I always thought that we would never leave our current property, it was our dream home with massive outbuildings and in a near perfect location. Just recently though it has become too much for us, the business has failed, it doesn't make sense to be here any more. No doubt about it, the time has come to look for something a lot smaller, more manageable and nearer other people, we never see anybody out here because nobody is near.
We had the usual long discussions about what we wanted from a house and where we wanted to be and set about searching for that perfect place with the wow factor that would tell us we wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Mrs always wanted to be by the sea, I was happy with that, I always liked the sea side and you always get a great choice of takeaways and pubs and the such like in seaside resorts, I kind of find that appealing as we go in to old age. I need outbuildings - it'a a fact of life in much the same way as I need oxygen, I can't live without some sort of shedage or preferably brick built workshop. We decided just 2 bedrooms would be fine, a bungalow makes sense as Mrs doesn't do stairs well now, in another 10 years they would be impossible I would think. As nobody has had the decency to invent the hover board and I hate stair lifts the single floor residence is the only choice.
It turns out that while there are literally hundreds of bungalows in coastal areas available for sale very few indeed meet all our requirements. We saw some quite nice ones but you pay a big premium for that short walk to the sea and easy access to local amenities and you tend to get a very small property with a single garage if you are lucky. People go there to die so the developers build what people want - minimalist living and ease of maintenance. While we kind of want the same we need that space for me to play and piddle about with stuff, life wouldn't be worth living if I can't. We looked at places with big enough gardens to take a 20 x 12 shed but nothing really moved us. We started looking at houses out of desperation and even considered the dreaded stair lift. One property was in the most amazing location and had character by the bucket load but boy did it need some work. Just too big a project, although somebody younger with more enthusiasm could probably turn it in to an amazing property.
Not too many yads from there was a bungalow that had looked and sounded ideal in the estate agents' blurb, big garage / workshop, brand new kitchen, excellent decorative order etc etc. The reality was somewhat different with badly cracked ceilings and a kitchen that looked like it had been done on the cheap that would be doing well to last 5 years, very disappointing.
It went on like this for a while and it soon became apparent that the housing market was somewhat more buoyant than we had thought and house after house sold before we were in a position to put in a credible offer. One property in Skegness had really appealed to both of us but it and 2 other prospects all sold on the same day - the day after we accepted an offer on our house and were in a position to start making offers. That happened another two times - properties that we were really interested in and had been watching for weeks all selling before we had a chance to either view or put an offer in.
There was still one property though that really appealed, a 3 bed bungalow on the edge of a really nice little village just 5 miles south of Skegness so still near enough to nip out for a takeaway or get one delivered. there is a Chinese, a chippy a kebab house and pizza place in the village but not a lot else. It is very pretty though and it will suit our retirement needs rather well. It has a double garage, just the right sized garden, the must have for Mrs - a very nice little conservatory and joy of joys 3 toilets. The downside was that it has electric storage heaters, which are the work of the devil and it does need a fair bit of maintenance as it was owned by an older lady in poor health so things have got a bit shabby in places. Most of it's just decoration but I can see some areas that need remedial work - 7 of the sealed double glazing units have condensate in them, for example.
We both fell in love with it though and it had been on the market for a while, the Son was selling it and clearly wanted shot sooner rather than later. We went to look at it on Rightmove and saw that it had been taken off the market - oh bloody hell, not again!! I phoned the agent and she explained that as the house had failed to sell the guy ad taken it off the market and had booked for new carpets to be fitted and for the whole house to be redecorated. Now we didn't want that because firstly it alost certainly wouldn't be done to our taste and secondly they would have to carpet round the storage heater, which we would be ripping out anyway! This gave us a great opportunity to put in a derisory offer on the basis that it would save him a few grand in redecoration fees. I was delighted when our first offer was rejected, it would have been a nightmare if it had turned out I could have got it for less. We got 5 grand off the already reduced asking price in the end, I think we have an absolute bargain. Yes there is loads that needs doing, Mrs will want a whole new kitchen, we will need a whole new heating system - storage heaters cost an absolute fortune to run and will never offer the flexibility of a decent oil or LPG based system, I ran the numbers and was horrified to see that an electric boiler would cost about 3 quid an hour to run. It might not sound a lot but if it was running 7 hours a day, that's 21 quid a day, well over 600 quid a month. Multiply that by 7 cold months and it's well over 4 grand. Storage heaters would be half that but as I said, I can't stand the shitty things. Oil will work out about 700 a year, it's a no brainer. The down side is the boilers are dear - 1500 quid versus 800 quid and you need a tank that costs 1200 quid and another 800 to install it. Total system cost would be about 6 grand, which sounds a lot better than the 22 grand we were quoted for a ground source heat pump.
So here we our, our offer has been accepted, we know what we need to do, our house is sold, it's just a matter now of hoping the chain doesn't break down beneath us, the bungalow is vacant. It's exciting and scary at the same time, it's going to be bloody expensive - we have to pay the estate agent over 6 grand for doing sod all and about 3 grand to a solicitor who also does virtually sod all. That really hurts, I have to work an awful lot of hours to earn that sort of money, the estate agent didn't even do any of the viewings and charged us extra for the media pack, which was produced by a third party. all they did was stick the house on Rightmove and hope for the best. All the solicitor will do is use automated portals to check planning applications and drainage and all that sort of thing, transfer the money - they charge for that - ask some stupid questions, sell some meaningless and unwanted indemnities, leave it all to a junior clerk and then piss off on an expensive foreign holiday at my expense. I hate them all.
Add comment
Comments