Category: Moving House

Songs of Love

25th May 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

Pale, pubescent beasts
Roam through the streets
And coffee shops.

Their prey gather in herds
With stiff knee-length skirts
And white ankle-socks.

But while they search for a mate,
My type hibernate in bedrooms above.
Composing their songs of love.

Slow progress on the house. Initial draft contracts have been approved, and our solicitor has sent “Additional preliminary enquiries” on to the vendors, whatever that means. No news yet on an exchange date, much less a completion date. Ah well.

In the meantime, though, I’ve made a start on clearing out all the junk I’ve accumulated, both over the last 5 years living here, and in the years before. When we moved in, a whole bunch of stuff was chucked, still boxed, in the study. If I were being truly ruthless, I’d chuck it without looking through it. Fortunately though, I’m not quite that insane. There’s a whole bunch of stuff in there of interest:

  • 10 free tickets to Satan’s Hollow nightclub, Manchester (use by 31st December 2000). I went there for the grand opening and nearly knocked Richard O’Brien flying after drunkenly stumbling into him. He was utterly gracious about it. Good times.
  • Entrance tickets to Empire State Building, International Visitor’s Invitation to the US Senate, and assorted other stuff from the first time we went to America in 2002. Been back several times, to different parts of the country, and thoroughly enjoyed myself every time.
  • A large collection (upwards of 100) of “Free dial-up internet” discs. I started collecting these when they were common in the belief they might be valuable some day. In fifty years or so I’ll see if I’m right.

Stuff I won’t be keeping includes:

  • Every payslip I was issued, July 1999-June 2005. Puts what I’m paid now into perspective all right. Whether I’m underpaid now, or was then, or whatever, I’m amazed that I managed to survive on so little. Then I remember I survived by getting into huge amounts of debt I’ve only recently paid off. Time to shred these, I think.
  • Half a dozen assorted PCI and AGP video cards, along with a small mountain of other PC components, including a CD-Rewriter drive that must have cost me a week’s wages, and a DVD-ROM drive. There’s a couple of hard disks here too. One I can’t access and the other seems to be a backup of my PC Circa 2004. Straight to the bin for this little lot, except for an 802.11g WiFi PCI card I don’t remember buying. That might still be useful some day.
  • A Compaq T1500 Thin Client PC! For a short while this acted as a box to display video on my TV. Now there’s more processing power in my mobile phone.
  • A stack of videotapes. I’ve no idea what’s on them, not having owned a VCR in about four years.

Amazing the stuff that just gets put away in the belief it might come in useful some day. In recent times I’ve become a lot more pro-active about getting rid of unnedded cruft. Just as well, it seems. I’d have run out of space to live in if I’d ket accumulating it at the same rate.

Starman

2nd May 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment
Sempre estar lá e ver ele voltar-
Não era mais o mesmo mas estava em seu lugar.
Sempre estar lá e ver ele voltar
O tolo teme a noite como a noite
Vai temer o fogo…
 
He came, he surveyed, he went away. And so did the bank’s surveyor too. The net result of which we have a mortgage offer, and know exactly what’s wrong with our house. The homebuyer’s report is an amazingly arse-covering document; a whole bunch of things that I hadn’t even thought of as being worthy of my attention are flagged up as “Urgent! Needs sorting right now!”. These things include that the fuse box is old (but still servicable; the wiring’s reasonably recent), there’s no banister on the bottom three stairs, and that the doors have non-safety glass in them. The one thing I didn’t know about was that there’s some damp in the extension, but it doesn’t seem to be anything that’ll cost a lot to fix.
 
I’m glad I paid a completely independent surveyor; my surveyor had the ability to spell complicated words like “Asbestos” (the garage roof’s made of it; given it’s over twenty years old that’s not surprising) and to count to four – the number of bedrooms –  unlike the bank’s guy who counted three, and also decided that the house was worth less than we’d offered for it. Happily on that point the bank seem to have ignored him and decided to lend the amount requested anyway (and my own surveyor, who didn’t know the offer price, had agreed with me on value spot-on).
So, it progresses. And given the competency level of the bank’s surveyor, I wonder just what else in the way of fail we’re going to encounter.

