the Bryson book. (In a Sunburned Country)
Hey, Luke good luck tomorrow -or in a few hours I suppose
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