Selling our cottage

I have been itching to write this post for months. It was supposed to be the story of how we sold our cottage and bought our new home. But the story is far from finished, and now it’s spilling over the edges, yearning to be told in some form. So, without neat endings or satisfying conclusions, I am publishing it anyway.

I hope it goes without saying that this is, of course, very much a first world problem. We are so lucky to even be thinking about buying our next home, and it’s also a stressful, emotionally draining, difficult process. Both things can be true. Sometimes it just doesn’t go your way, and you have to pick yourself up even when it all feels a bit hopeless. If any of you out there are facing similar challenges with buying or selling your home, I hope this is helpful!

Towards the end of May, we went to see a Victorian terrace ten minutes’ walk from where we currently live. It has three light-filled bedrooms, flowering wisteria over the front door, a long garden that backs directly on to rolling hills. We fell unexpectedly, madly in love with it, put our own house on the market the very same week, got an offer on the first viewing, accepted said offer, and put an offer in on the new house (on my 32nd birthday). 24 hours later, it was accepted and it all started to feel terrifyingly, wonderfully real.

It was a whirlwind of epic proportions, in the beginning. We worried that our house would sit on the market for weeks on end, that nobody would want to buy it. And then, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the very same sales agent who originally sold the house to us, showed a young couple around. They fell in love with it just as we did two years ago. “There’s a lovely symmetry in how this has all played out,” we thought. The passing on of our own first home to two people who are in the same phase of life as we once were, who clearly want to love and care for it as much as we have, felt so right.

“It really was a question of how much we actually wanted this house. Our mortgage had been approved, but was it too much of a risk for us to hold?”

Everything was moving so quickly that it felt almost too good to be true. And then, the first obstacle revealed itself. The attic in our new house was converted into a third bedroom in the early 1990s, and the owners at the time did not apply for planning permission or building regulations. The local authority had no record of the conversion, and that was a major problem for our mortgage lender, who would not approve our new mortgage until we could prove that the conversion was structurally sound and fire safe.

At this point, dear reader, I had quite the meltdown (sorry, James). I was convinced that there was absolutely no way on this earth that we could buy this house - it was all too uncertain. What if we could never get it officially certified, making it hard to sell in the future? Were we landing ourselves with an unsellable property? It was heart-wrenching, knowing that our perfect home was sitting right there, with a glaring problem we couldn’t easily overcome.

With no written evidence that the conversion meets building regulations of the time, we had to commission a chartered building surveyor to assess it and produce a lengthy report. After an extremely anxious wait, we found out that it is structurally sound, safe and up to code, although some remedial work is required to make it fire safe.

It really was a question of how much we actually wanted this house. Our mortgage had been approved, but was it too much of a risk for us to hold? After a lot of talking and deliberating, asking family and friends for their advice, looking at our finances and weighing up all the options, we decided to negotiate a reduction in price and continue with the purchase.

Little did we know that a dodgy extension from the 90s was the very least of our worries. While we were negotiating back and forth with the estate agent, our buyers had received the report from their homebuyers’ survey, which identified damp in the cottage. If there’s one word that strikes the fear of God into potential buyers, it’s damp.

This revelation was of absolutely no surprise or concern to us initially, 1. because damp also came up in our own survey two years ago and we barely even gave it a second thought, and 2. it’s a Victorian house, built in the 1890s. Of course it has moisture in the walls. This building has stood here for more than a hundred years! We have never seen any evidence of it being an issue - no damp walls, no condensation, no mould, no rotting skirting boards.

“They approached the situation in such a different way to how we would have approached it that it felt like whiplash.”

It soon became clear that our buyers were far more nervous than we were about the prospect of damp. They paid a so-called specialist damp surveyor (basically a guy with a damp metre, who had next to no knowledge of how period homes are constructed) to inspect our house - and predictably, he found ‘rising damp’ everywhere, quoting for his own company (it’s astounding that this practice is even allowed) to undertake more than £7,000 worth of invasive chemical damp proofing.

The process would have involved taking up brand new herringbone flooring and carpets, removing radiators, and injecting who knows what chemicals into the fabric of our beautiful Victorian cottage. Our buyers were insistent that they wanted us to pay for the works to be completed before they moved in. We said no. And that, dearest reader, was that. They pulled out of the sale.

We were a little shell shocked, but not altogether surprised. The shock soon gave way to infuriation. There’s so much we don’t know about what these people were thinking - were they trying to use it as a bargaining tool, and we called their bluff? Were they just naive to the realities of buying a very old house? They approached the situation in such a different way to how we would have approached it that it felt like whiplash.

So where does all of this leave us? Well, we’ve had no choice but to go back on the market. The chain hasn’t entirely broken down just yet, but if we can’t secure a new buyer in the next few weeks and months, we might lose our beautiful new home. The thought of that happening makes me feel desperately sad. I am convinced that the house is meant to be ours, and that’s a dangerous headspace to inhabit when the entire process is teetering so precariously on a knife edge.

“I suppose I wanted to write this as a reminder to myself that the story is rarely ever finished. There are always more chapters to write…”

In more positive news, there is a lady who lost out on our house the first time around and is, miraculously, still looking for somewhere to move to. Sadly, she and her partner are in a bit of a tricky situation (their buyer has not yet secured a buyer for their place. Are you following? I’m not sure I am…), and they aren’t yet in a position to make an offer, but they did send us a rather lovely handwritten card expressing how much they adore the cottage, so all is not lost.

These funny little coincidences and moments of fate are giving me hope that this is all still meant to happen for us. We both knew, as soon as we walked in, that this house is The One. To lose it would be devastating.

At this point, I am pouring all of my energy into manifestation. I’m picturing the champagne and fish & chips we will have on the floor of our new living room, the bifold doors we will open wide as the sun sets, the first night’s sleep in our new bedroom at the very top of the house, the first gurgle of the coffee machine when we wake. I can see our families gathered around the kitchen table through the seasons, a Christmas tree glinting in the window and the log fire burning, coats and shoes piled high in the porch. I see summer evenings drenched in sunlight, the two of us looking out over the fields at the very bottom of the garden with a glass of wine in hand.

This really could be the place where we start the next chapter of our lives together. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. The process has been fraught with issues, it has tested our resolve and presented us with challenges we didn’t think we would come up against this year. But it has also reminded me of just how lucky I am that James chose me, that he continues to choose me, through all of it.

I suppose I wanted to write this as a reminder to myself that the story is rarely ever finished. There are always more chapters to write, and maybe it’s better to share something, in the absence of a neat ending, than not at all. This is real life. It’s not over until it’s over.

I hope to be back here with positive updates soon. Please keep everything crossed for us!

Until then,

L xxx