Confessions of a house hoarder

cazmanian_minx

Good news and bad news. The good news is that we've been told we've got both the residential and commercial mortgages. The bad news is that the lender's underwriters want both to complete on the same day so the credit cards are paid off immediately (as having the cards and only the residential mortgage puts us on the wrong side of their affordability line) - and of course, until the other house is decrofted, it's not mortgageble.

Fortunately the surveyor is coming a week on Monday to do the drawings, but even if the solicitors play nicely with each other it's still going to take a minimum of three months to get it all tied up. The seller is a bit twitchy about this (her decrofting took 14 months to go through a few years back) so I had a look at bridging loans yesterday, but no lenders would even consider a house this far north. So unless anyone has any bright ideas for paying off just under £50,000 of cards in very short order, we're now stuck until the decrofting goes through, and I need to work like a demon to get a kitchen and bathroom in.

Work-wise things are going well. I got the market research job done thanks to some help from NEL, who was having a quiet week and lent me two of her other typists for a couple of days. Still going through the PhD stuff, which is really interesting, and this morning I've got a 45-minute celeb interview to do for newest journalist Call me shallow, but I do love doing them

With the last of the international friendlies over, I'm also going quiet on the matched betting front for the summer. I've withdrawn my bank from two bookies, but have £1,000 stuck in another two, because my card expired in February and I haven't made a deposit on the new one. Since the chip on the new one stopped working yesterday, the bank's sending me a replacement and I'll wait for that to arrive before calling the customer service teams to get my withdrawal method changed - I can't do it myself unless my balance is £0 and I can't withdraw because the card's expired! The money can sit in Ratesetter over the summer (although quite a large chunk is paying for Mr Minx's birthday weekend away) and then go back to work in August when the football season starts again.

cazmanian_minx

Oh, forgot to add - we had the shearer over last night, so I have 13 happy naked sheep running around and 1 unhappy naked sheep. Poor Bella, the oldie at 13, wriggled at exactly the wrong moment and got the front edge of her left ear caught in the clippers She came out absolutely covered in blood, looking like something out of a sheep horror film, and with blood still dripping from her ear, but it congealed fairly fast and within 20 minutes she was back to grazing. It's had a good blast of antibiotic spray and I'll keep a close eye on her - if it goes yucky, I may need to go into the vet's and get an injection for her. This year, because I have more than three sheep, I've had to register with the British Wool Marketing Board, so they've sent me a huge sack (called a sheet) and all the fleeces are rolled up and put in it. I then take it to their depot when I'm next going south where it's graded for quality. I get a very small payment straight away and then next year, once all the fleece across the UK has been sold, I'll get a balancing payment so the total I receive is the average price per kg for wool of my type and grade sold across the country. It won't be a lot - I think the average price for my breed of sheep is about £1.42 a kg - but it will cover the cost of shearing them with a little left over.

We've also had our peats cut, which I haven't had the bill for yet, but I think it's about £1.76 a metre. Mr Minx and I went up to the hill the other weekend and laid them all out to dry, and once we've had two or three weeks of wind and sun, we can go back up and herringbone them to dry the other side for the rest of the summer, before bringing them down in the autumn and stacking them for our winter fuel.

Jessy103

Great news about the mortgages but shame about the cards! I don't know much about it but could Crowdfunding be an option?

cazmanian_minx

Jessy103 wrote: »

Great news about the mortgages but shame about the cards! I don't know much about it but could Crowdfunding be an option?

It's a great idea, but I don't think I'd be able to raise enough - I'd have to pre-sell weeks in the holiday lets and that's over a year's-worth of weeks in all three. I've been looking at peer-to-peer property lending today as well, after listening to a podcast about it, to buy the house faster, but that doesn't seem to be an option either. I shall just have to work a major charm offensive on all the solicitors

It's been a quiet day, but an interesting one. I've had a one-to-one lesson in trading football on Betfair, making 50p in the process, and after a conversation with a friend who is setting up a stud and is therefore looking to loan out some of her other horses, have a miniature Shetland pony arriving on Wednesday - both my horses know him, as he used to live next door, and having him around will mean that I can take each out on his own for some exercise without the other one charging up and down screaming because they've been left behind.

