Home is where the heart is: Canberra couple hosts faux auction
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Nothing says commitment like buying your first house with a partner. But when facing an impossible housing market, one Canberra couple has done things their way.
Originally meeting in Canberra four years ago, Alicia Jaques and Nathan Darma’s paths crossed on several occasions, but it wasn’t until Alicia found herself ‘down the road’ from Nathan in Melbourne while staying with family to escape the toxic smoke of the 2020 Black Summer fires that she finally agreed to go on a date.
“He swept me off my feet,” says Alicia. “We just thought we would try the long-distance thing and then [COVID] lockdowns were rumoured to happen…within 12 hours he was on the last bus to Canberra with all of his stuff and he moved in.”
Months later, after Nathan had let go of his Melbourne apartment, the couple sat down and talked about what they wanted in the future. Both Alicia and Nathan agreed that if they were to ever have kids they would want to raise them in Canberra, but as they looked at the housing market, they realised they wouldn’t be able to afford the four bedroom, two bathroom dwelling of their dreams.
Instead they decided Nathan would buy into Alicia’s home in Higgins and they would refinance, using the money to renovate.
“I have a house and we love our neighbours and we love our location. The only thing we don’t love about this place is we may not be able to fit two children in easily—so why not extend it?” says Alicia.
“We spent the last couple of months with an architect…we’re basically doubling the house which is going to be crazy but it’s going to be our forever house.”
However, while they were excited to plan their dream home together, Alicia says she was sad Nathan would never get the proper experience of buying a home. So she came up with a plan. She would host a surprise faux auction for Nathan with family and friends.
“The idea was we would have everyone come in and take a card when they walk in and it would say ‘You’re single’ or ‘You’re a couple’, ‘You have up to $900,000 to spend’, ‘You should make the first bid’ and each card was super different,” she explains. “The idea was that Nathan would have the max budget.”
With Nathan’s birthday coming up, Alicia thought it would be the perfect celebration—but to make it feel authentic Alicia needed a real estate agent to add the finishing touches.
Reaching out to Home By Holly, she says Bianca and the team went above and beyond to bring her unusual surprise to life.
“We had to meet up for a sneaky coffee,” she explains. “He thought I was at the gym and I’m there bawling my eyes out because he proposed the day before— Bianca was the first person I told!”
Seven days before the auction, Nathan had knelt down in the Meerkat enclosure at the National Zoo and Aquarium and proposed. As much as Alicia had joked about getting engaged there, she had never thought it would happen.
Deciding to keep the engagement a secret, Alicia planned to announce it at the faux auction as an additional surprise for the friends and family she had invited along.
“Bianca came and said ‘Surprise! We’re bringing a videographer’.” says Alicia. “I had been keeping this little secret and Nathan didn’t know why we weren’t telling people we were engaged.”
Bianca – Auction Darma estate FINAL from home.byholly on Vimeo.
“All of the hurdles that COVID has thrown at us and all the struggles that we’d had just led to this moment of being like ‘this is forever’. The video captured that a little bit and that does make me a bit teary because I found it really hard fitting in when I moved to Canberra and I’m glad to share this community of people that I’ve met.”
“I am hands down indebted to how much work and time the team put into this.”
While the Canberra property market is challenging many people looking for their forever home, Alicia says this was an important way to make the house “a little bit ours, less mine”, and that ultimately, she wanted to start their life together in a home they share.
“When we talk about the moment that we brought it with our kids, we will get that. Not the memory of when we bought a house for the first time…more like we bought a house in front of all of our friends and family and felt that community support that we need as a family to move forward,” she says.
As they start their life together in their ‘new’ home, Alicia and Nathan are beginning to plan for the not-so-distant future, and while the wedding won’t be until 2023, Alicia promises that like the story of their relationship, it will be anything but traditional.
PHOTOS BY: Mat Pizzato
