At long last, I am finally moving.
Over a year ago we decided to do a little property shuffle. My husband owns the top flat in a house so we approached the owners of the bottom flat to see if they wanted to sell. Cue several weeks of negotiation and we eventually ended up on a price we both could live with. For us it makes perfect sense. We will own a whole house, divided into two flats. For now we will live downstairs and rent out upstairs to cover the mortgage. When we need more space, we’ll do a bit of construction and ta da – a whole house.
Only it hasn’t been that simple. I found a buyer for my flat almost straight away. Then they couldn’t come up with the money since they needed to sell something first. So I waited. Got a bit distracted with a big holiday away and our wedding. Eventually after 6 months of waiting I decided to put it back on the market.
A few weeks later, the original buyers announced that they had the money. Hurrah! Only they didn’t. They still needed to sell this place, it’s just that they’d found a buyer for it. Only their buyer had a buyer. Who had a buyer. Who had a buyer. Basically 5 other people had to sell their houses first before our guys could come up with the money.
But they were convinced it would work out, so we waited. And waited. And waited. Then just 2 days before the legal paperwork was all set to go through, it fell apart. One of the many buyers in the chain no longer wanted to buy.
So again we put it back on the market. This time we found a new buyer. Hurrah! We said yes, and we got moving. Then our original buyers came out of the woodwork again. Good news! The chain has reformed! Only now there are 6 people who need to sell their house first. Gah.
In the meantime, the nice couple that we were buying from had gone out and found a place to buy. And their sellers had found a place to buy. And THEIR sellers had found a place too. Link all these people up and you have 10 people all trying to buy and sell, and all reliant on someone else either buying or selling first. Utter madness.
As a back up plan we decided to remortgage my flat and turn it into a rental place. If all else fell through we could rent it out, and use the second mortgage to buy the new place. Except the property valuer for the mortgage company rumbled us. He’d been around before to value it for one of our buyers, and told the mortgage company that we weren’t serious about renting it out. So they said no. Oops.
After a few very tense weeks and countless emails, texts and phone calls from just about all 10 of the people in this chain we at last got to the point of signing contracts. Thursday, the day before good Friday, we all paid our 10% deposits and signed contracts committing us to completing the deal and moving just 5 business days later – Monday the 16th.
Then we had this conversation with our sellers:
Them: We are going to be away on the 16th, can we stay on a little bit longer and move out when we get back?
Us: Okaaaay, but that means we are going to have nowhere to live for a few days and will need to put all our stuff in storage and pay to move twice. We are willing to help you out, but you’ll need to contribute towards our extra moving costs.
Them: Actually we don’t feel we should contribute. We told you and everyone else about our holiday a long time ago so it should have been factored in. We get back on the 21st really early and will have the moving trucks turn up at 9am.
Inside my head: Really? Really!? REALLY!??? You think you can just live in our house, rent-free, for 5 extra days and expect us to pay for storing boxes, moving boxes twice and you don’t think you should CONTRIBUTE to that!? And where was the fricken thank-you to us for offering to do you a favour?!
Us: Hmmm, on reflection if you are moving the same day you get back then you don’t really need to stay there, do you? Why don’t you get YOUR moving company to pick up your boxes early, store them, and then pay again to move them to the new location. Let’s just stick to the contractual date of the 16th.
Them: Oh, okay.
The end.
emilytakesabreak 