The 9 highly emotional stages of looking for a house to buy or rent.

Don’t worry, the irony of this post being published on a Saturday morning is not lost on me.

Because if you’re in the deep depths of looking for a new place to live, you have no spare time to idly peruse your favourite websites on a Saturday morning.

Your precious spare minutes are being used to swipe potential properties on Domain and Real Estate Apps with the fervour of an excessively superficial Tinder user.

For anyone going through this special kind of hell (in a booming property market), read on for the 9 emotional stages of house hunting.

1. Anticipation.

It’s the lead-up to Saturday, and you can feel it; this week is going to be it, you’re going to find the ONE.

2. Amped.

You’re two coffees in, you’ve been able to find the first open home without getting completely lost. You’re basically #winning at this point.

3. Duped.

On closer inspection, there seems to be a GIANT communications tower in the backyard that has been Photoshopped out of the ad.

4. Euphoria.

Turns out the next place on the list isn’t a total dump. You’ve already started to mentally plan where you are going to put the couch, bed, dining table.

5. Jealousy.

Oddly, it seems that you’re not the only one who has turned out to see this house. There are about 70 other people also mentally moving in. And you want them out of your dream house, stat.

6. Disbelief.

You ask the real estate agent how much it is for and find out it’s out of your price range.

By about $600,000.

7. Anger.

How can houses/rents actually be that expensive? Is it a joke? Are there really people out there who can subsidise mortgages/rents that HUGE?

8. Extreme hunger.

After back-to-back openings, you’ve developed some real hunger. In a suburb you’re not familiar with, the best solution you can come up with, in your fragile and irrational mental state, is to get pizza delivered to your car. If only you knew where exactly you were.

So you settle for a bag of chips from the servo.

9. Next level despair.

You immediately want to do this:

Followed by this:

Repeat stages 1-9 ad nauseum, until you find the one.