Moving matters: When is the right time to buy a house?

Soon to be on the market...

I am just about NOT raiding the biscuit box, I think I may have a lower lip tremble and I have this sort of pricking feeling behind my eyes.
I AM being VERY brave.
My offer for a new home has been turned down virtually flat and needless to say I am feeling pretty cut up about it.
The thing is though, as I was told by a very knowledgeable Estate Agent friend (he sells houses I could never afford in a million years in London): "The only way to buy a house is to sell a house first."
I got turned down flat despite going £30,000 over the asking price because my house is yet to go on the market.
"To be honest," said the local estate agent big wig, "you are just not in a position to proceed and in my great experience you may not get an offer on your house for  six months even if it was on the market today."
Personally I was rather affronted at that - seemingly implying that I had obviously got my home on the market for way too much and that I would land up being very silly when trying to sell. In fact I got the feeling he didn't think I was serious about the property or indeed that I was a buyer worth his time and effort.
Can I blame him? There is no evidence whatsoever that I am serious. My home hasn't even made it to Rightmove let alone OnTheMarket or indeed the local papers.
Yet I am selling. Honest - even though I am not desperately happy about it (but that's another story).
The national estate agents have been selected to market and sell our home and we've signed on the dotted line, the photographs have been taken, the description has been written, the lawyers have been engaged and I have just been e-mailed the floor plans.
My home will be there for all and sundry to see by Wednesday.
And yet without having it under offer  I feel that no one is ever going to think I am deadly serious about buying.
So the thing is, do I wait until I have sold my property then look? Or do I carry on in the hope that  everything will fit like a jigsaw?
Cash is king - as they say but did you know only 38% have been sold cash in the past quarter of the year and it does not look to increase according to statistics by Nationwide. So that means that 62% of home buyers are just like me....
That is of course unless I sell my home first then I too will be that most vaunted of buyers, the estate Agent's dream - a cash buyer...
Wonder how I will be treated then? Wonder if that will be the right time to buy?

House Hunting: When you have to play tough

It’s pitch black at past 9.30pm and there’s a farmer sitting in his cab on the tractor doing God knows what to the field outside merely by the light afforded from his headlamps.

Where once these 200-odd acres supported eight families now there is just one: a father and son set up (plus grandsons under 18) and this is not their only land holding. In fact they farm ten times as much – it’s no wonder none of Roger’s sons wanted to take on the tenancy from the family.

However, that did allow us to get our dream – although sometimes it can feel like a nightmare. In fact it chops and changes between the two with alarming regularity. After I made my dreadful gaffe and basically told the estate agent what we could afford, it was definitely nightmare time. Not least, because it was decided that the whole sale would be done by sealed bid.

There was only one word for it: “SH*T”

We’d been here before and lost.

It is very difficult to find a home when you have so many restrictions: Dear Charlie can be a little unrealistic at times. He wanted land; an attractive preferably old house with water, woods, out buildings, within a 10 minute drive of a station on the mainline to London and definitely not timber framed.

Now I don’t know if many of you know Suffolk but this is the land of timbered houses. Every house we looked at was timber framed. A point I laboured frequently in the nine months we searched.

Me: “So just tell me why you don’t like them??!!”

Him: “I just don’t.”

Me: “Then why pick this godforsaken county then – everything is timber framed.”

Him: “They’re scary.”

Oh god! It turned out as a child he had been sent to stay with a family who lived in a heavily timbered house full of spiders – something that clearly had affected him deeply. And, however much I tried, I could find no sympathy, as I was the one who had to keep looking and vetting and I was so desperate to stop. I was willing to compromise, buy any old house, just unpack and have my life back again.

We’d been married nearly two years and I still hadn’t opened all our wedding presents. In fact I hadn’t seen the majority of my things since before we were married as I had moved in to his house and there had been no room for my pictures, knick-knacks and furniture.

And of course there was one other thing, a little niggle which P kept reminding me about – babies. How could I possibly let myself get pregnant when we didn’t have a home?

So finding out that we had to go to sealed bids was bad, very, very bad.

So there we were in the kitchen just days after P had told me the good news – pissed off and pitiful.

P: “What do you want to do?”

Us: “Sod it say we won’t play.”

P: “That’s helpful… no in fact that IS helpful!”

Dear Charlie and I looked blank. Now I love P but I do find him just a little difficult to keep up with. Never have I known a person who has had so many businesses from Kites to the estate agencies, property development to hypnotherapy. So perhaps you can forgive us if we were a little bewildered.

The next thing we knew P had got on the blower and informed the agent that his clients would not be participating in the sealed bid and that the agent would be doing his client a huge disservice as P’s clients were quite obviously the ones who had the most cash.

Me: “But I thought you said we weren’t meant to tell them that on pain of death!”

Him: “Do you want the house?”

We nodded dumbly.

And I wish it had been that simple. We won battle but the war was far from over.

House Hunting: Down right Puck like impudence!

Have you ever met someone who is innocently mischevious other than a child of course? Someone the embodiment of Puck from a Midsummer Night's Dream? Well I did just over eight years ago and since then he has gleefully overseen my countryside education.  However, I fear that the temptation to get me to say things, which will make me seem foolish, is just too strong to resist. A bit like teaching a foreigner a few phrases to help them out. They think you are teaching them to say: “I would like two tickets please.” When in fact you teach them to say: “I would like you to call me Dilly and would you plant me in the ground.” Or something equally daft. Hilarious!!!!

