I asked them fully expecting a perfectly reasonable answer of no, you will have to get a proper buy to let mortgage for the old house. But no, I go on holiday for a week and come back to not what could have been ‘Yes, we’ll do it but you have to ask for this…’. But a letter confirming that yes I can let the house and so long as it’s all legit from a rental perspective re tenancy agreements etc then that’s fine with them. The actual approval letter!  Someone actually read my request, considered it sane (which it was of course) and not only said yes but pre-empted my next question and provided the formal approval.

I’m pretty impressed by that. After 13 years now, I still consider moving my original mortgage to Virgin One/RBS the best financial move to date.

We’re now flat out for school applications.

I’ve rather glossed over in these posts just how many emails and phone calls were involved and how many times we chose to do something even though there was a small risk it might have to be done again.

What is clear is that we’ve been lucky. Lucky to be able to buy before selling, lucky to find the right house within days, lucky to have missed the wrong house and lucky that the following players performed so admirably, professionally and quickly.

• The One Account (Virgin branded, owned by RBS) who continue to exceed expectations as they have done for the last 12 years. They make everything easy.
• Our solicitor, Leigh Young of Stroud. They are simply outstanding and not just in this most recent task. They never send a bit of paper that can be replaced with an email!
• Cotswold District Council who completed the local searches faster than anyone could reasonably hope.
• The Cirencester branch of Perry Bishop who, as the vendor’s agents were, as their tag line suggests informative at every stage and sympathetic to our urgency.
• The surveyors whom I can’t recall at the moment who did surveys on our current and new  houses and had the results back to our lender in 1 working day.

Kudos to them all. Quite remarkable considering the scorn (often justified) poured on the wider population of all the above professions.

On previous posts I forgot to mention. Surveys were ordered by me via our lenders last week. Survey was done on friday a few days after offer. Results are in today so today is a busy day. Surveys all ok. Searches all ok. Draft contract is ok.

We give the thumbs up to our solicitor to proceed to exchange. We suggest a completion date of July 1st.

Then, there is another conveyancing oddity. These contracts seem to have a standard 10% ‘deposit’ that is paid to the other party should one party fail to complete following exchange. What could stop you completing? well there are a couple of searches for bankruptcy and some land registry stuff again that the solicitor will do on behalf of the buyer’s lender but only after exchange. This is bonkers. They wait until after you are commited to 10% and just before completion before finding out if you have a nasty surprise in store (perhaps you are a victim of ID theft and do not know it yet). Well, we do not need that kind of surprise thanks very much so I ask my solicitor how much to do these searches on my behalf and do them again after exchange on my lender’s behalf? I could barely believe the answer. £4. Yep, £4. So for £4 I can avoid having a nasty surprise that would put us in the hole for 10% of the purchase price. I order the searches. All clear as expected but you know what, I’ll be able to sleep now after exchange.

They don’t. Tomorrow is Tuesday. If we do not exchange contracts by Friday it may be impossible to get the boys into their new school before summer break and certainly any appeal will be delayed greatly. Neither are show stoppers and it’s true we may be being a little intense about the whole thing but a big part of our reason for moving inevitably is to benefit our children. Not having contact with their new peer groups before Summer is going to make nurturing new friendships over the holidays difficult.

At least the searches are ordered. Word from the council is these should arrive early next week, some 5 days within their usual ‘estimate’. So, with any luck and a following wind the vendor’s solicitor will return from holiday refreshed, invigorated and just gagging to sell us a house.

It’s going to be a long weekend. There doesn’t seem to be anything else we can do. The next stage is a draft contract from the vendor’s solicitor. All we can do is wait.

My solicitors, being of frankly infinite patience are open to questions from me. It turns out the memorandum of sale simply states who the vendor’s solicitors are, how they can be contacted by my solicitors and how much we are buying the house for.  My solicitor is very good but they like all solicitors are used to following a prescribed order for conveyancing and there doesn’t seem to be much attention paid as to whether any of the steps in the process could run concurrently and so speed the process.

I ask my solicitor ‘What does the Memorandum of Sale let you do? why must you wait for it?’. The answer is that this is how they get the vendor’s solicitor’s details. They then contact them to get the ball rolling. I probe a little further thinking that I may be powerless to hurry this first step so what is the next step? can the next step be done while waiting for the first?

