All is revealed!

Short Version: Sold flat. Bought new one. In two weeks. Very excited.

Long Version:

Before we went on holiday to Ireland, we viewed a ground floor flat, and fell in love with it. It was just what we wanted. Private front garden with big hedge, facing morning sun, small shared back garden facing afternoon sun, with a door out from the kitchen. Nothing needing doing inside. Well, almost nothing. It’s the nicest shared back green I’ve ever seen, in fact, the residents had just had it landscaped and the wall rebuilt. We knew it was THE ONE!

In a complete panic to move quickly, we contacted an Estate Agent who advertise that they’ll buy your house. The man came round, and said, no, we must sell it. ‘It’ll sell in a week’, he said. We were dubious. The photos and Home Report were done next day and we were off to Ireland for a week.

Meanwhile, the object of our desire ‘Closed’ ie taken off the market and any offers were to be made by a certain day. They do this when they have a reasonable amount of ‘Notes of Interest’. In Scotland’s (bonkers) system, you all put in your sealed bids and you have no idea what everyone else is bidding. So usually you miss out unless you go crazily over the asking price. Anyway, we weren’t in a position to make an offer, and were devastated it had ‘closed’ so soon.

However, we had to go ahead with the sale of our property, as everything was in motion. We’ve been thinking about it for years, so it wasn’t really the snap decision it sounds like.

THEN… while searching (with mounting desperation) the real estate websites for a suitable abode, none of which fitted the exacting requirements (or if they were, they were not in our price bracket) ...

There it was! Back on the market! Our dream house!!

They hadn’t sold after all!!! This house was meant for us! (That’s a lot of !!). Then they took it back off the market again, which means, if I hadn’t spotted it on that day, we wouldn’t have known. The sign is down, they’re not on any websites, but still quietly open for offers.

And we had an offer on our place by the end of the week. A really nice young university lecturer who loved the place. She came for a second viewing and stayed an hour, while other folk were looking round. She made an offer and we accepted. (We’re not hard-nosed bargainers, obviously). I didn’t want to say then, because I know that ‘an offer’ may not automatically mean a sale, and I didn’t want to count my chickens.

But it’s been a stressful week, and they’re hard-nosed bargainers (quite right too) and probably sensed our desperation. They wanted rather more for it than we initially thought. In Scotland it’s an ‘offers over…’ system. But they should have said, ‘offers in excess of…’ which would have been a more accurate guide.

However, this morning, after we tried to hold our nerve and bargain them down over several days, we agreed on a price. And a date. Phew! We’re SO excited. The date is November 1st.

You realise, of course, that this is the first step in the acquisition of a puppy!! It’s turning out to be the most expensive puppy ever…

This is the (soon to be ex-)neighbour’s cat. I’m too weak with stressing by the phone all day to go far.

PS It’s not just a puppy (that would be ridiculous) - we want a garden, our own door (I get fed up picking up litter carelessly dropped by some of the dozen or so amorphous residents who share the stair) and No Stairs. I don’t exactly skip up the stairs now, so I can imagine them being a problem in a few years.

That bubbly WILL be opened tonight. Weekday or not.