A New Adventure.....

Hi girls, sorry I have been AWOL for a wee while........we have been busy buying a new home!

Its the property of our dreams, the house we will have our family in one day; a lovely farmhouse with over a 1/2 acre garden and a big barn. Its in a perfect peaceful location, up a half mile private road shared only with a steading conversion and a cottage.

Euan and I are so excited, its the kind of house we have dreamed of buying and never thought we could afford. We got it for a great price because its needs rather a lot of work...its been renovated and extended in places and some of it is very rough and unfinished .....part of it dosent even have a roof!! But we are young, dum and we just fell in love with it. We werent actually looking to move but I always nosy on the property websites and I saw it one night shift. Its not far from where we live so I drove up the driveway on my way home at stupid o clock and I just knew it was the house for us......I went home and woke up a sleeping Euan.

Getting the house was a serious drama .....we viewed it three times and had a really good relationship with the sellers, we had a lot in common with them, and they pretty much verbally agreed to sell to us.
It went to sealed bids at a closing date (as is the custom in Scotland) and we didnt get it. We were heartbroken. I was really cross because I felt that we had been led on by the sellers but Euan kept telling me that he had this feeling that it wasnt over yet.

The sellers then showed up at our house the next day ( its only 2 miles away) and said that they felt awful because they really wanted us to have the house and if we could change our offer (although ours was actually the highest, it was subject to a few conditions for mortgage purposes which they didnt feel they could fulfil) they would pull out of the other deal.

After frantic phonecalls to our broker and instructing another survey (I called in sick to meet the surveyor at the house to bat my eyelashes), we managed to sort something out with a lender and so the sellers tried to get out of the other deal. They couldnt.
Thier only option was to make the completion date only a few days after accepting that offer in the hope that they winning party couldnt fulfil........that was a tense week I can tell you, but luckily, the other party didnt even get back to them in time ( very strange) so legally- they could then accept our offer.I did feel guily about the other party but it turned out that they hadnt even viewed the house before offering at the closing date and they showed up at the house that night claiming to be unaware of any deadline for completion!

Getting a mortgage is a total nightmare. After the drama of securing the house, although we had an offer in principle from a lender, we then had to secure a formal mortgage offer. Our original lender backed out given the condition of the house, our back-up lender offered us less money than we needed. They scrutanise every little thing on your bank statments.....and they even took into account our student loans. That must be a new thing, I dont remember being asked about them when we bought our last house and they dont appear on your credit profile. We also only had a fortnight to complete the sale because the sellers were moving to Orkney and we were terrified that they would go to another party who were cash buyers if we didnt hurry up and sign the paperwork!!! But we got there in the end.

It has been without question, the most stressful 6 weeks of our lives. I dont think I have ever said the words "I need a drink" so much before.We had the house.... we didnt have it... we had the house.... we didnt have it.....we had a mortgage...we didnt.....we had a mortgage...we didnt.....up and down like a yoyo!!

Of course, now the reality of situation has hit us and we are walking around the house writing down a list of all the work that needs doing 50% excited and 50% terrifed!! We have next to no money left but the house is totally liveable, we can just close the doors to the parts that are scary.
Its less than 2 miles away from our current house so we are moving car load at a time this week and then we have hired a van for next weekend.....I will post some pictures once things have settled down a bit.

I hope you are well, I have been keeping up with everyones blogs from work but the work computers block me from commenting........as soon as we get tinternet at the new house, I will be back!! xxxx