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 The mortgage we’d been planning on taking out had been withdrawn from the market.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.