House News!

If you read my post: House Hunting – The Highs and Lows! a few weeks ago you’ll know that we found a house we really liked. Here’s an exciting update of what’s happened since…

Back in February we had a second viewing on what I like to refer to as ‘House number 4’. My boyfriend and I loved the house so after the viewing we went through our checklist and the pros and cons. The house ticked every single box and we couldn’t think of any cons at all. The house has a driveway for two cars, is on a quiet street, has three bedrooms, a second reception room, a garden, and it is in a great location. It also had a new roof eight years ago, a new kitchen about four years ago and a new bathroom just over two years ago. We could both see ourselves living there and we knew it was the house for us. We decided to take the plunge and made an offer that same night!

We decided to go in a bit lower for our first offer, we hadn’t anticipate finding something so soon into our search and this meant our money was a little tighter and budget a little smaller than we first planned. Our first offer was rejected as we thought but our mortgage advisor had prepared us for this, he gave us some helpful information and we spent the night recalculating what we could afford to pay. Saturday morning my boyfriend left for work and it was up to me to start the negotiations. I rang up, put in our revised offer and waited…

A couple of hours later, the phone rang… It was a PPI call centre! My heart was pounding and I was so disappointed it wasn’t the estate agent. They called about an hour later; the lady on the phone sounded a little deflated so I already anticipated another rejection. To my surprise she seemed to be doing a Simon Cowell style bad news/good news twist. She told me our offer was lower than the vendors bottom line BUT they really liked us and so they had accepted our offer! They were also willing to take it off the market and cancel the viewings that were scheduled for the next week.

I was absolutely ecstatic and completely shocked that we had got the house on our second offer for £6500 under the asking price! The lovely lady on the phone told me that as it was Saturday the official acceptance would come through on Monday and that the listing would also be changed early the following week. As soon as I was off the phone I rang my boyfriend, he couldn’t believe the news either; he got straight on to our mortgage advisor who got the ball rolling on the mortgage and suddenly it all felt very real! After years of saving, we had finally found our house!

Since then, we have been going through the various motions of buying a house. We have instructed our solicitor, had our mortgage offer accepted, had the valuation and survey done and we have just had confirmation of the chain. We are at the bottom of a four house chain but the estate agents seem quite confident that everything is moving along nicely, all houses involved have had offers the offers accepted, all the surveys have been done and as a result, everything is on schedule. It’s all very exciting but having said that, it’s now a waiting game hoping that nothing goes wrong. I’ve heard so many stories of people’s sales falling through and it’s nerve wracking knowing that it’s completely out of our hands now.

Despite not wanting to get my hopes up too much I’ve still got carried away imagining what I will to do to the house. I’ve created a Pinterest board for each room and we have visited a few furniture shops so we also have an idea what couch and dining table we want. We are planning on going back to the house in the next few weeks to start measuring up ready for when we can start ordering those larger bits of furniture. We will probably wait until we have exchanged contracts as that will give us a bit more security that everything will go ahead. Until then, I’m keeping everything crossed that it all goes smoothly. Ideally, I’d love to be in before my 30th birthday in June.

The plan for the next couple of months is to start clearing out the house that we live in. I’ve already started selling some bits and pieces on Shpock and Facebook buy and sell pages. I’m also planning on doing a car boot sale once the weather improves which will help to clear some space in my spare room. All the cash raised is going into my smash jar and we are going to use this money to buy a special piece of furniture for the new house (although we are tempted to use it to fully stock the booze cupboard). I think we will decide once we smash it open and find out know how much we have saved.

If anyone is on a similar house buying journey, feel free to get in touch with any queries. I’ve had so much help and advice from people who have recently bought and it’s been so reassuring. I can also recommend our mortgage advisor to anyone in the Greater Manchester area; he has been absolutely brilliant and he is completely free!

Happy Saturday,

Thrifty Clair x