It’s been a while since I last wrote, but frankly Mr Shankly, I have good reason not to have stopped long enough to write.
We’re trying to buy a house. We’re looking in Guildford. Why Guildford? Simply because the estimable MrsT managed to get a job in Brighton (lovely town but possibly one of the worst places to have to commute to daily, from anywhere but Hove), we need to move to somewhere halfway between there, and where I work.
We are not ready to move to a small village yet, if ever. In any event, I’ve watched enough Midsomer Murders to know how lethally dangerous small villages are. No thanks.
The only real contender was Guildford. As luck would have it, it’s an interesting and lively university town, with a lively shopping, café, pub and restaurant selection.
MrsT made the initial appointments with estate agents. This proved to be ill-fated, as having grown up in China, always living in apartments, she had no points of reference for what to look for in a British house. The results would best be described as utilitarian.
So I took over arranging viewings, and soon we had our dream house. It was within budget, in a quiet road, plenty big enough, and needed no work doing to it at all. Our offer was accepted, our mortgage approved, and all was looking rosy.
After a few weeks, however, there was bad news. The vendors had spent a whole FIVE days looking at houses, found their dream home, put an offer in, had a survey done, found a problem with it, and had a little cry/tantrum. Apparently, if they couldn’t have THIS particular house, they weren’t going to move. They cancelled the sale. Fuckers.
After a day of moping, we metaphorically picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves down, and adjusting our hats* to a jaunty angle, saddled up and started all over again.
I then entered a mad cycle of work and house viewings – racing down to Guildford after work, to view houses. As Guildford is an hour from work and/or home, every time I tried to arrange several houses to view – tricky given the current stagnant housing market.
I have no idea how many houses we viewed. Somewhere between 30 and 40, with half a dozen on the town’s estate agents. After a while, one badly cleaned bathroom started to look pretty much like another.
The agents, true to their profession’s reputation, were variously lackadaisical, wide-boys, or corporately brainwashed automatons. You really had to push them to get anywhere. This is not like when I bought houses in The States, where you get a realtor, and they have access to all the other realtors’ properties, splitting the fee between themselves and the vendor’s realtor.
So that’s where we’re at. There has been some progress, but I can’t tell you about it at this point. I’d particularly like to tell you about today’s comic house viewings, with my mother-in-law wandering into several gardens – none of which were anything to do with the houses we were viewing, and all of us sneaking into one house to avoid being seen by the owners of another.
I’m also just dying to do a humorous bit about the various agents I’ve had to deal with, but I’m saving that until we’re home safe, literally.
*I lied about the hats, and for that matter the jaunty angle and/or inference of being on horseback
