Buying Our New Home

You are probably aware that we have recently moved home. It seemed to take forever from when we decided to sell and when we actually moved. Our flat in London was shared ownership so we had to abide by the housing association’s rules regarding the sale of our home.

When it came to looking for a new property we relied heavily on the internet simply because the area we were looking to move to was around fifty miles away. It just wasn’t feasible to journey up and browse in estate agent’s windows to keep up to date with new homes coming onto the market.

When we began our search we knew we were looking for a three bed house, which was a non-negotiable. A garage was something we would’ve loved for extra storage but not an essential. It was also important that we moved to an area that had good commuter links to London so we decided on one particular area to focus our search.

Daily I would search online for houses that were in our budget and that met our requirements. If something came up that looked good I’d give the estate agent a call. That moved on to calling other estate agents directly to see if they had any properties matching our criteria.

We spent a fair few weekends travelling to view houses, sometimes only one property for the day which sometimes felt like a waste of a journey. But as the houses with our preferences and budget were selling like hotcakes, we had to move fast.

 

There was one house that I particularly fell in love with (just from the online photos & description) after spending an evening searching through estate agent websites. When I called them to book an appointment to view the following morning, I was told that the viewing day was already fully booked. It sounds ridiculous but I was devastated, I and the other half wanted the chance to view it. Our names were put on a waiting list if anyone else dropped out but I didn't expect to hear from them. To my shock and delight I did receive a call a few days later and we booked in to go and have look.

We knew prior to the viewing that we would be making an offer and we did. One of the big selling points was the garden, it was huge and would've been ideal for Eliot. It also had a garage for our ever growing clutter. Unfortunately we didn't get that house as the owner decided the safest bet was to go with a first time buyer even though our flat had been sold.

 

Then one Saturday morning I received a call from a different estate agent about a house that I'd enquired about several weeks earlier. It had been sold but was now back on the market. We went round to have a look the next day and decided to make an offer. We completely missed a great deal of things that weren't great with the house as you may have already read about. Our offer was accepted and we really felt it was meant to be after the time we had spent looking. We're still working on it now!

My lovely friend Danielle helping with some DIY

 

Obviously with moving home comes plenty of expense, solicitor's, fees, furniture removal costs and estate agent charges. We had to cover the costs of the housing association's solicitors and pay them a percentage of the selling price. If you sell through an agent you are required to pay their fees.

An online company who offer a range of upfront packaged fees are My Online Estate Agent. Unlike local estate agents you may find on the high street, My Online Estate Agent offer their professional services with  lower commission rates.  They recently carried out some research which highlighted that British homeowners could have saved a whopping £3.5 billion if they had sold with an online estate agent  in 2014. My parent's have been um'ing and ar'ing about selling their home for years now. One of the reasons they've put it off is due to costs involved. As neither of them are internet savvy I will be helping them put their place on the market through an online agent when they finally decide to take the plunge!

 

Have you saved the £££'s by selling through an online agent?

Feeling Meh!

 

I haven't blogged for over a week, mainly because I haven't felt like it and I've been in a very 'meh' mood. So I thought I'd do a little update of what's been going on.

 Last week I did my first two days of supply teaching, which were much better than I'd ever imagined. The first school had written on the whiteboard in the staffroom 'Welcome to Lucinda Turner who is teaching in year two and three today' which was very unexpected! Staff can be unfriendly towards supply teachers (not necessarily because they mean to be but they have too much darn work to be getting on with). Not a bad start to my first day as a supply teacher at all. The following day I taught in another school covering nursery, reception and year one. I had a good day there too! 

On Friday we went to look at another house which we already knew we would be making an offer on. We also knew there would be competition as there were eleven other people viewing. The selling point for us had to be the garden, it was an amazing space for a little one to play in and had the potential to extend. We put our offer in on Monday (my birthday) as the estate agent who was dealing with the property wasn't in the office over the weekend. Later on we increased our offer as we knew there had been higher offers. Shortly after the OH called to tell me our offer had been refused, even though it was higher than the offer the vendor had accepted. According to the estate agent the vendor was concerned about accepting an offer from  buyers that were in a chain. To be fair we're not really in a chain, the person who is buying our flat is a friend and first time buyer, their mortgage has been accepted and we've been given a provisional exchange date. This was a total birthday bummer for me. We made a larger offer on Tuesday morning which was also rejected. It just completely contradicted what the estate agent had told us at that viewing, that the vendor 'wanted as much money as she could get'. Perhaps it just wasn't meant to be and something better will come along (that's what I've been telling myself anyway).

Tuesday and Wednesday I did a couple more days of supply teaching which again went ok again much to my relief!

Tomorrow Eliot has his overdue immunisations which I'm not looking forward to as he is a lot more aware of everything since the last time he had injections. I've had about three offers for work tomorrow but turned them down after feeling guilty about not being there when Eliot has his jabs. Even though I need the money I knew I would just be feeling guilty about not being there for Eliot, as his mum I feel I need to be there.