Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork

A huge amount of guff arrived from our solicitors yesterday morning so I spent last night trying to find all the guarantees and other documents required to complete the sale. I was struck, whilst watching the news on the BBC at the same time how much extra money I could save if I had a second home allowance similar to our elected representatives, that way I could execute a quick "flip" to avoid CGT having had some help with the refurbishments costs. Oh well – I shall have to remain a humble tax payer.

I have written to the solicitor who claims in one of his two letters to arrive to have obtained Office Copy Entries. I thought the whole point of a HIP was to avoid the need to get these reports – instead it appears we are paying for two of them! I shall wait and see what he says.

Just got to find the guarantee and inspection certificate for the central heating system and wait for the final certificate from the Local Authority's building control which I have only just realised we haven't got yet.

The House is ......

UNDER OFFER!

Offers that come to nothing

Nearly a month since my last update and whilst there has been a lot of activity there has been no offers that have amounted to anything.

We received a reasonable and serious rental offer but after giving the matter some thought decided to reject it. The plan was always to sell this house and that isn't going to happen while somebody else is living in it. It was interesting that the opening rental offer was increased after a couple of weeks both in terms of duration and value as we kept rejecting it but I remain convinced we made the right decision at this time.

A couple of weeks ago I asked another agent to get involved and this seems to have made a difference. We have received another offer for close(ish) to the target price but the agent doubts they are serious. There seems to be a number of people at the moment who put offers on houses they have no intention (or no ability) to actually complete on. We continue to get a number of viewings and I remain confident that there will be positive news fairly soon.

Offer Update

We have just received a second offer for the house which is much more acceptable. Not as high as we would have wanted but one that will turn a profit.

The Estate Agent is just negotiating the final figure and then it looks like we may a have buyer.

I'll post an update as soon as I have one.

Update

Time has flown by and it doesn't seem that it has been three weeks since I last updated this blog. That sounds like a confession "bless me father for I have sinned, it has been three weeks since my last update....."

That means the house has been on the market for about five weeks and whilst there have been plenty of viewings there haven't really been any meaningful offers. I say "meaningful" in this context as we did get one offer which the agent had the sense to reject before I even had the opportunity to comment on it. Interestingly this was the right call as I said that if they were prepared to "move a bit" we might be able to reach a deal but they then didn't get back to us at all – not even to reject our approach. I am confident that these people would not have progressed with a purchase even if we had accepted their original, low offer.

The house remains on the market but we have now decided to investigate the rental market as well. This was always a backstop position (outright sale was and remains the preferred solution) but it is far from a disaster and many people have commented privately that they believe this to be a better approach anyway. It appears that people make decisions on rental quite quickly and there are already a couple of people who have expressed an interest.

Should we end up renting I will then re-mortgage this house to free up as much cash as possible from it. Strictly speaking the house is currently owned outright but that is because we funded it from the current family home. There is nothing wrong with doing that but I have been told that it is harder to offset interest on loans against tax if you don't have a specific loan for a rental property.

More news as soon as I hear anything.

Viewings Update

The blog has been a bit quiet of late but that is really because there is not much to report.

Today (Saturday) really marks the end of the 2^nd week that the house had been on the market and available for viewing. We have had 5 or 6 people round so far and no offers to date. I am not worried about this although it would have been nice to have had an offer of some kind – even one to turn down! At least that would stop Tim pointing out signs in estate agents windows saying "Under Offer" and reminding me how much I have lost in interest payments during the time it took to eat a curry!

The agents initially estimated that they would "sell the house in a fortnight". The last time she made a prediction was when we sold our old house and she got that right. I think that somebody is going round for a second viewing today so you never know – she could be right again.

February Statistics

After the sudden and surprising peak at the end of January things have settled down again in APD blog land although there have still been 55 people visiting the blog a total of 350 times last month. 11% of these have not visited before.

The international readership is ever present so hello to Brazil, Romania and Turkey among others.