I suppose the most my steady readers (if indeed, I do have steady readers) know about me is that I have a lot of stuff. I tend to tell people I have more than any one person should rightfully have. Despite constant attempts to whittle down the collections, I find I have something in the order of 3,000 DVDs, 5,000 CDs, 1,000 books and more. I did sell off most of my vinyl LP collection years ago but there are still a few boxes of those I couldn’t bear to part with. And my ’90’s addiction to laser video discs is still very evident, with a couple of hundred of those lying around the house somewhere. Not to forget my two somewhat large dogs with large, wagging tails who love to chase each other around all day.

If I lived in a normal country, one that built affordable apartments and houses to human sizes, this would not be a problem. But I live in Hong Kong, where people move up from 400sq ft government housing to three-bedroom 700sq ft flats and consider it luxury. Most people I know live in flats well under 1,000sq ft and pay vaguely reasonable rents (or bought their flats for somewhat reasonable amounts). But when you have so much stuff, you lose that option.

Further evidence of my insanity is the fact that in just under 11 years, I have lived in seven different places. That means having to pack and then unpack and sort through this stuff an average of once every 18 months. I think that’s because when you’re living on the semblance of a budget, compromises have to be made in terms of where you live, especially in Hong Kong. You decide what compromises you’re willing to make (size of the flat, location, view) and then live with them as long as you can, or at least until a year has passed and you can give your landlord two months’ notice.

The first couple of places I lived in here were flats in newer high-rise buildings. They were those monuments to Hong Kong’s billionaires in which the actual flat size is about 60% of the advertised space and the thickness of the walls can be measured with a micrometer. The second one was in Mid Levels and, while I initially enjoyed being in a building with a large pool and a free shuttle bus to and from Central, eventually I got tired of the constant pounding of pile drivers coming from every direction.

Eventually I discovered other neighbourhoods and the joy of older, low-rise apartment buildings: high ceilings, thick walls, floor plans that make sense – places that felt like a home, that felt permanent. My most recent flat was in a 60-year-old building with just 28 apartments. The rent was cheap (because I moved in during SARS), the walls and floors were thick, I had huge built-in closets in every room and an actual oven in the kitchen. It was perfect in every way except for the view, which was of the car park for the building next door.

So after four years of inner city congestion and needing to go outside to know if it was sunny or raining, the thought came into my head that I should move to that paradise named Sai Kung. (No one has been able to explain to me why West Kung should be on the eastern end of the New Territories and no one can tell me where East Kung is.) I started fixating on the idea of being in a village house, with a roof and some balconies and maybe even a garden, someplace where I could leave the door open all day and the dogs could just run outside and play.

However, if you’ve been looking for a new place lately, you know that real-estate prices have gone through the roof. At the end of last year, the Hong Kong stock market was establishing new highs on a daily basis, which led developers to jack up prices for new developments in the Sai Kung area, which in turn led existing home owners to double or triple their asking prices.

People were telling me I should buy instead of rent, but I soon found out that the banks have all stacked the odds in favour of big development companies. Buy a flat in some new high-rise cardboard building named for some obscure European country and you could get a 95% mortgage and even a bridge loan for the other 5%. But if you’re looking at an old low-rise or village house, you’ll have to pony up at least 30%. And with two ex-wives, that’s not something I can do.

I knew that finding something I liked and could afford was going to take a lot of work. I visited dozens of realtors, many of whom didn’t even want to bother with me once they heard my budget. Others simply took me to places that were almost double the amount I wanted to spend.

I lost track of how many places I looked at. One thing I learned is that people who own houses in Sai Kung have some crazy design ideas. I saw this one village house that had been converted into a six-room hotel and was now being converted back to three bedrooms – each with two bathrooms! Other houses within my budget were chopped into tiny rooms, had no kitchens or featured design ideas from the planet Necron.

And then, finally, there it was, the place I was looking for, at a price I could afford. A house that had unobstructed full sea views from every floor, large bright airy rooms, two parking spaces and a garden, all within my budget. The landlord agreed on a price with me, shook my hand, and then was “too busy” to sign the lease for three weeks, leading to an almost total nervous collapse on my part. I was convinced that I was going to end up with cider in my ear like Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls.

Finally the lease was signed. And the thousands of CDs, DVDs and books, as well as the two dogs, all got moved in. My mental health stabilized. And I realized the reason that the house was so cheap was that it was falling apart and the landlord didn’t want to spend any money fixing it up. Anything that needs to be done is going to be done by me.

Well, fair’s fair. I’ve got a $1,000,000 view from a 20-cent house. On Sunday I made myself lunch and sat outside on my patio, breathing in the closest thing to clean air Hong Kong has to offer, and watching sailboats and kayaks rather than taxis and delivery trucks. It’s so nice that I want to spend all my time outside, rather than inside unpacking hundreds of boxes and getting thousands of things into proper order. I might as well just leave them there anyway, already packed and ready for the next move.