Just 63 days after submitting our offer on the house, we finally exchanged contracts yesterday, with a completion date of next Tuesday.  Now this may sound like a long time to get to point of exchange, but you do have to allow for those professionals with long lunch breaks (the longest being 4-and-a-half hours, with not a jot of exaggeration), and lost mortgage applications (a week with 3 branches of the same building society pointing their fingers at each other).

Now we just have the small matter of packing up our entire life and stuffing it into the back of a van…

And sorting out all the utilities.  And insurance.  And Sky (don’t forget Sky!).

Meanwhile, work projects are running late, sports days are happening, heavy metal concerts are being attended (more on that next week) and Mrs H is doing a sterling job at keeping her boys and girls (both in school and at home) in line.

Since my last entry on the matter, well, not much has happened, really. (Belt up for a thrilling ride readers!)

First, there was a slight miscommunication between us and the solicitor which has probably delayed things by about a week. They were waiting for a letter from us to tell them to proceed, whilst we were waiting for news from them about what to do next. (I thought I’d instructed them last time, but apparently me turning up in person and saying ‘yes’ isn’t enough, they need it in writing. Fair enough, really.)

Then it seems that the building society ‘mislaid’ our mortgage application for a while, culminating in the amusing/frustrating (delete as applicable) situation where 3 branches were all claiming they’d never heard of us. It turned up at branch one (our local) after a couple of determined phonecalls from our IFA. We have decided to use the building society’s surveyor to do our Homebuyer’s Report, as it’s an awful lot cheaper. To be honest, having read one report and heard about a few others, they really don’t seem to be spectacular value for money whichever you choose, so going the cheapo way isn’t too concerning. (Cue comments….!)

So, now we need to start paying money… £525 for the valuation and homebuyer’s report, and another couple of hundred to get the local searches under way. A drop in the ocean really, but ‘ouch’ nonetheless.

A quick house update. After our offer was accepted last week, we’ve properly instructed our solicitor, and signed scary mortgage forms. A surveyor is ‘getting back to me’, whilst our mortgage advisor is checking with the building society about how much an extended survey will cost through them.

The chain seems to be OK – our vendors have apparently already found a house to buy and put an offer in.

It’s all sounding and feeling particularly ‘real’ now.

And there you have it. After viewing 5 houses we have had an offer accepted on a nice 3 bedroomed semi-detached affair on the outskirts of town. Now the fun and seemingly undocumented process of buying a house begins.

Whilst talking to the solicitor today (for longer than strictly necessary… they bill by the minute, right?) I was informed of the interesting fact that because the house is in the vicinity of the nice church that tends to get all the local marriages, we may be asked to contribute to its upkeep. Now this doesn’t sound too bad; there must be thousands of houses in the vicinity, so what’s a few quid every now and again to keep a nice church going? Well, it’d be nice if it did work that way. However, the church gets to choose who it asks for money, and it can be as many or as few people as it sees fit. Apparently there’s a case going through the courts at the moment about someone who was asked for £6,000 for something or other back in 1990, and decided to fight it. All the appeals have gone against him so far, and it’s about to go into the European Court of Human Rights. His bill so far stands at about £504,000.

Alternatively, we can pay for some indemnity insurance.

About 10 hours ago I said:

My biggest concern at the moment is that we’ll see the house we want and be beaten to it

Both of the houses we were interested in have been ‘tied-up’ today before we even got a chance to look at them.

(“Tied Up” – I’m assuming that means “sold”, but I’m not completely sure…)

Hmmm, there seems to be a distinct lack of picture today. This is mainly due to being a bit preoccupied with becoming Kent’s latest property mogul. We have spoken to a mortgage advisor, and ventured into some estate agents to register our details. We’ve even spotted a house we like the look of.

This is where bloggers usually tend to quote some statistic about housebuying being one of the most stressful things you do in life. Well, cliché or not, I can quite believe it, so if anyone has any advice please do feel free to share. My biggest concern at the moment is that we’ll see the house we want and be beaten to it, since we can’t devote 100% of our time to the process.