Ding! Ding! All change, please... (now replaced with new diary on MFW)

milann · 16 May 2023 at 8:26PM

Wow that immersion heater sounded dangerous 😳😳😳

savingholmes · 17 May 2023 at 12:25AM

That was a mammoth 🦣 update.

Hope you find the right buyer and seller soon.

EssexHebridean · 17 May 2023 at 10:41AM

The immersion heater would have been lethal had we not woken when we did Milann - or rather, not been woken by HRH. We were incredibly fortunate not least as had it blown - which they can - it would potentially have taken out the flat upstairs as well. You can imagine we were incredibly angry that the seller just hadn't told us!

RS we usually get lamb sausages from the farmer's market - they're a bit different to the usual pork and he does them with rosemary, garlic etc. nice to have something a bit more unusual isn't it!

Apologies - I realised I missed a good number of visitors when I updated yesterday - not sure how that happened but thanks to all who stopped by and shared house hunting stories/wisdom/experience - it all helps! Redo I really want a wisteria - I've been mentally eyeing up everywhere we've been interested in with wisteria-planting possibilities in mind!

OK - house news then. We viewed The One with the massive kitchen diner last night - and it's absolutely beautiful. Met one of the current owners too and she seems lovely - they've apparently basically done the entire house room by room over the time they've been there, plus the extension and the outbuilding in the garden - and have made an utterly stunning job of it. Our one main hesitancy from the listing was that we'd agreed all round that we ideally wanted somewhere with direct access into the garden and this didn't seem to have - but a quick nosy round on Sunday suggested that there was a possibility there could be and looking last night - big double doors in the rear of the shed - winner! There are odd cosmetic jobs to be done, and we'd probably want to decorate it a bit more to our own taste once we'd been there a while and got a feel for the place, but we knew almost instantly on walking in that it was somewhere we'd love to live. So this morning we will be accepting the offer we have on ours, and making an offer on that one. The agent mentioned that the owners may be open to an offer, so we plan to offer 15k under asking in the first instance (it's on at OIRO in any event) and see what they say - we have also been clear that we are stretching our budget. We know they are keen to get an offer as they've already seen somewhere they want to move to, so fingers (very!) crossed. Very exciting and also tremendously nerve wracking!

General MSE stuff - my 6 month fix with personal money has matured this morning and dropped into my easy access - I probably want to shift it elsewhere for the time being where it will earn a fraction more interest, as I now don't plan to re-fix it for the time being until we see what we are needing to do financially for house-buying - it seems counter productive to risk locking it away when we still might need it.
We've done a bit of looking at various mortgage possibilities and working through different term lengths - we've decided to increase the term slightly to get the monthly payments down, but we're leaning towards a 3 year fix rather than a 2 as rates are slightly lower for those. Currently we're hesitating over whether to go with a provider that allows OPs up to 10% of the original loan amount, or one which allows 10% of the outstanding capital - although realistically we're not likely to be in the zone for OPing anything close to the limit in those first 3 years so that may not be particularly relevant.
Banks checked and all OK - I'm looking to transfer at least £500 to the New House Fund at the end of the month as things stand, and contributions to that are now all-important as we'll have to pay a chunky lump of extra Stamp Duty of course which buying in a higher price bracket. Always irritating having to hand over money in taxes but there you go! Although it's probably now unlikely we can amass anything much towards other moving costs in there before our likely date of move, it would be nice to at least have enough there to cover that SDLT so that is the main driver going forwards.
I'm picking up odds and ends on Prolific at the moment so my balance there is creeping up gently - £11.65 payable with £2.20 pending at the moment.

Tea this evening will be keema and sweet potato curry with rice - I remembered to get the curry out of the freezer last night to defrost in the fridge. Need to remember to get the sausages out tonight ready for tomorrow too. Friday is going to be bits and bobs I think - MrEH keeps telling me we "need" to use up the black pudding ahead of going away because we can buy more while we're there, so I may well incorporate some of that - the remaining sausages, we've got eggs to use, a handful of oven chips in the bottom of the bag....you get my thinking I'm sure.