House moving: from the beginning

Ok, let's try to write a brief chronology of what's been happening with this house sale. It all starts on 10th July, when to my surprise I get a phone call offering me the job in Nottingham I'd interviewed for a few days before, and which I'd figured I'd failed. So I accept, and agree a starting date of 9th September as I'm due to attend the EUROCALL 2003 conference at the start of September. Two clear months in which to finish off the current work I'm doing, and sort out a house sale and move. Easy-peasy, you'd think.

Selling my house: the first moves

So my next move is to call local estate agents to get valuations. I get four in and get valuations ranging from 65k to a ludicrous 72k (this is a 2-bed end terrace in Hull, hardly a hot location). I pick the Halifax and decide to have a go at 68k. This is still an amazing jump on the 45k I bought the place for in November 2001, but I figure that any 'profit' is going to be swallowed up by the higher house prices in Nottingham. Shortly afterwards, on 22nd July, I go to the Nationwide and get them to ok a mortgage up to 75k.

Finding a house

So then I go house-hunting in Nottingham, requiring much searching on the Internet (on a 56k modem, mind) for estate agents in the area, whose websites range from ok to absolutely dire and unusable. In this I'm helped by my girlfriend, Jenny, who's well experienced in this house-buying lark and was, and is, an invaluable source of advice. It also helps that her sister and man live in Kimberley, just outside Nottingham, so we can kip over and get some local advice from them. I ring around estate agents, and get them to put me on their mailing and 'alert' lists and send me out house details, of which a stack arrive through my letterbox, as does a copy of the local Nottingham property rag. My criteria are simple:

• 90k max


• quiet area - no main or through roads


• 2-bed or better terrace or better


• within cycling range of the University

Searching, searching, ever searching....

Jenny and I - well, mainly her - go through the rag and the various sheets I've been sent, and pick out a few worth looking at within cycling range of the University. I ring estate agents and arrange viewings for two places, the others marked as possibles having already gone. Off we trot to Nottingham on Saturday 26th, around 1.75 hours drive down motorways. The first place, in Long Eaton, is a bit of a wash-out - small house, unsuitable area (smack under the E Midlands airport flight path doesn't help, unless I wanted to get back into planespotting).

Success

The second place I strike lucky: nice 3-bed semi, ex-council house on a mixed private/council estate, well-kept, nice folk, in Bilborough on the NW of Nottingham near, but not to near, the M1 and with plenty of greenery within reach. 80k which isn't too bad for Nottingham - perhaps the price reflects its ex-council house status, but that's no bother to me. I scamper off to the estate agent handling the sale, put an offer in at the asking price, and get it accepted. All going smoothly so far. Now I just have to sell my house in Hull...

Being a salesman

So commences a frantic couple of weeks of tidying up the house, garden and back yard (and having to keep it tidy every day), and showing people around on viewings. A few turned up in the first week after I chose the Halifax, who'd found the house on the WWW or in the Halifax window. I was expecting an absolute flood as soon as the house hit the property supplement of the local rag the following Thursday, but got told that the Halifax was unable to get the house in that week but would have to wait a week longer. My mood darkens, but I'm still optimistic.

Anyway, I must have gone through at least ten viewings, giving the same, increasingly-polished spiel. You certainly see a variety of people on viewings, not all of them folk you'd want to meet in everyday life, and it feels strange and intrusive to be showing them through what is, after all, your home. And in this case, a home I didn't want to leave. Because I've got to be around for viewings I can't go anywhere for more than a half-day in case the Halifax ring up with another possible punter, and my life revolves around the hard sell.

Wot, no offers?

I don't get a bite for over two weeks, despite some enthusiastic noises. Feedback from the estate agent indicates some reasonable, and some bizarre, reasons for not choosing the house. The main gripe is the lack of a bath, which I can understand as there's only a shower in the 'bathroom'. No-one says the price is too high, but I decide I'll maybe drop it. It's now over 2 weeks after I put the offer in for the Nottingham place and I worry that the sellers will pick someone else with ready cash or who've already sold. I also start to worry about timescales.

The word of an Afrikaner

Just as I'm about to ring the estate agent to drop the price, I show a slightly odd couple around. They're immediately and openly enthusiastic, and say they'll put in an offer. They tell me of a place they were going to buy in East Hull, and that they'd given their "word" to the seller that they'd buy, only to be asked by the estate agent if they'd go any higher, which made them lose their interest. This sounded a little strange, but I'm new to all this so I shrug it off. They brim over with enthusiasm for my place, and they are cash buyers, so I go all cooperative and even let them borrow the old survey report. They go away, and shortly afterwards the estate agent says they're offering 66k, 2k below asking. Ok, a bit of a disappointment, but I was going to drop the price anyway so what the hell. Plus they've got ready cash so the sale should whizz ahead.

On the strength of the offer, I go to the Nationwide and arrange a mortgage for the Nottm house, then engage the same Briefs (Lockings) who're selling my house to buy the Nottm one. Time scale? The Halifax reckon 6-8 weeks average after searches start to when you move in, so we're already looking at mid- to late September, so I'm looking at 3 weeks renting. Hmmm. Not nice when I'm up to my ears in debt, but I figure I can pay it all off with a little cash (a few K) I'll keep back from the house sale.