Ten Years Alseep

27th April 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

Ten years asleep in the queue for the late night bus –
With all of us.

Breakfast television is the biggest decision I’ve made
In the last decade.

It wouldn’t happen in another world.
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer planet.
It would’ve happened in another world,
So don’t pretend to care when you don’t care!

I was wondering when the stress of buying would kick in. On Wednesday I had the phone call. My mortgage broker was calling to tell me that there was a problem. The day before he’d called me to tell me everything was OK and the finance company’s survey was going through. This time he was calling me to tell me he’d (inadvertently) lied. Apparently there was a problem with the application. Eight years ago I had a few financial issues, and had a credit card withdrawn. Eight years ago! Apparently they wanted to know why – I could barely remember myself. I ended up telling them how much I’d earned back then, having recently graduated, and they went away again.

Finally the survey was booked in and performed yesterday, but it was a rather nerve-wracking few days. What else would they find in my credit history that didn’t appear on my credit files (I checked them before we even applied)?

Now waiting to hear back from my own surveyor as to the state of the house. Then we’ll see what’s what…

It’s all been done

13th April 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

I knew you before the West was won.
And I heard you say,
“The past was much more fun.”
You go your way, I go mine –
But I’ll see you next time.

It’s all been done,
It’s all been done.
It’s all been done before!

Two conversations of interest this afternoon in the the ever-complicating saga of the house, though this time it’s sheer incredulity that I’m left with, rather than anything else.

The first conversation was a call from my mortgage broker. He’s sent all the paperwork off to the lender and he’ll chase them if he’s not heard anything by the end of the week. Nice, efficient, pleasant, and I trust him. He’s earning less commission than he would have if we’d gone with the original plans, but still perfectly pro-active and helpful. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was after our remortgage business in a couple of years’ time.

The second conversation? The estate agent, phoning to tell me that our vendors have found somewhere to live. First thought – wow, that was fast. They only started looking last week! There was more though. The vendors have arranged their mortgage through the estate agent. Would I care to do so? No. Not even if they can guarantee to beat the rate I’ve been quoted elsewhere? No. Not even if they can give me a fixed rate of 3.2 %? Not a chance, matey. I don’t believe for a second I can get that rate. Even if I hadn’t already paid for the valuation survey, I’d be going elsewhere for my mortgage. Somewhere where they’re up front about how much they earn from my business.

All this, too, after they’d already spoken to my mortgage broker! So far all I’ve got from the buying process is a list of who not to sell through when we come to sell, however many years down the line it is. I think I’ve met at best one even remotely trustworthy bloke so far, and that was because he was a sole trader in a sea of national franchises.

Let me down Easy

11th April 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in 2 Comments

At first you smile, then turn away
I’ve been thinking of what I should say
All last night I stayed up dreaming,
I’m still dreaming.

Movement on the house front. On Tuesday the estate agent called me to tell me that the vendors were looking for about 10k more than I was willing to offer. Was I willing to increase my offer?, he asked. The reply was a firm “No.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “I’ll pass that on and get back to you for a final decision.”

I wasn’t hopeful. When we looked at the place originally it was on the basis of  “Slim chance we can negotiate them down”. The initial price reduction was a pleasant surprise – but still no guarantee that anything would happen. I placed the offer fully expecting to get laughed at, and to move on to the house we expected to be able to get. The next day, he called me back.

“Congratulations, your offer has been accepted” was the news on the other end of the line.

Wow. To say I was in shock was an understatement. Didn’t really expect to get the place, happy that we have it. Cue a mad rush to phone a solicitor, phone the mortgage broker, get everything in place. Then to phone the beloved who’s been working away from home and break the good news to her.

