Happy Birthday, Dad!

Well, it would be if you were still with us...

A bitter-sweet day (in some ways): I (still) miss my adored father, but we did splash out and buy ourselves the biggest present ever!  I'm sure he would be fantastically happy for us - I've finally become a second-time buyer after 20 years in the first-time home, and it's a house, too.  There's going to be more sadness, too, as he can't come and do the building work for me, but I think he would be pleased I've returned to the countryside and already feel "settled".

At last:

We've had what has seemed a stressful two and a half years, but we've finally bought a house.

Three years ago we moved out of London to Maidstone so that we were better located for our search for a house in the country (in Kent: nice countryside, pretty good access to London; great for the Channel Tunnel), and in a better "position" to move quickly when we found the house we wanted [no flat to sell, financing ready].  We'd already sold my flat, and found tenants for David's [keeping a toe-hold in London (and hopefully it will eventually be an investment!) in case we ever want to move back].

We started house-hunting in earnest in April 2012 [having earlier re-mortgaged the rental property to help with the financing], and have looked at I don't know how many properties.  Back then the market was still in the doldrums, but no-one had told the sellers that their properties hadn't continued to rise in price in a falling market, so an awful lot of places seemed to be "remaindered" - apart from the price, of course!

The longest time we'd seen a house on the market was since 2008 [and this wasn't in 2012 when we started looking (we managed to up our budget in 2013), but mid 2013] - so over five years. We know that all properties will sell, and if they don't there is only one thing that is guaranteed to be wrong, and that is the price.  We've seen an awful lot of dross [people bought a fixer-upper, couldn't afford to fix it up, let their family wreck it (because it was going to be fixed up) and then had to sell because of divorce] - if you haven't touched a place with 1980's wallpaper, and prices are going down, we know it would be nice if you could sell it for the price of two houses, but you are wasting everyone's time trying to do that!

Apart from Christmas and holidays [although we have house-hunted-by-proxy a couple of times from France; thanks, internet!], we have had fewer than a handful of weekends house-hunting-free; it's been an exhausting process.

In early November 2013 we engaged a house-search agent, who has been fantastic and shown us places we wouldn't have found [as well as loads that we'd ruled out already], and never lost patience when a place was perfect 'on paper' but rubbish in reality and was supportive and understanding when we were on the verge of despairing.  Claire, you've been wonderful!

As has Helle, our fantastic solicitor, and Rob the wonder-working mortgage broker - thank you all, guys!

I'm fairly sure my various health issues have been caused/exacerbated by the stress/stuck-in-limbo feelings [I've probably overdone it at the gym in trying to work off some of the frustration/to feel I'm 'getting somewhere'], and I'm really hopeful my sleep will improve and the trigeminal neuralgia will vanish without a trace...

Oh, and I think the whole process (and my health problems) had been made somewhat more stressful by the repeated threats of redundancy David has been under for the last 18 months?  At times we've discussed calling off the whole search, especially after his entire team [department?] was terminated, leaving him the only person remaining - ostensibly to wind up the business left behind, and then who knows?  'Keeping the faith' has been tricky at times.

Anyway, that's all behind us now.

We finally managed to find a house that is the full 'package' [no, the house is not currently particularly nice, but it can be made a lot better, and the quiet location/wide plot/woodland/wildflower meadow (well, it will be a meadow when we've cleared the saplings that have been allowed to grow unfettered for 5-10 years) are just what we were looking for] in a horribly rising market!

I think the Mortgage Market Review has slowed things down immensely [except, of course, vendors' expectations!], but that didn't kick in until we had had a tender accepted on "Brookside".  So, too late to help us, but in time to completely bugger up our Agreed in Principle mortgage/financing calculations!

We've certainly seen a lot of properties return to the market that had been "sold" [indeed the semi in Pluckley where we were gazumped was offered to us again, after the buyers were turned down for two loans; ("Brookside" is a better package, although that house was the dream house, although the footpath there was putting us off - clearly a large number of people think the land attached to the house is a dog latrine/exercise ground), it's still on the market].

We've spoken with three mortgage brokers, who all agreed the financing we wanted stacked up, and was "do-able" as far as the mortgage companies were concerned - but that didn't deter Halifax from turning us down without a reason less than a week after agreeing to finance the purchase, and Santander from turning us down after over two months of shilly-shallying!  Thankfully someone at Woolwich wants to lend money - otherwise the only people able to buy would be developers/lottery winners?

I'm so glad that the hunt is over - now we just need to do some work to make the place live-able!

The roof leaks, the back door's been bashed in, as has one of the windows, mushrooms are growing from the floorboards in the bedroom, the kitchen has a sink & a solid-fuel boiler (!) but not much else [who needs a floor?!], but it's going to be great with a lot of elbow grease & some professional help...

The real work starts here, and the whole house-hunting saga will be quickly forgotten, I know, so we are so pleased!

A big, huge, thank you to everyone who has helped us in the process of finding and buying, and to our friends for all their support and continued finger-crossing through the various asking-price-offer-refusals and gazumpings, but the biggest thanks of all to David for never getting impatient/cross with me and issuing an ultimatum when it seemed as though I was searching for a unicorn!

We are currently exhausted, but very happy, and the prospect of having an "our" home [as opposed to my living in "David's" flat or him living in "my" flat] after only 15 years is really giving me a massive injection of enthusiasm, as is the prospect of all those trees (only the saplings that should never have got past a seedling; the oaks and hornbeams are safe) to chop down...

HURRAH!