My new card arrived on Saturday, the balance from one bookmaker is on its way back to my bank account and the other will get sorted tomorrow after my free bet on the US Open settles one way or the other (looking like it will go into the exchange right now, which is no bad thing!) I've already got £500 from my matched betting in Ratesetter at 2.7%, so there'll be another £1,000 going in next week to sit there until the football season starts again.

Next week's jobs - 10 minutes of a file left for Journalist #3, who needs it back by the end of tomorrow, about 90 minutes in from NEL and hopefully will charge through the remainder of my friend's PhD interviews, as Mr Minx is away Tuesday to Thursday nights, so I can work late.

cazmanian_minx

There is light at the end of the transcription tunnel! I'm so busy at the moment that I've had to turn down two jobs this week - one has said that it's not urgent and I can do it next week, which is great, but the other was six hours of focus groups, which would have been a nice chunk. Shame.

The surveyor came yesterday to measure up the land the house and garden down the road sits on, and has said he'll have the drawings to the government department arranging the sale in 2-3 weeks (he's out surveying up here all this week), so we're a step closer to getting our mortgages.

Exciting news this morning in that I have finally been notified of my 2016 farm payment (3 days before the deadline for the Scottish government making the 2017 one, which I suspect they're going to miss!) - a grand total of £408, which is about as much as it cost me to get help with the application. Still, money in the bank is money in the bank (or will be, when they pay it) and I can use it to buy some more lambs.

The Shetland pony arrived and has fitted in pretty well - there was a little bit of handbagging the first time they all went in together and then Merlin decided to take revenge for all the times the Shetland chased him around the field with his teeth buried in Merlin's backside when they used to share a field and nipped him a few times on the back, so they had a few days where the Shetland preferred to graze alongside wherever the horse next door was grazing rather than with my two, but for the last 48 hours or so the three of them have stuck together and hopefully things will now settle down.

TallGirl

Caz just finished reading your blog wow amazing and stunning pictures. Definitely follow you on there now. Ethel's house is looking stunning hopefully not long now. Exciting to take on a second so soon (if it works out) hope you get what you want.

Jessy103

Glad things seem to be looking up! Aww look at that little face! I remember when I used to ride, the Shetlands at the stables always had an attitude and used to think they were shires! Lol! :rotfl:

cazmanian_minx

We are going like the clappers with the house this week, spurred on by the fact that we have our joiner/carpenter for 3 weeks more or less uninterrupted and then we lose him to a new house build for 6-8 weeks, so we absolutely have to get the floors down and the kitchen in before he vanishes!

Quick flyby to say that the mortgage interest was only £71.60 this month, which I think is about the lowest it's ever been.

cazmanian_minx

I think I may be half-dead, but we have the kitchen floor down, the hall floor down, part of the living room floor down, paint on a few walls and the kitchen units are going in tomorrow.

Sofas are ordered, as they're a 12-14 week lead time. I've never spent more than £450 on a sofa before (SofaSofa Madrid sofabed, now a decade old and still going strong!), so a smidge over £3,000 on two leather sofas was a bit of a shock. However, they are astonishingly comfortable and, more importantly, will fit through my front door.

Today's card payments took me to over 1% paid off I have a slight dilemma now; my other Barclaycard finishes its interest-free period in two weeks and the first Barclaycard hasn't coughed up with a new offer. Mr Minx's empty Barclaycard has a cash transfer 0% offer which will more than cover it, but I think what I'm going to do is pay it off out of the deposit money for now and then take Mr Minx's transfer offer later when we need to pay the deposit on the new house. It'll bring our percentage of available credit used down a bit.

cazmanian_minx

Barclaycard paid off, kitchen units all in (doors still need to go on and oven, hob and extractor are waiting for the electrician to come back), smallest bedroom mostly painted = knackered Minx.

Could I please have some mortgage-granting vibes? The lender for the new residential mortgage asked for a letter from my accountant confirming that my income would continue at similar levels. I didn't think she'd agree to do that (I wouldn't in her shoes - I simply send her a list of invoices and expenses each year to do my tax return from!), so I suggested that I draw up a five-year income forecast, ask her to look over it, make any changes she thought prudent and then write them a letter to say she agreed with the forecast. So we've done it this afternoon, the letter is being written as I type and once that's gone off, it's all down to the lender as to whether we now get a mortgage offer in principle or not...