It hasn’t all been sweetness and light, though. We met the mortgage advisor on Saturday morning to get everything finalised, and had some news that brought us back down to earth with a jolt. The mortgage we’d been planning on taking out had been withdrawn from the market. That was a problem – in our budget there was a choice of a hike of 0.7% interest (not a small amount of money per month), to try a mortgage provider who was unlikely to take us on, or putting down a bigger deposit. Now, fortunately, we’re first-time buyers so the stamp duty we’d previously allowed for was no longer an issue. With some careful calculations, we were able to arrive at a conclusion. We could just afford to go up to 15%. We’ll spend the summer being very skint indeed, wipe out our savings completely, but on the other hand the combination of bigger deposit and lower interest rate means we’ll be able to save more afterwards (I have a number of guaranteed bonuses coming in over the next six months too). At least the lender seems happy to accept our mortgage request without too much trouble.

So, if (touch wood) we complete, we’ll own more equity in our home than we’d originally intended. Let’s hope this is the last bad news we hear in our journey.

The Boxer

4th April 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles.

Such are promises – All lies and jests.
Still a man hears what he wants to hear,
And disregards the rest


The Home Stretch, maybe (pun not intended). Three more appointments, and further developments.

Appointment 1

The second house we saw last Saturday, second viewing. We’re late because we’re expecting the estate agent to turn up and he doesn’t. The vendors don’t mind too much – they’re friendly people and they answer all my questions. It’s a very nice house, and since it’s been marked down it’s maybe within the realms of negotiation to our price point. Depending on what we see later, we’ll probably make an offer.

Appointment 2

Starts fantastically when we can’t find anywhere to park nearby – it’s all residents’ bays. We end up parking 5 minutes’ walk away, which isn’t so much of a problem. Quite useful to have done so – on the walk back there’s a very rough-looking pub and a 1960s council tower block on the verge of collapse, no more than 100 yards away. When we get to the house, the estate agent’s already there waiting. Unfortunately when he comes to let us in, his key doesn’t work. Cue twenty minutes waiting outside while the vendor rushes back from the shops. House is nice enough, but I don’t like the way the space is divided up – it’s been significantly remodelled, and there’s the parking and neighbours to think about too.

Appointment 3

The second house we saw on the first day of viewings. Pretty much as I remember it. Still nice enough to make an offer on but we liked the first house more. Still a very nice place, mind. If the offer on the first house isn’t accepted (and, being realistic, I’m not really expecting it to be) we’ll be happy to make an offer on this house.

More Conversations with the Damned

Once again I call the absentee estate agent from the first house of the day. “Are you willing to make an offer?” he asks. As it happens, I am. I give him my terms and he says he’ll call the vendors and get back to me. So far, I’m in limbo. As I said above, I’m not really expecting the offer to be accpted, but given I haven’t had a call back yet, I don’t think it’s an outright refusal.

So – might have found a place, might not. Let’s see what happens over the next few days.

HIPs don’t lie

30th March 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

You know my HIPs don’t lie
And I’m starting to feel it’s right
All the attraction, the tension
Don’t you see baby, this is perfection

Ahem. Not my usual choice of accompaniment but the pun was too delicious to resist. The ongoing saga goes on, and I’m beginning to wonder what some estate agents do for their cash.

Saturday, Appointment 1

A house. Seriously the most nondescript house that I’ve seen so far. Good-sized kitchen  and big combined lounge / dining room, reasonable sized rooms upstairs. Apple trees in the garden and a garage. If houses were foodstuffs, I’d probably describe this one as the equivalent of a boiled potato. Sure, it’ll keep you alive, it’s got some stuff in it that’s good for you, but by about the first three days you’ll be desperate for something with a little more flavour to it.

Saturday, Appointment 2

A house. There’s been some mix-up at the estate agent, and he can’t meet us, so he calls us to give us directions. I don’t even have a house number for the place, so we have to walk along the road until we find the house from the photograph I have in front of me. It’s a decent house, mid-terrace, good size, and the current owners are decently friendly. Garage at the back, loft conversion – the place is certainly big enough, and well-looked after. The problem? It’s £20k over our top budget. The estate agent thinks the vendors will budge. I’m not so sure.

