Saturday 28 September 2013

Why I hate buying a house

You may have gathered that Hubby and I are trying to get on the property ladder. We've moved a few times in the past 5 years so the whole packing up everything isn't that  uncommon to me, but this is the first time we're not simply moving into a rental. I appologise if I'm sounding a little bit like a stuck record but, this should be an exciting time... in fact at the moment I'm wavering between being totally non-plussed and hating it. Here's why:

Everything takes so long
We were lucky, we found the house we wanted back in June. It's now nearly October and we've still not exchanged.  It could all still fall down around our ears like, well, a house [of cards].

Solicitors
Our solicitors, their solicitors... both are just frustrating.  We went for a large online conveyancing firm to save a few pennies, and to be fair they've been okay... but they skate around giving advice. They don't ever seem to want to commit to a course of action.  I guess that's what you get for saving pennies.  The seller's solicitors on the other hand they are complete lemons.  They love giving advice. Shockingly poor advice. For example they have advised their client to not allow us to come for a pre-exchange visit.  I mean we're spending a ridiculous amount of money (only all our life savings) and the last time we saw the house was two months ago. We just have to hope that they've not knocked a wall down or been having wild house parties in the meantime.  We very nearly walked away from the whole sale...

People coming to poke around
So we've given notice of our intent to move to our landlord... I know I said we wouldn't,  but we were meant to have exchanged this week (it didn't happen as, surprise surprise, everything takes so long!) so we tried to talk hypothetically to our landlord... and it's all just run away from us. And now we've got people coming to our flat this weekend to have a poke around to see if they want to move in. Oh god.

Part time evening work (unpaid)
Both Hubby and I work a full time week. In fact I'm often working in the evenings and weekends to keep on top of everything... but somehow we have to try and squeeze in trips to mortgage advisors, calls with solicitors,  reading legal documents, shuffling paperwork... not to mention the seemingly endless toing-and-froing with the seller's estate agent. So I do a full day at work,  have a 2 hour commute home, and then have to start working all over again. It's exhausting.  It's also particularly challenging when estate agents and solicitors only work office hours!

Insurance
We're buying our first house. Our family home. It's the start of something very exciting.  Somewhere where Hubby and I can start a family. Redecorate.  Get a cat. (Not necessarily in that order.) There's so much life ahead.  But before we get our foot through the front door we have to talk about our dream ending.  I know it's the sensible thing... but discussing your partners untimely demise or the fact that either one of us could become critically ill does take the romance out of the adventure.

I know I'm whingeing. It's just that I'm finding it such a hard journey. I can not understand how people regularly  remortgage and move house. It's not pleasant.  Everything seems to just get put on hold. You empty your piggy bank which makes everything seem a lot more expensive. You can't commit to anything because you may be packing or moving or trying to squeeze in some extra paper work... to be honest I'm looking forward to moving in and getting on with living.

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