Things No One Told You About Being a Home Owner

There is a lot of pressure to get that first step on the property ladder - the theory goes that if you're renting you're only paying someone else's mortgage, so you're just forking our 'dead' money into a bottomless pit. 

There's a lot of focus about how you're best to get that foot on the property-rung, but what about after you've picked up the keys?  Hubby and I have been in our first home for just over a year now, and we've discovered that the learning doesn't stop after you complete.

Redo-It-Yourself

What happens when you move in to your new home and discover that the kitchen sink is rotten, or that someone had sawn through the floorboards in the spareroom or that only thing stopping the water-tank from crashing through the ceiling is one small plastic crate?  We uncovered all of the above in the last 12 months.  It also seems that the people we bought our house from had a thing for No-More-Nails.  No job too big for No-More-Nails... including sticking the bathroom light to the ceiling, fixing curtain rails, hanging curtain rails...

A little part of your New-Home-Owner brain makes you assume that your lovely new home will be shiney and new... the bubble quickly bursts when you're scrambling around in your loft trying to build a wooden frame around the header tank.

Be prepared to flex your DIY muscles - never assume that the people who were there before you didn't cut corners.

Maintaining boundaries

Your survey, and your solicitor will have told you which boarders you have responsibility for, so you're prepared to replace fence panels if they blow over.  But what you might not expect is your neighbour to complain to a door-to-door hedge-trimmer-man that the evergreens in your backyard are interrupting their Sky signal...

Tradesmen: It's not what you know, it's who you know

Sometimes no matter how much Googling you do, or Youtube videos you watch, the task remains beyond your DIY skills.  When that happens, your only option is to call in the big-guns.  But where do you start?  If you're like me and move to a new area away from family, how do you know where to turn to?

I have to recommend sites such as Mybuilder - you post the job you need completing on a board, and interested parties can 'bid' for your business (you can read reviews and see photos of previous work), all without sharing your personal details - or Trust A Trader where you can find the details of recommended tradesmen and women.  I've found a fantastic plasterer and a super double-glazer - and I'm not afraid to ask for more help when I need it.

I guess I really am a grown up.

We're going to be homeless

How I wish I could turn back the clock and take my own advice. How I wish I hadn't been persuaded by the experts or believed them when they said everything was fine...

We needed to reduce our notice period to get the sale through. We negotiated.  We got out of it.  All so we agreed a completion date.

How I wished I hadn't.

We're now up the foul-smelling creek without a paddle.

The day we were meant to exchange (in fact after our solicitor attempted exchange twice that day) we got a phone call from the estate agent saying there was a bit of a problem with the seller's onward purchase. Cutting a long boring story short (trust me, we've heard the estate agent go through it enough times, as if repeating the story makes us feel better), a couple of major issues came up on their local authority searches and they need a certificate to get their mortgage. It's going to take 8 weeks to get. We only have 4 weeks left on our tenacy...

And that's before we even start to think about the affect on the rest of the chain...

So why on earth have they been chasing for exchange?!

They weren't ready!

I don't believe for one minute that they have only just become aware of this... they've not even sorted the mortgage! 

I'm angry. I'm upset.

I'm homeless.

Why I hate buying a house

You may have gathered that Hubby and I are trying to get on the property ladder. We've moved a few times in the past 5 years so the whole packing up everything isn't that  uncommon to me, but this is the first time we're not simply moving into a rental. I appologise if I'm sounding a little bit like a stuck record but, this should be an exciting time... in fact at the moment I'm wavering between being totally non-plussed and hating it. Here's why:

Everything takes so long
We were lucky, we found the house we wanted back in June. It's now nearly October and we've still not exchanged.  It could all still fall down around our ears like, well, a house [of cards].

Solicitors
Our solicitors, their solicitors... both are just frustrating.  We went for a large online conveyancing firm to save a few pennies, and to be fair they've been okay... but they skate around giving advice. They don't ever seem to want to commit to a course of action.  I guess that's what you get for saving pennies.  The seller's solicitors on the other hand they are complete lemons.  They love giving advice. Shockingly poor advice. For example they have advised their client to not allow us to come for a pre-exchange visit.  I mean we're spending a ridiculous amount of money (only all our life savings) and the last time we saw the house was two months ago. We just have to hope that they've not knocked a wall down or been having wild house parties in the meantime.  We very nearly walked away from the whole sale...

People coming to poke around
So we've given notice of our intent to move to our landlord... I know I said we wouldn't,  but we were meant to have exchanged this week (it didn't happen as, surprise surprise, everything takes so long!) so we tried to talk hypothetically to our landlord... and it's all just run away from us. And now we've got people coming to our flat this weekend to have a poke around to see if they want to move in. Oh god.

Part time evening work (unpaid)
Both Hubby and I work a full time week. In fact I'm often working in the evenings and weekends to keep on top of everything... but somehow we have to try and squeeze in trips to mortgage advisors, calls with solicitors,  reading legal documents, shuffling paperwork... not to mention the seemingly endless toing-and-froing with the seller's estate agent. So I do a full day at work,  have a 2 hour commute home, and then have to start working all over again. It's exhausting.  It's also particularly challenging when estate agents and solicitors only work office hours!

Insurance
We're buying our first house. Our family home. It's the start of something very exciting.  Somewhere where Hubby and I can start a family. Redecorate.  Get a cat. (Not necessarily in that order.) There's so much life ahead.  But before we get our foot through the front door we have to talk about our dream ending.  I know it's the sensible thing... but discussing your partners untimely demise or the fact that either one of us could become critically ill does take the romance out of the adventure.

