So we spent the whole weekend ecstatic at the thought of having exchanged, only on the Monday to get a call from the agent asking why it hadn't happened.
Spending the week at home in between jobs gave me the opportunity to get on to it straight away, well, in between climbing ladders and painting the exterior of the current house. Apparently, now we were in a position where the transfer deeds were to our solicitors satisfaction, her attention had turned to our mortgage offer... were we currently in the process of completing the sale of our current property... not whilst I was half way through smartening the place up we weren't! A condition in the mortgage offer indicated that we should completely repay our existing mortgage prior to taking up the new one. Where was that winning lottery ticket!
I was straight on to the lender, explaining that we intended to market Montague Road as soon as we completed on the land purchase. The Underwriter wasn't sure, but would discuss with her Manager as it placed us outside their standard lending policy. Waiting on tender hooks, I decided to get on with some inside tasks whilst awaiting the call back. About 40 minutes later it came, whilst outside their policy, they were happy to continue to lend, but stipulated they could not extend beyond the monies agreed until we had sold Montague Road... phew! That was all fine and planned for.
The following morning the new offer appeared, I quickly looked through it and sure enough the condition regarding repaying the existing mortgage had been altered. Back to chasing our solicitor. At about 11am she called me to highlight and new condition, "Existing Property Rented Out", they were expecting us to rent out Montague Road? Ok, I had the underwriter's name and I was straight back on the phone. Quickly she realised her mistake and agreed to email both myslef and our solicitor. By 12:45, we had the email and it was a green light... though it wasn't until 4pm that I received the confirmation that exchange had indeed occurred.
I'm pretty sure there's a few extra grey hairs amongst the blobs of white masonry paint!
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Friday, 27 March 2009
It's really happening!
It started with a missed call from the vendors estate agent, then an email from our solicitor. She had indicated that everything was in place ready for an exchange. I was still under the assumption that there were the outstanding access right issues, so replied asking whether conditions had been agreed and that this would just be a conditional exchange.
Off I went to lunch, thinking that would be it - though I'd just sat down to start tucking in to my lunch when my phone rang. Guessing it was related to my email I answered, to discover the access rights had actually been completed and the exchange was to be unconditional with a completion date planned for April 24th! Not only was today going to be a celebratory drink for my last day in the current job, but it was also going to be celebrating 6 months of getting this land purchase completed!
However, now we needed to get the deposit transferred, so I had to head into the closest branch of our bank... it all seems to be happening now, let's hope the planning permission doesn't take quite as long.
Off I went to lunch, thinking that would be it - though I'd just sat down to start tucking in to my lunch when my phone rang. Guessing it was related to my email I answered, to discover the access rights had actually been completed and the exchange was to be unconditional with a completion date planned for April 24th! Not only was today going to be a celebratory drink for my last day in the current job, but it was also going to be celebrating 6 months of getting this land purchase completed!
However, now we needed to get the deposit transferred, so I had to head into the closest branch of our bank... it all seems to be happening now, let's hope the planning permission doesn't take quite as long.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
The end of the beginning?
First a quick introduction... My wife and I have been together for almost 10 years now, we discovered early on we had several common interests, one of which was to build our own home. It's only been in more recent years that we have found ourselves in the financial position to start seriously looking for a plot for this dream.
In fact, we started looking around in 2006, the height of the property boom, with land being bought up at a dramatic pace by developers. Fortunately in July 2008 we were made aware of a plot quite local to us, this was it we thought, now or never!
After a little bit of haggling over price, a holiday in between and a little bit of confusion caused by the usual estate agent wranglings, we agreed a price and had our offer accepted in September 2008.
Here we are toward the end of March 2009 and we're on the verge of exchanging contracts... Hooray!
Why the length of time in between? Well, first there was the need for the seller to get planning permission to allow us to secure our self-build mortgage, that took its time, and again came with a few misunderstandings; did it need to be outline, detailed, what about the fact that it didn't represent exactly what we intended to build? Then there was the usual drawn out dealings with solicitors and an interesting rights of way issue.
Once the exchange has happened, we can get on with the real business of designing our future home... the end of the beginning is upon us.
What happens next should be fun and what's written here will hopefully be frank, showing the highlights and lowlights of doing it yourself and insightful for those interested in doing their own self-build.
In fact, we started looking around in 2006, the height of the property boom, with land being bought up at a dramatic pace by developers. Fortunately in July 2008 we were made aware of a plot quite local to us, this was it we thought, now or never!
After a little bit of haggling over price, a holiday in between and a little bit of confusion caused by the usual estate agent wranglings, we agreed a price and had our offer accepted in September 2008.
Here we are toward the end of March 2009 and we're on the verge of exchanging contracts... Hooray!
Why the length of time in between? Well, first there was the need for the seller to get planning permission to allow us to secure our self-build mortgage, that took its time, and again came with a few misunderstandings; did it need to be outline, detailed, what about the fact that it didn't represent exactly what we intended to build? Then there was the usual drawn out dealings with solicitors and an interesting rights of way issue.
Once the exchange has happened, we can get on with the real business of designing our future home... the end of the beginning is upon us.
What happens next should be fun and what's written here will hopefully be frank, showing the highlights and lowlights of doing it yourself and insightful for those interested in doing their own self-build.
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