Confessions of a house hoarder

hiddenshadow

Congrats! That's amazing.

Jessy103

Fantastic news! Congratulations! Still loving those bananas!!

cazmanian_minx

It really is a game of snakes and ladders, this. After saying a few weeks ago that we could 'probably' borrow our mortgage reserve back, I rang the mortgage company this morning to find out how to go about it and 45 minutes of getting repeatedly put on hold while answers were sought from higher up (which I don't mind at all, because they've been closed to new business for a long time and very rarely get anyone calling in about a mortgage), they've decided that we actually can't. However, they've assured me that we DEFINITELY can port the mortgage to the other house, as long as it doesn't breach their maximum LTV of 80% and we'll come in at 63.8%, so that shouldn't be an issue.

This means we're going to have to put in more cash than we were expecting, which will slow finishing Ethel's down a bit, though Bank of Family was so impressed by the rental projections that they've offered another £30,000 at the same rates if needed.

I've nearly completed the application form for the holiday let mortgage, just need a couple of pieces of information from Mr Minx and his most recent payslip and we're ready to go.

AlexLK

Rental projections are amazing and so are the dancing bananas, they've made me smile after a really awful few days. I presume both houses will be holiday lets only? Therefore, I imagine your biggest issue will be getting enough people to rent the houses for a week or so for enough months of the year? Are marketing costs expensive for this type of thing?

eco_farmer

I fancy staying, outside of midge season of course!

cazmanian_minx

AlexLK wrote: »

Rental projections are amazing and so are the dancing bananas, they've made me smile after a really awful few days. I presume both houses will be holiday lets only? Therefore, I imagine your biggest issue will be getting enough people to rent the houses for a week or so for enough months of the year? Are marketing costs expensive for this type of thing?

All included in the 18% fee I'll be paying the holiday cottage agency (and those figures above were after that had been taken off!). The projections are based on 25-27 weeks, but everything they have up here is currently getting 35-42 weeks.

eco_farmer wrote: »

I fancy staying, outside of midge season of course!

You'll be very welcome

If, of course, we manage to do it, because our mortgage company has now done a U-turn on porting the mortgage :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: It's down to the credit cards. The commercial lender is completely fine about them staying as they are until Ethel's is mortgageable and then them getting paid off by taking a mortgage on that. Our current lender won't take that into account and says we can only afford a mortgage of £32,500 :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I'm now seeing whether the company doing the commercial one will take on the residential one as well, but their residential arm is separate and we may hit the same problem. If we do, I have one final throw of the dice to try if the seller is willing to be flexible (which she is, very, but this might be a step too far!). Hopefully we'll be able to get everything sorted with the same lender.

Mr Minx is away for work for a few days, so it's head down and make some cash. 4 hours of transcription lined up for starters

cazmanian_minx

I had a call with the residential arm of the building society on Wednesday and thankfully we've passed the affordability checks All I have to do now is get together a small mountain of paperwork and send it off to them, plus they need to get a valuation done as the seller's surveyor isn't on their approved panel. On the downside, as we're out of area it has to be a repayment mortgage, so our monthly payment is going to go up from £300 to £850.01.

Now need to put my foot to the floor and get down the road finished and ready for guests ASAP, so the additional income starts coming in. (Not that I've seen another perfect holiday cottage I want to buy or anything....needs a bit of work and there's a retention on the home report, but I'm sure someone will snap it up before I have the cash!)

EatingTheElephant

Great news on the mortgage, how long before down the road is ready do you think?

cazmanian_minx

EatingTheElephant wrote: »

Great news on the mortgage, how long before down the road is ready do you think?

I'm hoping to have it done by my birthday, which is the end of August. All the paperwork for the new mortgage got emailed off last night, so I'm going to be sitting here crossing my fingers now!

I have an amazing amount of work at the moment - this week: 3 files in from NEL (2 done, 1 to go), 1 from Journalist #1 (3 minutes left to type!), 1 from Journalist #3 (done), 1 from small agency (done), 18 from a friend for her PhD (2 done, 16 to go) and an enquiry from the market research people to see if I can do 24 x 40-minute interviews starting today if they get it signed off from the client (goodbye sleep...).

I've been a bit spendy this week Last weekend I went to see Erasure in Glasgow - they were absolutely awesome and I enjoyed myself so much that I promptly booked myself a ticket for their London gig next year when the pre-sale went live yesterday. £45, which was reasonable, but £12.25 in booking fees??? That's taking the mickey :mad::mad::mad::mad: I thought I might as well get everything sorted out at the same time, so I have a flight to Heathrow (£53), a Premier Inn room in Hammersmith (£50) and a flight home from Bristol (£35) - the gig is on a Friday night, so I'm going to jump on a train on Saturday morning and go and see Mum in Gloucestershire for the rest of the weekend

On top of that, Jeremy Hardy is doing a gig in Wick next weekend - he was the first comedian I ever saw live when I was about 15 at the Bristol Old Vic (so 27 years ago!) and I really want to go to that as well. Tickets only £14 though, so that's not going to break the bank.

lionheartedgirl

Found you! hurrah! I had been wondering where a few long lost faces were, and a few of them are here! how lovely!

I'm so excited to read of all your new ventures and wish you all the very best :-)

*subscribes*