It has been confirmed - I didn’t get the preferred house. After looking at the alternatives available and thinking a bit more about options the house I’ve been approved for is growing on me. I think my uncertainty about it comes from two things:

1. I’m filling in the gaps that I can’t see with worst case scenarios instead of what’s likely, and extrapolating a few things into problems that are unlikely. Particularly concern about overgrown trees - where I am now I have a small garden with trees in the neighbouring yards that grow over and block most of my useable garden space. In this house there are big trees, but they are already mature and there is space for a vegie garden between them. They are also deciduous trees, so I should get lovely shade in summer, light in winter and lots of leaf mulch for the garden.

2. The layout of the house means some changes to how I set up my rooms, I can’t just mentally swap the rooms I have now into the new house. But when I sit down and think about how to work with the different layout it should work pretty well. I might end up changing the layout from winter to summer - it has a great dining/lounge room with a north facing bay window that will be amazing in summer, and a south facing lounge that should be much cooler in summer. Being migratory depending on weather seems a good option.

One big upside is that it is in the lower end of my budgeted rent range. I should also be able to do a dog door for Mr Woof - there is a window to floor level in the main bedroom which opens onto the back garden, I should be able to get a door put into that and replace it with normal glass when I leave. Doing that with a small window should not be much more than a good quality sliding door insert would be.

The biggest unanswered question: where to put Miss Meow’s litter trays. Do they need to be at ground level, or are cat’s happy to jump up on a bench for that? I’ll have to do some research, I could put a cover over the bath (which I don’t use) and put the trays on there.