I know I only posted Monday but the weekend was a big development in the whole buying a house / mortgage situation. I have had a few people ask about it so may as well write what happened to fill everyone in.
Everything has happened so quickly. Lara and I had 3 days off together a couple of weeks ago with the intention of popping into a few estate agents and seeing what was out there, maybe even take a look at a few in our time off. Lara was going to the Spurs game on the Saturday so I headed to a few in the local area to see what I could find out. How backwards is that?? She goes to the football and I go looking around Estate Agents looking for available properties. Haha. So after picking up details on around 25 properties we sat down that evening and looked through to see if any caught our eye. At one of the agents they had 3 apartments that looked pretty nice and we could look at them one after the other, so we arranged to take a look at those early on Monday morning. We saw a new built 2 bed apartment that was large enough but the shape of it was like they had a drawing competition at pre school. There were awkward corners here and there so you would never get any furniture to fit. Nice but not nice enough. No Go! The second was a place in the town centre. Once again a 2 bed apartment, this place was massive! The lounge was large the bedrooms were nice and large and the kitchen was adequate too. The one drawback, only 1 parking space! Not a major issue if you live in the sticks, but in the middle of a town centre with ticket happy traffic wardens it was an issue that we just couldn’t be bothered to deal with. No Go. Shame. The third place was another 2 bed apartment (there’s a pattern here) in a little village. It was spacious, fairly new and had tonnes of storage space, even a loft that we didn’t realise it had on first viewing. The area was lovely, the views out of the window were beautiful and there was just a nice feel to the whole thing. We looked a couple of other places but our minds always seemed to go back to that one. After a second look we decided that we really liked the 3rd one we saw. The next days in the words of Murray Walker – Go Go Go! We made an offer on the place. 5 minutes later in what seemed like the blink of an eye we had our answer. Errrrm….No! Haha. Offers batted back and forth until we made one that made him think for nearly a week, we’re in! Offer accepted and now the fun starts! You Beauty! I haven’t had many feelings like the one I had when they accepted the offer, I was buzzing. Not only had we got a place, but it was the one we wanted. Sure we could have looked at more places, but we found one that was ideal very early on, we looked a little more but why keep trying?
Before all this I couldn’t tell you anything about a mortgage, I was a complete amateur. Lara was on the same level too so we were both making the biggest purchase of our lives with no idea of how to go about it. Fixed rate, Variable, Trackers….Errrr What?? Then there is the legal side of things, Solicitors, Life Insurance, Contents Insurance, Stamp Duty and a whole array of bills that are going to come at us. It is going to be a long few weeks. We had a little advice from a couple of people just before we started looking and decided to go with a mortgage broker that someone we knew was using. We seemed to get lucky with this too, using a guy called Andy that has been excellent so far. He would go through everything with us making sure we knew every detail, explaining things to us in simple terms without being condescending. It was exactly what we needed. By the end of our near 2 hour long meeting with Andy we knew our stuff, sorted our life insurance, contents insurance and solicitors. Bingo Bango Bongo. The mortgage application has been sent off and we are waiting to hear how that comes out over the next day or two. I was always the one drawing blank looks as people talked about which mortgage is best and why, the rates going up and down the different advantages of each type, I didn’t have a clue. Now Lara and G are up on the lingo and in full swing of the biggest purchase any normal person makes in their life.
I’m sure there will be some downs, surely its inevitable, but so far we have had a smooth ride – Im hoping it stays this way throughout and doesn’t turn into a white knuckle rollercoaster. Next step I guess is looking at what furniture we like and trying to sort out how to look for what service providers to use for things. Im sure Sky + HD is the most essential and important purchase any couple can make. Hehe!
Pray for me!!!
G
No comments:
Post a Comment