Well its been a very busy time for us during the past week what with shopping and overcoming the jetlag but particularly the unexpected change with regard to our housing situation. The house had been on sale since the beginning of January 2019 with only a limited amount of viewings but suddenly it sprang in to life in mid January this year with as many viewing than the whole of last year.
Well you never can tell who will purchase you house but we were visited by a young couple with parents and spent a lot of time,more than usual which we understand is always a good sign, then a few days later they came back again and this time brought their two young children and very shortly after that we received an offer and negotiations began. Oh we thought , where are we going to live and also we are flying out to Florida in a few days and before we left the couple confirmed the price and we have an agreement subject to contract.
Over the past year we have been visiting areas to find out if they would be suitable for us to live with our requirements of close to shops, train stations etc and we still ended up wanting to live in East Horsley but in the interim period there had been no indication of any suitable housing for us either old bungalows and/or houses with main road frontage and so we backed off. However en-route one day to East Horsley we passed a new development by the well established Octagon Group on a large , ex MOD plot, in West Byfleet which looked interesting but we had not bothered with before. So on the Wednesday before we left on the Friday we paid a visit and liked what we saw and overnight made an offer but unfortunately somebody else beat us to it.-Damn. However we did mention if anything falls through to let us know.
In the meantime the buyers of Piplin House did a full building survey and the house passed well we understand and so now its all with the solicitors for exchange of contracts on 5th March, or thereabouts. So we thought lets wait till we get home before we start looking again and then in the middle of last week we were contacted by Octagon to say another plot was available but after consideration turned it down. Two days after that somebody else pulled out as we presume they could not meet the builders timetable for completion and this is a four bedroom, three story house with all the latest gizmo’s and a utility room and integral garage and its near the shops etc. On site they will also be building additional larger houses and also also apartments and eventually a care home and se would, in theory, as we get older just go smaller and smaller until we end up in a box.
So the matter is with the solicitors and then the paperwork started to arrive requiring lots of work and although we have a notebook computer with us printing and scanning facilities are quite a distance away and also we now the proud owners of a new Canon printer/scanner and had to buy staplers, hole punches and folders for keeping stuff in.
So for the past week Noel spend a couple of hours answering messages and signing and sending documents but the big issue is when the new buyer want to move in as ideally we would like mid April but they may want earlier requiring to return home holiday from a fully paid for holiday. In addition the builder will/has starting pressing us as we need to make choices on colours and perhaps other stuff by the first week in March which also might require a trip home.
OH WELL- its all fun and games
In the middle of all this we are enjoy the nice weather and taking advantage of the warm weather and the temperature of the swimming pool. Be back with soon in the next day or so for an update