The odd couple, Roy and Sonja Wilson, the guy looking like Tweedledee, the woman a wizened late 50s South African (you know, where sex is what coal comes in), an Afrikaner who came here in the early 70s, ring me up and ask to come to the house to measure up, so I say "fine". On talking to them it turns out they live in Bridlington, have already sold their house, and say the buyer's in no rush to move in. They'd only lived there a few months, having been "forced" out of their house in York because they'd had an endowment mortgage which was falling some 10k short of paying off the loan, so they flogged up and used the proceeds to pay it off and bought a place in Brid. They also said that they'd considered moving to Portugal, but the house was too small, then to France, but the regulations were too stringent, then to Greece, but the guy handling it was shady. All a bit Walter Mitty, but what the fuck - as long as they're cash up front with me I'm cool. I don't have to like or respect the buyers, even though it helps and I do try to.

Then we talk about moving dates, and they're wanting to move into my house in early September. There's a fart's chance in a hurricane of that as I can't move to Nottingham if I've not completed on the house there. Had I plenty of money I could move out, store my stuff in Nottingham, and B&B; it until the house completes. But I don't have that sort of money. We leave it up in the air, with them promising to talk to their Brief and me promising to talk to the Halifax about dates. Next thing I know they ring me to say their Brief's agreed a completion date for their house on the 29th August! This even though they said the buyer was "in no hurry". I can't move out by then, so they say they can rent a caravan and store stuff for a few weeks, but when I say that, according to the Halifax, we're talking late September at the earliest for a move they start banging on about the expense of renting and storage. I bite my lip - surely they've brought those ex's on themselves by arranging an early move-out date?

Bending over backwards

Anyway, I'm still eager to keep them as buyers, because I've - foolishly, trusting to their "word" - taken the house off the market and am no longer taking viewings, so I've no other offers. So I contact Nottm Uni to see if they'll cough up for storage ex's, as if they do so I'm willing to move out mid-September to accommodate the Odd Couple. I email in my request (I've still not received an answer, not even a 'fuck off, you must be joking' message), and the next morning get a call from Tweedledee to tell me that they've found another place in Hull which their Brief assures them they can move into in two weeks - they really must be awa' with the fairies if they believe that cobblers - and that they're withdrawing their offer. So much for their fabled "word".

The moral of the story of my buyers is: don't take your house off the market until you see the colour of the buyer's money. Keep holding viewings and listen to offers until your buyer actually commits some serious cash to the house.

So why not rent?

Long and tedious and involved, isn't it? If not for landlords/ladies being the most repulsive and miserly section of the petit-bourgeois then there'd be a lot to say for renting - cough up your rent and deposit and in you go. Trouble is, six months later out you go again if the landperson feels like it, and even if s/he graciously allows you to stay it's one month's notice either way after that. If that's security I really am a hamster. As for public housing - forget it, unless you've been on the waiting list since mammoths roamed the Earth and have a list of 'disadvantages' longer than an elephant's dick. No, unlike other European countries (in Italy, for instance, renting is the norm), renting just isn't a serious option in the UK - if you can, you have to buy a house, or be forever at the mercy of penny-pinching landpersons.

To be continued...

Ok, that about brings me up to date - over a month's weblog entries condensed into one. Back to the present on the next, hopefully an awful lot shorter, entry.

Well, here we go. Everyone's into this weblog thingy (I flatly refuse to use the horrible word blog) so I might as well get stuck in.

Who am I? At work, a web developer (soon to be Learning Technologist) of some 12 years experience in UK Higher Education, firstly at the University of Hull then, after they made me redundant thanks to external funding for my post being pulled (thanks a heap, Prof Mike "Pineapple" Kelly of www.lang.ltsn.ac.uk), as a 'freelancer' (trans: working for crumbs on small websites and seeing the overdraft swell), and shortly at the University of Nottingham's School of Nursing.

As a person, I have a pretty damn varied field of interests, and go through a wide variety of moods, these days mostly of darker shades. But that's another day, another weblog.

Right now, my major concern is no longer finding a job, but finding somewhere to live. I'm trying to sell my house in Hull and buy one in Nottingham, but am running into the usual house-buyer's blues. In subsequent entries I'll try to detail the aggro involved in house buying, not to particularly enlighten anyone who's experienced in the so-called 'property market', but for two audiences:

1. People who are thinking of getting on to the 'housing ladder' but don't really know what's involved.


2. Myself in the future so I can remind myself of the sheer time-consuming, blood-pressure-raising aggro involved in house transactions.
   

Until today I had buyers for my house, but they pulled out for reasons I might go into later. I'm committed to buying a house in Nottingham, but need to flog mine first, so chances are, even if a buyer magically materialises tomorrow (unlikely) I'll be waiting until mid- to end-October to move into the Nottingham house. In the meantime I've got to find some digs to live in as my job in Nottingham starts on 9th September - this can either be easy but not cheap, or cheap but not easy. Either way, I'm going to have to cough up for my existing mortgage and rent for digs, and I'm not very liquid right now...

Ah well, more in later days.