My first living out-of-home experience was in a terrace in the inner-city. It was a decaying, mould-riddled property that probably should have been condemned. There was one bathroom between five people, the kitchen was an add-on that had a perspex roof and no insulation. Natural light was non-existent, and the fourth “bedroom” was an attic you couldn’t stand up in. I loved it.

I went on the lease with two friends and together we gleefully filled it with second-hand furniture that, like the house itself, had seen better days. We didn’t care about the many problems – we were just thrilled to be living independently and have somewhere to throw parties without parental oversight.

Share house life can be fun in your 20s, but priorities inevitably change.

After a couple of years, I outgrew the terrace. Having landed my first full-time job, I decided to seek an environment that didn’t involve strangers coming back to my house at 2am on a Wednesday.

Now I had a slightly bigger budget, my list of living requirements grew to include things like “no obvious mould” and “a real roof”.

With every move I made over the following decade, the requirement list evolved. After living in an apartment in which the water........

© The Sydney Morning Herald