Conversations with the damned

So, feedback for all those who we went to look at houses with. I set up two second viewings for next week, and give the rest of the people I’ve viewed with a polite “thanks, but no”. The agent for the second house on saturday repeats his beliefs that the vendor will shift on price. I say I’ll think about it but won’t promise anything. I ask for a cop of the HIP for both the houses I want to see again (HIPs, I’ll grant, are mostly a waste of time, but the land registry and future planning bits are kind of useful, which is why I’m getting hold of them.) The first agent sends it there and then. The second says he will, then doesn’t bother.

When I phone him up the next day to chase, he apologises and tells me the house was taken off the market this morning, and he’s going to have to cancel my second viewing. Nice of him to be proactive and tell me. Funnily enough, this is the same agent that tried to get me to take out a mortgage with him too. Any more houses, I’m going to go out of my way to avoid dealing with him.

On a cheerful note, the estate agent from Saturday has come through – he’s texted me to say the vendor’s knocked £15k off their asking price. Still over our limit, but maybe there’s some maneuvering room here now. Hmmm. Needs more thought.

The Old Apartment

26th March 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in No Comment

Broke into the old apartment
Forty-two steps from the street
Crooked landing, crooked landlord.
Narrow laneway filled with crooks
This is where we used to live.

Seconds out, round two.  Four more houses down, some good, some not so good. So without further ado:

Day 2, Appointment 1.

A victorian semi. Looks good from the outside, though the front garden’s a bit overgrown. The estate agent’s a local independent and he turns up on time. Inside, the hallway immediately reminds me again of old houses full of students, though in this case besides the chipboard wallpaper, there’s little actually in common. The current owner is apparently a widow – an impression I’d already got from the pictures in the particulars. The front room is lovely, as is the dining room. Kitchen is a little messy but in decent nick. Downstairs bathroom needs refurbishing but not urgently, there’s no window that opens so there’s a little damp where water has splashed from the sink. Nothing too bad. Upstairs, the two smaller bedrooms are fine. One is only single glazed but the frame looks to be in a decent shape. The shower room’s been more recently updated, and again looks fine.

The problems? The master bedroom, where the current owner’s stripped off the old wallpaper and not got around to replacing it (helpfully showing a patch of water-damaged plaster, which I’m told was due to a burst pipe which is fixed). The other issue is location – it’s on a Red Route, meaning parking is in a side street a couple of minutes’ walk away.

Appointment 2

Unexpected super bonus appointment! The agent from appointment 1 has another house he thinks I’d like. It’s 2 bedrooms, terraced, but pristine. I meet him after lunch, and he’s not kidding, it’s very nice inside and had been well looked after. It’s a bit further from the station but who cares? The only real issue is the size – 2 bedrooms is a bit on the small side, but it’s otherwise excellent. Needs more thought. But after the unexpected super bonus appointment, we have:

Unwanted Interlude

I met the next estate agent in their offices in Sutton. They were going to show me two houses – they very nearly didn’t show me any, and it was only because neither of them were available with other agents that I didn’t walk out there and then. Apparently they really, really, want me to ditch my current mortgage broker and go with their in-house one, simply because he’d advised us to hold back on getting an AiP until absolutely necessary. Fat chance. I spend twenty minutes getting the hard sell on why the mortgage I’m considering is the wrong one (it’s quite obvious they get higher commission on certain mortgages) listening disinterestedly to the absolute wanker behind the desk who doesn’t seem to want me to get a word in edgeways, much less listen to what I have to say. Eventually he loses interest (half an hour later!) and releases me to his colleague who’s going to show me the houses. He looks barely out of school, and doesn’t exactly scream competence or experience to me. However, he takes me to:

Appointment 3

A repossessed house. It’s a lot bigger than anything we’ve seen so far – 3 bedrooms, loft conversion, “sun room” at the back, and much bigger than I was expecting. And there’s damp. Lots and lots and lots of damp. Rough reckoning tells me it’d be about £3k to fix the damp alone. The roof on the sun room needs replacing too, as does the bathroom interior in its entirety. It’s a definite “nope”, even more than the place we saw last Saturday.

