A rant on house buying

Candice: I’m going to go slightly off piste with today’s post, only because this subject has been occupying me for the last three months and it all came to a rather abrupt end last week.

August – put house on market, October – accept offer on house, November – have offer accepted on another house,December – apply for mortgage.  This is when things started to go somewhat awry.

I’m self employed, and in the current world of risk averse banking, that means I am a risk that some mortgage providers don’t want to take.  Fine, so I’ll find someone who will.

December 19 – apply for another mortgage via IFA.

Enjoy Christmas break….

January – spend whole month going back and forth with mortgage company and accountant. “Can we have your books in triplicate, signed by the Queen, and from 1787 onwards.”  Eventually supply everything after many phonecalls and lots of swearing.

Mid January – “You must complete by Jan 31st else we wont buy your house.”  OK, ultimatum from buyers as looks like we are dragging our feet.  However, house we want to buy is going through Probate and they have been late applying.  “You must sort Probate before Jan 31st, else we want compensation.”

January 21st, “Bugger off we’ll sort Probate out when we feel like it.”  Mad dash of trying to find a rental property so we don’t lose our sale.  “Sorry, we don’t take cats.”

Finally, we gave up after many tears and heart break, and me feeling like the world was falling apart as we tried to keep it all together to maintain the chain.

Is it me or if the English house buying process a bit f*cked up.  Where else can you spend thousands on searches and surveys and then it fall apart at the last hurdle?

I’m sure I’ll find a story in here somewhere but at the moment it is all too raw.

Rumours by Freya North

Candice: After a spell of not reading anything other than the Sunday Times Style magazine, I found an interesting book in the charity book shop in Stratford.

Phil and I had both liked a book called Cat by Freya North, you’ll remember.  So when I saw another by her I thought, I’ll give this a go.

If you remember Cat was a strong female character and her book was as much about the Tour de France, as it was about her finding a man.  Well, Rumours is on similar lines but without the bikes.

The premise of the story is a woman, Stella, who has had a bad break up and is now working in a job she doesn’t want to do to pay for her and her son.  Her job is as an Estate Agent and she gets the biggest sale possible, the local country seat Longbridge Hall.  In the mean time, the Lady of the Hall is trying to assist the help’s son (Xander), as he has also had a bad break up… can you see where this is going?

Well I won’t give the whole game away but with abit of tooing and frooing Stella and Xander end up happily ever after, but certainly without any serious farce type ‘will they won’t they’ stuff.  Thinking about how Cat is written, I can tell the way that Freya’s life must have changed in the last x number of years.  Cat’s character was young, free and single, Stella is nearly 40 and has a child.  I know we all write from our own experience but I expect this is what has been going on for the author.

Like Cat, and Freya’s own description on her website of her writing style, the female character is strong and independent but able to let someone in.  I have to admit if I had read this before meeting my Husband I would have poopooed it a bit but now I am all married up, I can see both sides.

I wouldn’t say this book is as good as Cat, the premise of the tour kept me more hooked than the idea of selling a house, and there are some situations where characters seem to appear and then disappear for no real reason, the Lady’s daughter for one.  But I enjoyed bouncing along with it for a few hours.

Ironically, I have since discovered it is her most recent book, came out in June, so thanks to the bookshop for being so up to date!