HH6 - 28.05.13 - The Old Old People's Home

I was thinking of calling Helle - just to warn her that there may [hopefully!] be a call from the vendor's solicitor of the Old Old People's Home, and to put her in the picture about the house/purchase process - and I have been listing all the things that I wanted to say to her; a list of "pros" & "cons", so here it is...

Cons:

• The bid has to go to the estate agent's partner organisation, and then to the financial consultant for the trust, and then onto a committee meeting of the trust for acceptance [hopefully! - there's going to be a lot of that, I suspect] or refusal [hopefully not].  I may have the organisations names wrong (owing to tinnitus/deafness remaining from an ear infection, coupled with woolly-headedness/deafness in the other ear from the stinking head cold my wracking cough has improved into), but I haven't misunderstood the chain of people the message has to be passed through/approved by.  And I'm not underestimating the time that will take!
• The cellar has wet & dry rot, and penetrating damp
• The "library" (or dining room?) has wet rot and penetrating damp
• Subsistence to the porch has led to this coming away from the house; this has been actioned, but is awaiting a sign-off from the structural engineers.  There are (beautiful) roses at the ends of tie-bars all around the top of the first floor, so we can see work has been done
• One of the chimney stacks leans; this has evidence of previous remedial work (I'm guessing that was unsuccessful, or maybe just didn't correct the lean?) and will need to be taken down and re-built
• Some of the windows show signs of rot, and may need to be replaced
• As it's a former care home [I just think the Old Old People's Home sounds nicer/better/more friendly, so that's why I'm calling it that], there may be change-of-use planning permission required
• All the doors have been replaced with fire doors
• All the downstairs fireplaces have been ripped out, leaving just brick openings [oh, and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen which has no flue - we not sure that's even legal, let alone safe?]
• The house is not listed, but has some other kind of "special"-ness with regard to how the planning department views it and potential changes to the building [sorry for the lack of clarity of terms - see brain-fuzz, supra]
• The changes made to the house over the years/decades mean it doesn't 'flow', and the middle of the house is very dark
• Not to mention the whole place needs masses of work - new bathroom/shower room/loo/kitchen & decorating throughout
• It's probably overpriced [the agents have had "masses" of offers way below the asking price (but all in the same ball-park - that's normally a pretty accurate market valuation of a property)], but the only way of achieving the purchase is to offer the full asking price, so it is what it is.  It's a place that could become such a wonderful home, so we're taking that decision, and Rob reckons replacing the doors and tidying the garden would bring the value up to the asking price...

Pros:

• It could be a gorgeous house, with a lot of love, care, attention and time [and money/sweat!]
• It's got all the outside space we could ask for, and the "bones" of a good garden [mature trees will give it structure, if you don't show up with a bulldozer (a previous offer was accepted from a bloke who wanted to do just that, but his planning intentions were firmly squashed, so, luckily for us, he pulled out)]
• It's down a quiet, narrow lane in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, so is unlikely to suffer from (what we call between ourselves) the "Chilmington Green Effect" - it's not suddenly going to be on the edge of a new town of 15,000 houses [and we know how quickly those edges blur/spread]
• The structure looks to be sound: nasty concrete roof tiles (so newish roof), but at least they're not red; institutional use should mean the wiring is sound; the septic tank and heating/oil tank are relatively new, so no action is needed there for now [the radiators are ugly, and in the "wrong" places, and so is the oil tank, but wishing-for-change and urgent-remedial-action-required are worlds apart, and all houses have a wish list!]
• Our deposit is in place and mortgage financing is agreed in principle, so should be "good to go" as soon as the committee accepts our offer [hopefully!]
• The offer that didn't proceed from the garden-destroyer should (according to Rob, the estate agent) mean that all the vendor's paperwork is in place and up to date
• And did I mention that the place could be wonderful?  And I've been looking for a project [no quibbles here about it being too small of a challenge!]?

So, 13 cons to 6 pros - on paper, it looks like one to pass on, but the numbers don't paint the whole picture - it could be a dream home, and everything we do would add value, so the risk of overpaying (and so not being able to sell should we need to) would diminish over time...

Helle is out today, so I have another 24 hours to think of even more things to bombard her with!

Oh, and did I mention that David's entire team has been made redundant?  [He's in a "redundancy consultancy period" or somesuch (did I mention cerebral failure above?).]  There's a very good chance of his employers finding him another role, but does it not seem like madness to be offering at the top of our budget for a house that needs massive amounts of work?

I think we're crazy, but I know that we could spend the rest of our lives kicking ourselves for not "going for it" if we didn't try to buy the place...  [I've regretted much more the things I've not done than those I've attempted and haven't 'paid off', so it is a considered decision.]

So, we're choosing 'taking a risk' over 'lifetime of regret'; and I'm sure that's a decision we won't regret.