It’s a go

The Survey passed with flying colours, and we are getting a good deal for our money.Tomorrow I part with the big bucks, and Tuesday we will be moving.
Some of our ‘Woods’ friends have been in touch, and because we have to arrange disposal of practically everything, believe we plan to emigrate.
Believe me, if there had been any chance of us being accepted into NZ, we would have been on the first plane after the ink was dry on the completion documents.
We had thought about France (I actually remember a fair bit of French from school, but am no way fluent) or other cheaper European countries, but we would need to find work, thus foreign languages would be a major hurdle, and the US and Canada won’t take us as not only are we too old, we have no qualifications.

A couple of posts ago, I admitted we had been priced out of the property market.
Some of you may be wondering then why we decided to sell when we owned our house outright anyway.
Ah.
Finances, money, dosh, and our survival in a country of forever rising prices and forces beyond our control.
2013 proved that with the constant weather damage and everything else that drained our savings that year.
All of our capital was tied up in the house. We had bought on a rising market and invested over £25K on top of the purchase price. We therefore hoped to be able to release some of the equity to cover us until retirement (now 8 years away instead of 2 for me) by downsizing.
Our house may have been cheap to run, well for us, but maintaining it was becoming a struggle.

It was originally built in 1847, days when the road was level with the frontage instead of three feet above it, traffic had four legs and pulled traps or wagons, and aeroplanes had yet to be invented.
We kept things up together, and it was certainly in better shape when we left than when we arrived. However, things were changing and the poor old place was beginning to show signs of being unable to cope with the continuous heavy goods traffic and flyovers from the Typhoons at the air base 2 miles up the road.

Don’t misunderstand. The property was structurally sound (something Estate Agents appear to have never heard of judging by the crap they gave us details of) and there were no major issues to contend with. But in the coming years? Nothing lasts for ever, and we had to think of the future.
There was no work in our area (or a 20 mile radius) and for me to get an office job, I could be expected to travel some 50 plus miles a day, if not each way, for the basic wage which would be totally impractical. I had not ‘signed on’ as I was getting a small private pension, which actually would have reduced any unemployment benefit to which I may have been entitled.
Having our own transport meant living 10 miles away from a major town was not a problem, but when we are unable to drive or cannot afford to run a car, we would have to rely on public transport and shopping on the internet.
In 2012, we decided to sell and hoped to at least get our initial purchase price back.
Two other couples in our village put their property on the market at the same time. Both had been bungalows we had originally viewed, but were against because one had no back garden (having been sold to a rather obnoxious neighbour) and in the other there was nowhere to put my piano, which is no longer a problem.
The garden-less property sold within 6 months as the sellers had replaced the bathroom, kitchen, central heating and decorated and re-carpeted throughout, thus it was showroom perfect.
The other became our Nemesis.
They kept reducing their price, so to maintain interest, we had to too, though we could not afford to drop as much as they did. For each of our viewings, they got 6 , and had offers from 2 couples who had originally shown interest in our property. Both surveys revealed major problems and the offers were withdrawn.
They then decided to go ‘the auction route’ reducing their price even more, which was reduced still further by the auction house to attract buyers. They failed at auction, and eventually sold last November for almost £40K less than their original asking price.
We were therefore lucky to sell for what we did (actually the highest of the three) but were still tens of thousands of pounds down on our purchase price.
Thanks to the hospitality and generosity of our friend these past two weeks, we have managed to sort our lives out. In short, it has been yet another nightmare thanks to outside forces, lack of the readies, and trying to do the best we can with what we have, which isn’t much and is going to become even less.
Tomorrow, it all comes together, idiot banker permitting, and Tuesday we will spend the first night in our new home. What the dog will make of it, we have no idea.
Next time, I will fill you in.
Some of you may be stunned, shocked, surprised, even hysterical with laughter at ‘our folly’, but I hope most of my blogger friends will understand our reasoning.
One thing for sure is that it will be excellent fodder for at least a year or so.

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