Appointment 4

Another (smaller) victorian semi. Bloody well looked after, period features, nothing to do. It’s a really nice house but there’s not much to differentiate it from every other nice house I’ve seen. Might well go back for a second viewing, was that kind of place. The Astroturfed back garden was a bit strange, though, makes me wonder why it wasn’t real grass.

So – six down, three more tomorrow. If I had a favourite, it’d be the first one I saw today, I think. Not perfect but then anything that’s too perfect makes me suspicious.

Rule the world (with Love)

21st March 2010 2nd April 2020 by Sleeper in 2 Comments

It didn’t happen to us overnight.
Just ’cause it happened doesn’t mean it’s right –
To our embarrassment we lost the fight
To rule the world with love.

As some may be aware, we’ve finally managed to scrape together enough money to finally get a mortgage and buy somewhere of our own. No mean feat in London – the flat just below ours went recently for a cool £335k. A third of a million pounds! for a flat that has a single double bedroom, a tiny box for a second bedroom and a kitchen barely big enough to swing a cat in!

No, we’re looking somewhere a little less pricy. Somewhere we can get a 3-bedroom house given the kind of deposit we’ve got saved up. So far we’ve had appointments to view three houses, on a rainy Saturday.

Appointment 1:

About an hour before

*ring ring* “Hello there, it’s the estate agent for <address> here. I’m dreadfully sorry but the vendor’s having to cancel your viewing; her children are sick”.

Fair enough, a bit more notice might have been fine, but  understandable. Skip ahead to:

Appointment 2:

Setting off in the car with an hour to get there (should be a 30-minute drive) we eventually find the place and are 5 minutes late. From the outside, the house looks OK. I ring the bell. After no reply for several minutes, I knock instead. The vendor answers, and immediately I’m taken aback. He’s still wearing his threadbare dressing gown, in the mid-afternoon, and even in that he looks scruffy. I’m here to look at the house, I remind myself. Unfortunately the house isn’t any more impressive than its current owner. It’s a victorian semi-detached, and while on the outside looks to be in good nick, the inside is a different story. The place doesn’t seem to have been decorated in years, and even when it had been, it’s paint that’s been thrown over the old wallpaper. At the joins with the ceiling, the paper’s coming away, probably caused by damp. The extension at the back, containing a kitchen and a bathroom, shows signs of a leaking roof, and the way it’s been built means the dining room gets no light.

Upstairs is pretty much the same. More signs of peeling wallpaper, I can’t even get in the third bedroom to take a decent look at it, there’s so much stuff been shoved in there, but from what I can see there’s little to convince me the place is worth the cash. It reminds me of the sorts of houses we used to rent back when we were students and couldn’t afford any better. The vendor tells me he’s had it on the market for “a couple of months”. Google disagrees, and I now understand why. Maybe if he dropped the price by 20% he might, just might, stand a chance.  A few notes in the notebook, to the effect of “no chance” (a shame because on paper it looked excellent) and we make our merry way to:

Appointment 3:

Is a couple of miles from appointment 2, so we end up arriving 30 minutes early. Not a problem, though, the vendor is out and we’re meeting the estate agent. We park up and given we’re so early, take a walk around the neighbourhood. It seems OK, mixture of older terraces and a few newer builds, people looking after their gardens. And then the heavens open, and so, soaked to the bone, we sit in the car, shivering, waiting for the estate agent to turn up. In some bizarre act of karma, he’s late this time – though when he turns up, having phoned ahead, he apologises and shows us the house.

It’s the same asking price as the last one, but what a huge difference. Well looked-after, no obvious signs of anything problematic. It’s a house we can imagine ourselves living in, so I’ll be asking for further details from his office on Monday (though I didn’t say so at the time). The only two problems – it’s near a busy road (though even at the end of the garden the noise wasn’t too bad) and the train will take about 45 minutes to get to central London. I can live with those.

Come Friday, I’m going to see some more. And I’m sure I’ll have more tales of the weird to share…