Confessions of a house hoarder

brizzlegirl

Hope you’re Ok  Caz, keep posting when you can xx

cazmanian_minx

Thanks, Brizzle.  Interesting times indeed. 

I actually couldn't have picked a worse time to launch a new holiday let, but hey ho, it is what it is and we'll have to work with it.  I made the decision to shut Ethel's on Sunday morning, after the Scottish minister for tourism put out a travel guidance update requesting no one travelled to the Highlands and later that day Nicola Sturgeon confirmed she'd be asking all tourist accommodation to close.  The agency is contacting all guests up to the end of April and giving them the choice of cancelling or rebooking and so far most have chosen to rebook, which is lovely.  Anyone booked in up to 21st May can also choose to postpone or cancel without charge and they're not accepting new bookings before 4th June, though to be honest I think the country will be closed down for most of the summer.  The agency is certainly worth every penny I pay them in commission at the moment and I'm very grateful to all their customer service staff, who must be having a nightmare at the moment (they represent about 19,000 properties). 

Finances-wise I had my hopes raised and dashed a couple of times yesterday.  Firstly I dug out my insurance policy, saw I was covered for loss of rent in the event of being requested to close by a public authority because of a contagious or infectious disease.  Put in a notification of potential claim via my broker and Hiscox replied to say that since the property itself wasn't actually contaminated by the disease and could still be occupied, I wasn't covered.  Then the application forms for the £10,000 grants to hospitality, retail and leisure businesses came out.  The English ones specifically say that self-catering businesses are included, the Scottish ones specifically say that self-catering businesses are excluded.  Really fortuitously, the Scottish minister for tourism happens to be a friend of a friend, so I rang her to see how best to get his attention at the moment and she told me to Tweet him and use a certain hashtag that he'd recognise as being connected with her, which I did, and got a reply to say it certainly seems like a major anomaly and they're looking into it.  The Association of Scotland's Self Caterers is also lobbying the government and I can't imagine Visit Scotland will be too happy if all the self-catering cottages get repossessed, so I'm sure something will be sorted out eventually.

That said, I am in an extremely fortunate position in that Mr Minx's job is (a) well-paid and (b) secure (you can't just shut down a nuclear power station and walk away from it without giving the local area a bigger problem than coronavirus) and my transcription clients are mostly still going great guns, so much so that I've had to subcontract out a bit of overflow work to a couple of really good transcribers who I work alongside with for another client who has no work coming in because all her stuff is university-based research.  Helps me, helps them and means I also know that incoming work is in safe hands when I go to help my farming friend up the road for six weeks over lambing next month, because the four vet students she was having over from Belgium for lambing experience now can't make it. 

Also panic-bought a horse.  The one I mentioned a few posts back who is here on loan is joining the family permanently after his owner changed her mind about not wanting to sell him.  I'm paying in installments, so he's not mine yet, but hopefully all will go smoothly with the sale and she won't change her mind halfway through paying!

Brodiebobs

cazmanian_minx said:

Also panic-bought a horse.  The one I mentioned a few posts back who is here on loan is joining the family permanently after his owner changed her mind about not wanting to sell him.  I'm paying in installments, so he's not mine yet, but hopefully all will go smoothly with the sale and she won't change her mind halfway through paying!

Has to be the best line on here at the moment, made me snort my tea! Hope you get some answers on the rentals. Anxious times. 

EssexHebridean

LOVING the idea of panic buying a horse - well of course you did! Are you taking the instalments as buying a slice at a time - if so which end have you started with, there are negatives to both! 

Furious on your behalf about the Self Catering exclusion for the grant - I can't see past that being sorted ASAP. It also strikes me that the insurance are going to have a hard job not paying out mind as you HAVE been asked to close by a public authority! 

Will be crossing fingers for you here! 

Jessy103

Hope everything gets resolved soon with the holiday lets.

Panic buying a horse is just brilliant!! 😂

Take care x

cazmanian_minx

Huh, got a text this morning from Santander at 7am to say there wasn't enough money in the account to meet our direct debits (after nearly 15 years together Mr Minx and I finally got a joint account!).  Logged in on the app to check and both our standing orders into it were there, the TV licence DD had been taken, but the mortgage hadn't.  I assume that they tried to take the mortgage DD a micro-second before the standing orders went in.  The text message said they'd try again after 2pm, so I'm hoping it'll go through this time as there's more than enough money in there. 

After some intensive lobbying by various Scottish tourism and self-catering groups, it looks like I will after all get the £10k grant, which is a relief, because I've just had the electrician's final bill for Tor and it's £4.5k.  The remortgage on Tor to get the increased equity out is also postponed, as the lender said their underwriters aren't considering any holiday let mortgages until we have free movement in the UK again, which is also not helpful, though I completely understand why they're doing it. 

EssexHebridean

Aargh - yes, I imagine that is fairly logical in the circumstances - albeit still frustrating. Very relieved to hear that the issue around the grant is being sorted too!

cazmanian_minx

Scores on the doors time, as I've done all my invoicing:

• East Coast journalist - £294.01
• Original journalist - £113.33
• Newsletter journalist - £164.16
• Psychologist 1 - £236.67
• PR client - £164.17
• Newspaper - £69.17
• Psychologist 2 - £130.83
• Specialist market research agency - £148.86

Total - £1,321.20, which I'm a bit gobsmacked by!  Even when I take off the £145 I paid to two fellow transcribers to do Newsletter journalist's files (she doesn't just do newsletters, she's got a very high-powered job in magazines, but that's how I started doing work for her!) it's still smashed through my £1,000 a month target.  I've also got about £220-worth more work done for Specialist market research agency, but haven't been able to invoice it yet, because I haven't finished the project, so that's a nice chunk in this month's pot already. 

Is it time to break out the dancing bananas again?

brizzlegirl

It is...dancing bananas all the way  
Take  care Caz xx

EssexHebridean

Definitely dancing banana time! Well done!