Help calm me, house buying and selling stress. Part 4

From one shandi/y to another, I have watched your painful journey and been wishing you success. I am so happy that you can now turn over a page in the book of your life and start afresh. The news brought tears to my eyes. I wish you everything good from now on and many more happy years ahead.

A friend rang this morning, from my last village. She is in the very restricted goup, can hardly walk because of her bad lungs. Married with 3 dogs. They are head in the sand wrt internet, were never going to use e mails when they could phone etc. She is suffering now, no books left to read and no kindle and no internet to order food. Luckily the village people are very close and she gets help but their independence is severely curtailed

Best for us all to move with the times. I only learnt to use whatsapp this week

Oh that is fantastic news Shandy !!!!
Just great. It's made my day.
I'm sure we will come up with the perfect place for you. xx
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That's really excellent news Shandy and the 8 weeks will give you time to get all your belongings sorted. I am sure you will have a lovely summer househunting and will be warm, cosy and unworried next winter.

What a time you have had and I hold my hands up in admiration for the way you have dealt with everything thrown at you.

Well done Shandy

Ok, we all need to get onto Rightmove and make a start to find you somewhere wonderful to live.........

Brilliant news Shandy! We've been with you all the way and now for us to help you from a distance with your search.

Thanks Whiff, our posts crossed, hugs to you too for your support xx

Maytime2 I have got furniture on ebay and have had a few enquiries. I am hoping it may sell when lockdown lifts as I need the money to buy my white goods which I have to leave behind as they are all fitted.

Thank you very much Craftyone, I don't know what I'd have done without this thread, you have seen me through some very dark days.

It still feels like a dream. I haven't had a confirmation email but assume that will come later, I won't worry about it now, hopefully it will come and he wasn't rearranging the truth!

So glad Shandy that you have finally sold the house. I'm sure you will feel much better now that the problem has been taken off your shoulders.
If there are any items of furniture etc. in the house that you no longer want would you be able to just leave them there? I could be wrong but it seems in the Homes under the Hammer programme many houses have furniture left in them. It would save you such a awful lot of bother if you were able to do this.

Shandy57 over the moon for you. And bugger the kids. They are adults and have their own lives. It's your time now and you deserve an easier life. Nice 2 bed with bit of garden. Within easy distance of shops , doctors and activities you can join. Think of all the things you have wanted to have a go at. Now you have years ahead of you free from worrying about single glazed windows, whether you have enough oil and lugging things up all those steps.

Have they given you s firm date to get everything out of the station?

Flowers hugs and kisses heading your way. X

I am utterly delighted, at last that line across and a bright new future, no more draughty winters or trying to keep the fire lit or lugging logs or buying oil for the oil eating ch and best of all no more worry. Yes there will be a period of feeling in limbo, a bit of an anti climax but that is only you coming back down off a cloud You have shown your mettle woman, I am so proud of you

Well, friends, the dreadful deed appears to be done . I am finally free of the fear of the costs of the repair and maintenance of my huge and beautiful crumbling pile. No more sleeping on the sofa with a torch when gale force winds threaten my 'balls' being blown off! It was a privilege to live there

It's been an anxious wait. I got an email in response to my 9.30 am call to the auction contact this morning as her signal is poor, and emailed her back expressing my concern. She didn't reply by email , but phoned about half an hour ago and said 'good news - the sale has completed'. She also said how lucky I was - that remains to be seen as he has asked for eight weeks to complete, I won't celebrate until the funds are in my account. Thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement to enter the auction immediately I left the EA.

Apparently the buyer has been in contact with the auction house for the past two weeks and his original bid was £10K less, but he was persuaded to up it to £275K. A long, looooooong way from the figure I was led to believe I could achieve by the estate agent, but I can still buy something small and comfortable. I know my kids won't be happy but do have to think of myself, the thought of another winter there alone me feel like tearing my hair out.

I do feel I can justify it and come to terms with it. I knew £175-200K needed to be spent, most of it urgent according to the buyer's surveyor. We had in excess of 30 viewings with the two different EAs, and two good offers which came to nothing, then this buyer who has never been able to afford it, but now can. Out of the 33 auction house viewers only one made a bid of a lower amount without a survey, and as I've already said, the viewer who did commission a survey didn't. I feel so glad not to have any more strangers tramping all over the house, no more cleaning and fire lighting and smelly candle putting on, just clearing out from now on.

Right, off to write my letters to friends to leave with my will - with a coffee and my last piece of chocolate cake, thanks to Mary Berry!

Enjoy your day xx

East of OXFORD - Buckinghamshire. Norfolk is a great county - we visited a friend there the weekend before we went into lockdown. It is very flat and a long way away!

The reason this house is hard to sell: Grade II listed; relatively close to a road; high maintenance; larger than the average family needs. I quite agree that a house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay - the price tag doesn’t seem to be the issue. We should probably take it off the market for the time being - who knows.

