Ben Reeve Lewis continues on his quest …
Where we are now in the process
Having spent weekends scouting out the East Midlands for a prime bit of relocation for me and the Frazzster we have moved onto the next stage – doing the house up for sale.
I decided some time ago to stop looking on Rightmove. We are a bit away from hacking up the M1 for viewings until the house is ready for sale and I get fed up finding properties t hat are ideal knowing they will probably be gone by the time we are at the serious purchase stage.
Frazzy is not so easily deterred however and has been monitoring prices over the past few months indicating that they are dropping in our areas of choice in the rough locale of Nottingham/Derby, some by as much as £20k when they aren’t shifting.
A drop we aren’t yet seeing in our neglected area of South East London.
Why are so many 4/5 bed houses on the market?
Our dosh will get us a 4 or 5 bed detached because we are relocating from the more affluent capital to a place we can actually afford to live. There are enough houses of this size up for sale but why are so many on the market for months and the poor vendors dropping the price?
Obviously not enough buyers but why aren’t they buying?
Not being estate agents we can only guess why this is.
Obviously there will be an element of a great looking house but too close to a main road, a smelly factory at the end of the street, rooms smaller than they look in an estate agent’s wide-angle lens, windows too small, etc etc but what other reasons could be at play?
Its the size of house that people usually downsize from when the kids have flown the nest, these days at approximately 47 and we can tell by the internal decorations that more than a few are owned by the elderly, displaying that ubiquitous and hideous wallpaper with patterns of faces on where if you squint and concentrate hard enough, you can make out Roses of alarming vulgarity.
Too big for first time buyers, leaving the market to people upsizing and people like us relocating.
Getting out of London
I was chatting to our dog sitter the other day, whose business has been going from strength to strength until the last few months when she is getting less dogs to look after.
She said her clients, who are largely teachers, media types, even the odd minor celeb are telling her they are getting out of London because its getting too expensive to buy or rent.
A cry I am hearing more and more. A demographic represented by mine and Frazzy’s predicament. Two middle income working people priced out of their home town.
All conjecture of course.
Getting our property ready for sale
We are now facing the harsh reality of looking at what needs to be done to our house for sale and finding more snagging faults wherever we look.
The entire back garden fence will be replaced next week but wouldn’t you know? As soon as we book the builder the front garden brick gatepost fell off due to the powdering of the mortar adding more costs
The offending wall has sat there quite happily for 90 years and chooses right now to crumble like an Egyptian mummy or Cliff Richards exposed to sunlight,
Its as if the house is rebelling against the notion of being sold. Am I being fanciful in imagining that a house can throw a hissy fit?
Dealing with the builders has been hard enough.
Builders
Blokes who offer to do it for a song whilst tapping the side of their nose like Arthur Daley – definitely people to avoid, or at the other end of the spectrum decent builders so popular that they can’t possibly fit your fence until December 2018 and it will cost you double, presumably suggesting that if you pay even more they will get around to you quicker..
We’ve found someone in the middle range, not ludicrously expensive, apparently someone who pays tax and an employer of people over the age of 12 to do the work and not labourers he picked up standing outside Wickes and B&Q on a Sunday morning.
He has even offered to remove my old motorbike from the tangle of weeds and rust that envelopes it so his son can work on it as a homework project from mechanics school.
If only he knew how much I would have paid him for that alone, just to end the ceaseless nagging of “When are you going to get rid of that bike?”.
So the wheels are in motion, albeit it not on my old bike.
More scouting
We have one more scouting trip to do. We haven’t done south of Nottingham towards Loughborough and we will still have the rooms in the house to be decorated and all the clutter moved into storage.
After that we will no doubt be entering the third circle of hell in finding an estate agent to market it, separating sales speak from genuine and reasonable expectation and then the hassle of people viewing, the debilitating period of getting no interest and the frustration of people pulling out at the last minute.
In the middle of all that we will be spending weekends walking around other people’s houses and arguing over the list of things that aren’t up for negotiation. Too close to the road (hers)…..kitchen is too small (Mine) …..don’t like the look of the neighbours (Both of us)…. and on and on.
Then what do we do if ours is sold but we haven’t yet found a new place?
Frazzy’s mum is disabled so we can’t just cram ourselves into a caravan.
Never mind Location, Location, Location. Our immediate future is going to be Faff, Faff, Faff.