I know I'm whingeing. It's just that I'm finding it such a hard journey. I can not understand how people regularly  remortgage and move house. It's not pleasant.  Everything seems to just get put on hold. You empty your piggy bank which makes everything seem a lot more expensive. You can't commit to anything because you may be packing or moving or trying to squeeze in some extra paper work... to be honest I'm looking forward to moving in and getting on with living.

House Buying: Why I refuse to risk homelessness

There's a big difference between a house and a home.  And today I realised, that I'd rather lose a house, then ever risk the stability of a home.

But then maybe I'm beung unreasonable?

You may be aware that Hubby and I are trying to buy our first house. We've had our offer accepted.  We've sorted the mortgage. We've had the survey done. Problem is, we haven't handed in our notice on our rented flat, and today we find out that delaying two months may be a deal breaker.

For those who have never been in the buying process,  you don't legally need to buy a house, nor the seller sell you the house until you have exchanged contracts... a position we hoped to be in next week. Once we had things signed and sealed we'd hand in our notice.

Personally, I think this is reasonable.

It might be longer than average gap between exchange and completion but as we live no where near relatives, if we somehow end up with no roof over our heads (which is possible if the sellers pull out and we've given notice prior to exchange), to put it bluntly,  we'd be screwed... Bunking down on Park benches and curling up in our own cars becomes genuine possibilities.

But it's like talking to a wall to get the estate agent to grasp this fact.  I'd rather risk losing the house we're trying to buy, than end up without a home.

On top of that, our first-time-buyer wallets are already stretched to breaking point to reach an agreeable sale price, so moving into the house early and still paying rent on our flat just isn't an option (no matter how many times the estate agent 'strongly recommends' it). 

The thing is, I could almost understand the agents insistence on us moving faster if we hadn't mentioned it before.  But we did. I have 2 separate emails to prove it. And I'm genuinely not sure how much clearer the sentence 'We will not hand our notice in until exchange, and then we have to give 2 months notice' can be... so goodness knows why all of this has come as a surprise.

This whole situation is making me angry as the agent's attempts to smooth things over - not by fully recognising his mistake (oh no, apparently he simply 'misunderstood') - involved asking me if I would negotiate with my landlord to let me out of sone of our notice period.

Brilliant.  You don't want to explain to your client that you mucked up, so instead of taking a deep breath and having an awkward conversation you'd rather send the buyers to do the dirty work.  I'm sorry.  I refuse.

I'm starting to wonder whether this latest debarcle may just end up being the straw that breaks the camel's back... I'm honestly now on the cusp of not caring.

What will be will be...

We're Buying

So I've been at bit AWOL recently.  I do feel bad about it. The thing is Hubby and I have been spending every spare minute preparing for the next big step. Buying. 

The thing about Buying (the capital is mandatory obviously) is that it turns everything on it's head. We're first time buyers and the whole process is like wading through treacle.  None of our family have purchased recently so we've had to do our best - and at best, it has been very much the case of blind-leading-the-blind.

We've analysed our savings, spoken to 3 different mortgage advisors, endlessly Googled the house buying process, registered for countless estates agents... all before the actual viewing. And boy, isn't there sone real variety on the market?! We saw one place that essentially just needed tearing down and starting over. A lick of paint and marketing the property as 'an investment opportunity' was no where near enough to put the poor thing out of its misery.

But we've finally had an offer accepted. It's stretched us to the limit (we're going to be hand washing clothes and sitting on the floor for a while after the big move - currently unclear as to how we'll stretch to furniture), but that's short term pain.  Long term we'll have a beautiful garden, a house with three bedrooms and when we eventually have children it's in a good catchment for schools.

We've instructed a solicitor, and are getting the mortgage sorted... so all we can do now is wait.

That and try to scrabble together the pennies for white goods.

Craving stability

Sometimes I really miss primary school. The chance to explore your own imagination, try new experiences for the first time, and push a few boundaries.

Every grazed knee told a story, until one day you stumbled in the playground and for the first time you didn't cry as the blood seeped from the cut. That was the first badge of honour, a real achievement on the road to being grown-up: learning some of life's knocks aren't worth shedding tears over.

Inside the classroom safety was taken more seriously, particularly if you started rocking backwards on your plastic chair. Grabbing hold of the deck, and balancing on the chair's two hind legs was satisfying, until your teacher caught you and would then spend the next half an hour lecturering you about the safety implications. Smacking your head on the floor, damaging your neck and risk of death (maybe it was just my teacher that took it to the fatal level), suddenly made a minute of wobbling seem a lot less desirable.

So why do I feel that I am still balancing on a couple of chair legs? I'm clinging on to the metaphorical desk in the hope that I can remain upright as we wobble around. The Hubby and I are craving stability, but it seems that we still have one chair leg up in the air. 

When we were expecting we made plans. We knew where we wanted to be after the baby was born, and how I would spend maternity leave, but now that's not happening its brought into sharp focus just how transient everything our current life is. 

We don't know where we want to put down roots: where we've lived for the past 5 years, or back nearer our parents. We rent and its frustrates us that we can't even make simple decisions like where to hang a picture. We want to get on the property ladder but can't afford the house prices where we are currently... So The Hubby's looking for a new job.

I feel that I should be grateful that I'm not being forced by time to make snap decisions, but now that we have more time I wonder whether we'll ever find a way out of our rut.
Growing up isn't quite the adventure I thought...