Where going east do you fancy Gaga? We were once tempted by Norfolk. Around Cambridge is lovely but expensive. My husband, however, finds it all very flat.

grammaretto. I hope the oil isn`t all over the drive, that would be yet another problem to sort

Gaga, what makes your house difficult to sell apart from the obvious size and which area of the uk are you? We are pretty scattered here and we all know our areas quite well

The best advice from an EA was that a house is only worth what a buyer will pay

What a nightmare for your DD and family Grammretto. Such a stressful day for them without the added complications. Our girls had differing levels of angst on moving day - one we used to send to her grandmother as she used to throw up! Hope they will be settled very soon.

I wonder if Shandy has sold or will you be having a break from all the polishing and tidying - does it really make a difference do you think - if someone likes the property I’m sure they will see beyond the odd cobwebs! I spend so much time scurrying round lighting the fires putting on the heating then they’re gone within an hour or so!

Ellianne: yes we’ve had a number of people round - the thing is it’s a unique house (aren’t they all) and it will be a very specific person who buys it. We bought it with our DD and SiL when they had one child and one on the way. The idea was that it would be a long term family home where all 4 daughters would have space to come, bring their friends and subsequently families and eventually we would move to the smaller part and DD would have main part. A really case of live for the moment because you don’t know what is on the horizon.

Just heard that DD's hire van broke down. It had a massive oil leak. The garage were servicing it but let it out before it was done! Luckily they hadn't left the house.

The garage have sent a smaller one instead but the big one was all packed and ready to go and it had a lift. Nightmare!

Thinking of Franbern today

Good morning everyone! Craftyone, you ask about our house move. The house has been on the market for a year - the first nine months of that with an international agent who did the square route of f all we then changed to a local one who’ve arranged many viewings, but no offers. They now have a new sales guy who believes that with a virtual tour he will have people queuing up after the lockdown. We always knew that it would be difficult to sell and trying to do so during Brexit was a lost cause and just as things were looking up along comes COVID 19!
We are not new to moving having owned 2 precious properties and moved about 15 times with the army.
The plan was never to sell after 10 years as we are now being forced to do.
We haven’t started looking for anywhere as yet, but will go east, near a railway station with good links both north and to London - the most import thing will be that we are accessible to our grandchildren.
Just noticing that the birds have eaten all the sunflower seeds and I don’t have any more stacks of grain and peanuts, but they really love the sunflower seeds
Enjoy your days on the sun if you can find any, here it’s cloudy Have lovely walks etc etc.

craftyone we are still in our planning stage as DH isn’t feeling too good at the moment so the Polytunnel isn’t erected yet. We get frosts right through into early May where we are, so it all seems so early for us to be planting the things that you are at the moment, outdoors.
We are itching to start though, we are going to do the ‘ no dig ‘ method in raised beds, with net covers on to keep the rabbits, pigeons and deer off of them. The plan is that we will start some veg off in the tunnel. I have plenty of pots but I think I’ll have to try to get some more soil.

Ellianne, I believe the infections will start snowballing about 3-4 weeks after we have been let out, maybe a bit later because I do think that people are not going to be so careful. That will be september/october and from thence we are into the winter season. Everyone is hoping that eventually the virus cannot find a host and will die off but it will be what it will be

At least I have been more productive today, always being incredbly glad that I had extra patio built. I filled 2 poppy trugs, ready for toscana strawberries to arrive next week, the third one will have yellow balconi tomatoes on top and all will have marigolds/or nasturteums
www.thompson-morgan.com/p/vegtrug-by-vegtrug-ltd-poppy-classic/T67618TM

Bun ingredients are in the breadmaker, ready to make the dough and I am just going to have a coffee

btw that trug looks sold out at that price but they are so perfect for a patio or a balcony, they are very easy to set up and lightweight

Whiff, you said itv hub would not let you in, apparently it’s a problem with a particular generation of smart tv. Within the family we have several generations of the same tv and on the one in the sitting room we cannot have the itv hub.

It will take me a week at least to get used to losing an hour's sleep. I was reading the jokey thread last night!

I too am a marmalade lover. I have some frozen seville oranges in the freezer so may follow suit.

I got on with my knitting but then got stuck. I am not a great knitter though I love it and rely heavily on help from the ladies at the knitting club.

Not heard from DD yet about their move. There were just some mournful photos of the DGC sitting on boxes.

So you are in Melbourne SueH49. We stopped over for a couple of days on our way to visit our DS in NZ. What a beautiful city it is. It's like a combination of a European city, very upmarket shops with grand buildings built with money from the 19th century gold, and a seaside resort, with St Kilda and Williamstown, where we enjoyed an excellent meal in a fish restaurant.

I am sad now to think we may never go again and not see our DS and DGS for at least another year before they can come here.

Yes, the property market and selling houses is what brought us all together and I now have a DD and DS desperately wanting to move. They just missed the boat with lockdown, but no doubt some clever people on this discussion will come up with novel ideas.
Have you had many viewers Gaga? I think Shandy is on her knees from cleaning for people to look round. I remember having the white duvet covers at the ready if the EA wanted to bring someone round, then I whipped them all off after.