Step 2 is that the vendor’s solicitor sends my solicitor a copy of the land registry plan detailing the exact location of the property and the boundaries etc. that are included in the sale. This information then allows my solicitor to request the searches of the local council to find out whether someone has got planing permission to build an airport nearby. I’m a bit confused at this. I know for sure that I can buy a title plan of any property in the UK from the lend registry website for £14. I can find out what YOU own for £14.  I get the plan within a few minutes and email it to my solictor. My solicitor explains that she could order the searches based on that plan but if I’ve got the wrong plan or there is other land not shown on that plan (some properties straddle two or more ‘plans’ apparently) then the searches could be invalid. This is a house that is only 22 years old. It’s surrounded by other houses on the same estate and the plan looks identical to the property we looked at and is exactly what we were expecting. I shall take the risk that my £14 is wasted. I shall also take the risk that the £150 on local searches is wasted. I don’t consider either to be at great risk. My solicitor complies and orders the local searches. Whatever happens now, I just got the searches ordered a day earlier than would have been possible otherwise. And bear in mind, while we have already checked what the backlog is with the council on local searches (none, thankfully) that could be different tomorrow. Waiting until tomorrow to order a search could mean other buyers of other properties get in the queue before us. A day is not to be underestimated!

Conveyancing lessons learnt today:

• No one cares about this purchase and the timescale like we do.
• Do not accept a schedule because ‘that’s how it’s done’. How it’s normally done is a robust, belt and braces, works for every kind of property, process. It’s not a process optimised for any individual property so question it and assess the risks yourself.

…they lingered too long. Within 24 hours of our offer we had viewed another property four houses up the street that is bigger  (smaller plot though) with a much more family friendly layout, is currently rented to students until the end of June, is on for the same price and has decor which is more 2010 that 1989.  So again no onward chain and, we would guess a landlord who would love to sell to a cash buyer who can and wants to exchange early June. We can hardly believe our luck – surely the perfect buyer/seller match?

We make an offer, and a second and today they have accepted. A narrow escape. It’s so much better than the first house. We realise the first would have been a compromise we may have regretted, had they ever actually made a decision.

Desired school for the boys has been visited and established that there are places in reception for the youngest two but Year 3 class is already at 30. We will apply, expecting to be rejected for the Y3 class and then we will appeal and hope that common sense prevails. In the event of a failed appeal our eldest will be home schooled for the few weeks until term ends and hopefully a space will open up by September since folks come and go occasionally.

The race is well and truly on. We cannot apply for school places for any of the boys until we have exchanged contracts. Deadline is still June 10th. It’s time to find out why conveyancing is usually so slow and see if we can change that…

Primary reason: Too much driving. School is a drive away. Grandparents a drive away. Swimming lessons, library, shopping all a drive away. Not far, but far enough to spend £400+ per month on fuel just ferrying the kids around. Not good for the kids either; after-school activities like swimming or their best friends or the library all require a drive ,adding a half hour each way and making for later nights and just too much of young lives being spent in the car.

Secondary reason: Schooling. The boys go to a lovely small school but it’s very small and our eldest is in a year group consisting of just him and one other. It means he’s stretched and able to work with much older children in the same class but long-term, he will see these classmates move on for the next 3 years and it’s not clear how it would be possible to continue stretching him with such a small school community. The impact is less severe for his younger brothers who are about to finish reception but for one of them at least, friendship groups are a challenge again because of such a small pool of peers.

So, our objectives are: To be able to walk to school, walk to a leisure centre, walk to shops, walk to see Grandma & Grampy. Oh, and a bigger house. Don’t really want to move and end up somewhere smaller if possible. These boys keep growing, they are only going to suck up more space. Only one location ticks all the boxes – we need to move to Cirencester.

Decision made, we’re going to move. Challenges ahead are ensuring we can get school places, finding a house, buying said house, actually moving and to try to ensure that this happens in time for the kids to attend new school for a week or two before summer break so some friendships can be initiated and nurtured over the holidays.

Today is May 23rd. We need to exchange contracts on a house by June 10th in order to be able to apply for school places and stand a chance of getting boys into school before end of term.

Time to get busy.

Anyway, the point is that I’m now logged into my own blog just so I can demonstrate how damned easy it is to get your latest musings into WordPress, on a website, over to Twitter and Facebook all in a few minutes of typing and a simple click on the Publish button.

This blog post, dear reader you will note is about as interesting in itself as many of my others. Well, if you will read this rubbish, what do you expect.

Demonstration ends.

http://www.robinmalau.com/how-to-remove-rss-feeds-from-outlook-2007/

Shows how to remove RSS feeds from outlook 2007 when you think you’ve already removed them and can no longer see them under the RSS folder!