We’ve sold our flat.  And we’ve found a house we like.  And we’ve made an offer.  And it was accepted.  Now comes the tough part…

I found a gentleman from the area who does house surveys.  Unlike the survey which will be done by a bank for the mortgage, this guy actually pokes around an awful lot.  And he knows stuff about electrics and damp.  So within one week of getting in touch, he had already gone into the house, done the survey and sent us the report.  This guy is good!  The report is written in understandable language (thank goodness) and is long.  He found a few things that need work, but the most worrying thing is that he feels that the electrical wiring may be out of date and in need of changing.  Re-wiring a house is NOT inexpensive.  In addition, he found some damp in the extension which may have been caused by the shower in it (which we won’t keep, but the seller doesn’t have to know that).  But other than those two major things, which will probably cost around £8-9,000 to do, the house is in decent shape with some decorating needs and a few bits and bobs.  So I think we’ll probably try to re-negotiate the offer for at least £5-10,000 off to take care of all the electrics and whatnot.

We’ve had a provisional acceptance for our mortgage - they took all our details and said it looks good.  We’re going for a 75% mortgage which meant we could get a decent (for this time & year) rate for our 25 yr mortgage.  Still, it’s a huge amount of money.  I mean HUGE.  I could carry it on my salary alone if I didn’t want to eat out or do many fun things.  So while I’m not worried about taking on this expense, it’s still something that makes me nervous.  All the paperwork is in for the mortgage, and they’ll have to have the house appraised to see if it’s worth the value of the mortgage and what we’re going to pay.  Then in a few weeks after that, we should have it available.

The main hope is that we can complete on the sale within a month from now.  That way I’ll still have a few weeks to start doing some work on the house.  And get in a few companies to do quotes for the work we want to get done on it.  We need a wall knocked down, a wall put up, the kitchen and downstairs shower room stripped out, a new kitchen put in, a cloakroom put in, new flooring everywhere except the stairs, painting done in every room (maybe stripping of wallpaper), putting in bookshelves, existing wardrobes removed and new ones put in place and eventually we’ll have to do some work on the upstairs bathroom & on the fireplaces but that can wait until we can save more money to get that done.

So yes, the house will be a money pit for the first year or so, but we’ve planned accordingly.  We have enough money saved and with the sale of the flat, enough money left to both pay the 25% deposit as well as pay for all the above work and some furniture.

Roy’s cousin is in the furniture business so we’ll probably go through him to get some discounted furniture - two beds, two comfy chairs, a table with chairs for the kitchen/diner. 

It’s all very exciting.  I hope it works out!