As you might of guessed that at 65, Roger really hasn’t got enough to do. Not that A, his wife, isn’t trying to have some control over him but after 40 odd years – odd being the operative word – Roger has perfected the art of seemingly doing as he’s told but in reality pleasing himself. It’s only when A gets really cross, which I might say is a very rare occurrence, that Roger behaves for a few moments.

When Dear Charlie first met Roger to look over the house, Roger was at his most mischievous. I can hardly blame him.

The family farm was being sold following the death of Granny. It was she who had rented her farm to her son while keeping a firm hold over the family purse strings. Her death triggered the division of the spoils between Roger and his siblings. And as none of Roger’s children had been interested in taking on the farm he had decided to retire giving up his tenancy and at the same time as his home.

The farm, too small to be viable, was sold in lots land, farm buildings and house. And it was at this stage that we met him. On this particular day Roger must just have felt he’d test out the prospective buyers of his family home – not maliciously or anything maybe just sorting the wheat form the chaff.

He’d already dragged me through the undergrowth on my previous visit this time I was wised up and so was Dear Charles – I think Roger noticed and may have been a little disappointed but luck was to favour him again in the shape of McVitie, a Golden Guernsey Billy kid.

When Roger’s father  had given up farming, he agreed to share the house with Roger and his family. In order that the two wives could continue to rule their own respective roosts the family home was physically divided into two. Now, some 30 years later, Roger was showing the two halves to potential future owners and on this glorious Saturday morning was where McVitie comes in – literally.

You guessed it, McVitie decided to follow us about the garden and as we seemed friendly and happy to pet him he followed us into Granny's part of the house. Roger must have been quite delighted and I remember he actively encouraged the kid to come upstairs as he gleefully watched the expressions of deep worry and consternation that sped across our faces!

It was about this time when you could see Roger was encouraging McVitie to caper along the upstairs corridor that a sharp sounding voice that brooked no nonsense echoed up the stairs.

“ROGER!!!!!****”

The culprit raised his eyebrows and grinned as the goat was hastily shooed down the stairs and out into the garden. But any hint of contrition from Roger was never aired in our hearing despite being caught red-handed.

Over the years there is very little that surprises me about Roger – his reputation goes before him and he’s fully aware of it!

Despite that it is a privilege to know him and his wonderful family and and I think we get on, actually we have to, as he converted one of the barns and lives next door!

So near and yet so far...(when opening your mouth without engaging your brain can lose you what you really want)

As a year comes rapidly to an end I start to reminisce, tonight I thought about the first time I saw this place; the first time I met Roger.
I love Roger – I think I did from the very beginning. When I picked up Charlie that evening, that golden summer evening you know the type; heavy and hazy and just full. Everything golden from grass to leaves to crops in the fields – OK so it was June but the fields were golden - full of OSR and my husband full of hay fever!
Welcome to the country! I picked him up from the train station and just drove him to the house; I couldn’t contain my excitement and we cruised past backwards and forwards.
We couldn’t wait to get a better look. P brought the details and there she was - pink. Very, very pink. With a red roof. Lots and lots of Georgian windows and large pottery Gloucester pig placed jauntily in front of an elegant wrought iron garden bench. All this framed by verdant foliage and an emerald green lawn – freshly cut.
But that’s where it stopped – where were the best bits? Where were the internal shots of the beautiful drawing rooms and large farmhouse kitchen; the dining room? In fact any room?

Just a bald statement:

The productive Residential and Arable Farm known as … with substantial 16th Century Farmhouse (Listed Grade II); Modern and Traditional Farm Buildings and 248 acres of Fertile Arable Land being of the Hanslope (411d), Ashley (572q) and Ragdale 1 (712g) Associations (MAFF Grades 2 AND 3).
For sale by private treaty as a whole or in 4 lots

Lot 1 was the farmhouse and 3.93 acres … “in need of some updating and modernisation”.
Dear Charlie wished me luck the next morning as he left to catch the train to London – I had a viewing and would tell him all about it when he got home that evening and say whether I thought it was worth him coming along the next time.
I don’t remember much about that viewing except meeting Roger. Before we knew it the agent and I were taken down the garden going through a seriously overgrown rose arch with more brambles than rose and down to the moat through the tallest nettles on the planet.
I trotted doggedly after Roger as he strode forth in shorts and open toed sandals, totally oblivious of the chin high nettles and brambles that made up the back paddock, through the encroaching trees to the moat where he bade us turn round to look at the house. All the time he chattered, smiling thorough his grisly grey beard, his bushy eyebrows dancing with ill concealed delight every time I flinched, jumped, and stumbled after being stung, scratched or being tripped up. The agent fared no better – I swear that Roger did it deliberately and, knowing him as I do now, I’m sure he did. He took us through the dirtiest, smelliest and most tangled way round that garden that he possibly could. I was in three quarter lengths and backless sandals, while the poor agent was in his very best suit and brand new loafers. Needless to say we were wrecked and we hadn’t even set foot indoors.
The next memory I have is of being in the spare room upstairs looking out over the moat and into the wood on the opposite side. The sun shining on the water and casting dimples of light all around the room I was in and I go and open my big mouth and do exactly what P had begged me not to – I asked how much and the agent replied and I so naively said that’s great we can go to X - a good £30,000 more than was being suggested. As soon as I did this I knew I was in trouble. I tried to backtrack but I could see the gleam in the agent’s eye – he knew it and I knew it; I was hooked and I was the very first person he had taken round – how many others would do the same?
Foolish girl.
I can’t explain how wonderful it felt to know this was the one and how terrible to know that we could lose it just because I couldn’t keep my trap shut. I couldn’t keep my enthusiasm under control. I couldn’t be cool.
It would not be long before Dear Charlie and I were told that the property would be sold via sealed bids…