Again, another long absence from the blog from me.
I wrote the majority of this post over a year ago, but never published it. I don't want to not publish it though, as it was a long journey for us! I also intend to add some travel posts to the blog coming soon, as we have been on some magnificent adventures over the past year, and have another one coming up later this year.
For now, please find our tales of house hunting below...
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December 2017
Life has been somewhat in turmoil for many months, although it doesn't appear that we are coming out of it anytime soon!
For many reasons, including coming to the end of our renovation work on this house, we decided to put our home on the market. My husband works at home so can work anywhere (we are currently in the East Midlands), and I want a more rural life. Don't get me wrong, we don't live on a busy street at all - in fact we live on a fairly quiet cul-de-sac, but having grown up on a farm, I think my forever home is one in which I can't see a neighbour. I know that's not for everyone, but I much prefer the quiet and being surrounded by nature, rather than the hustle and bustle of the city. It just so happens that this sort of property usually comes with a hefty price tag ££££££.....
We've have fallen in love with several on the way, but for various different reasons they haven't worked out. I forgot how soul destroying house hunting is - how emotionally attached you get to houses, and then the crushing feeling when you don't come away with the house. I know they say don't get emotionally attached, and don't imagine yourself living there, blah blah blah, but I just can't do it!
I'm not religious at all, but I also have a strong belief in "what is meant to be, will be" so I try to focus on that and understand that for whatever reason, the houses we have lost out on just weren't the right ones for us, even if I cant see the reason at the time.
Viewing other properties and seeing the process from a buyers eyes has also been eye opening on how estate agents work, and I think we made a good choice with ours.
But back to the ones we lost out on, and why.
Property #1 - The Peak District
I genuinely thought this was "the one". I had been lusting after it on Rightmove for MONTHS. Before we were even looking to move.
On the way to view it, I just knew. This was the lane that approached the property. Just stunning.
The house had been renovated by the previous owners over the last 15 years, so whilst not completely to our taste, all the boiler, electrics etc. were ok, and it was more the surface decor which would need changing as well as kitchen and bathroom. All the windows had been replaced too with wooden sash double glazed units which were just beautiful.
The massive selling point for us was the outbuilding. This would be my project - and if the project doesn't actually form part of the main house that means we don't have to live through dust hell whilst I get my kicks from a project - then that makes the hubby a lot happier! The intention was to convert the outbuilding (picture below) into a self contained one bed holiday let which we could earn income from in the future. #winning.
Except we weren't winning. Because after having our offer accepted, we got straight onto the mortgage company to get things moving. We already had a mortgage in principle so I just figured it was a case of valuing the property and that was it. Our current mortgage is with First Direct so we were intending to port our mortgage across. This isn't an ad but I do love how they work evenings and weekends and I had most of our telephone appointments of an evening which meant my work wasn't affected.
I think it was about question number 3, where the mortgage lady asked if we were intending to use the property for any business use. I pondered the question, and thought that the holiday let could be considered a business, as we would be making an income from it. And that was the moment our dreams came crashing down. After speaking at length with First Direct, and numerous other Mortgage Brokers for independent advice, it became clear that we would need a commercial mortgage for this property rather than a residential mortgage. Commercial mortgages usually require at least a 25% deposit, which we don't have for this sort of property, so that was the end of that.
Heartbroken.
This was back in August, and with time I have been able to see the property with my head and not my heart. Whilst the living space was pretty spacious, the bedrooms were really quite small. None of the rooms would have fitted our king size bed in with room to walk down both sides of the bed. Also, if we had converted the outbuilding, we wouldn't have had any outside storage, which is one of our requirements. So maybe it was for the best.
Property #2 - East of Nottingham
Property No. 2 had soooooo much potential. It has currently got more of an old lady hoarder vibe going on; but if you saw past all of that, it could have been a beaut.
It was a 4 bed detached house, a large brick barn, and a dutch barn, along with 2 acres. Perfect. Oh, and not a neighbour in sight!
It was over budget, but we have been discussing with my parents for a while about potentially doing a joint venture with them. The brick barns would have been converted into an annex for my parents, with plenty of space for everyone.
We all had successful viewings and were really excited about the prospect. The barns could be developed under Permitted Development, of which I learned a lot about by some fab ladies on instagram who had done similar things. I also went to the local council to have a pre-application planning advice meeting which was really helpful and positive.
We put in our first offer, a little below the asking price, which was eventually rejected. We then upped our offer to the asking price, which they said they were not going to accept at the time, but may consider later, as they "wanted to appear to be marketing it more". I mean, what even is that?! We had it before when we bought our first house that we put in offers at the asking price, only to be told the vendors wanted more. I think that's really unfair to market the property at a price you are not going to accept. Fair enough if you state "offers in excess of", but that wasn't the case here.
We were all passionate about this project, so we had to leave our offer on the table, while the vendors had their cake and ate it too.
A few weeks later, the estate agent called, to let us know that the dutch barn, which was listed as part of the sale, had a tenant in it, who after using it for 20+ years decided that he had rights to the barn and wasn't going to leave!
Eventually the vendor decided to sell the dutch barn to the tenant, and asked if our offer was still on the table. They expected us to maintain our offer, despite the fact a big part of the sale was now missing, and would be a nuisance as we wouldn't be able to control what the barn could be used for in the future. Whilst we were all devastated, we all knew it just wasn't going to work out. Gutted.
Others
We had viewings at several other properties - both properties for us, and potential joint venture projects with my parents. But nothing was fitting the bill.
Outcome
All the mean while, we had managed to sell our house in an incredible two days(!) of putting it on the market. We accepted an offer just over the asking price which was just incredible! (Note: we didn't push her price up, that was her opening offer as the level of interest was massive!)
After 5 months of having sold the house, and nothing on the horizon, we regrettably pulled out of selling our house. It felt like we were moving for the sake of moving - not moving because we had found the one. I hated the whole thing as it felt like we were stringing our buyer along, even though our desire to move was genuine, and it seemed like we just had a lot of bad luck.
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I still have a dabble on Rightmove every now again, but have settled back in to our yellow house for now. Now the renovation is pretty much complete (there is always more we could do, and I haven't documented on here some of what we have done), this has freed up funds to allow us to enjoy life a bit more and travel which has been great fun. More on that to follow!
