A False Start

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!