Old College Pigeon

Today we had the roofer's inspection of the castle, and although we had reason to believe that all was fine after having had a mini inspection after the leaking gutter gave rise to the impressive icicles of mid winter, it was still a relief to get the all clear.
Hopefully now the buyer's lawyer can stop nit picking and we can sign the missives.

Here follows a rant which you may want to ignore.

In the old days under the Scottish system of buying and selling houses, it was the custom for interested buyers to engage a surveyor to make a report on the property in question, and on that basis , a sealed bid was submitted to the lawyer of the vendors on the closing date. This concluded the sale after the signing of missives. The unsuccessful buyers were therefore out of pocket by the amount charged by their surveyor.

Nowadays the seller spends a great deal of money on a Home Report which is available to interested parties. Sealed bids are submitted on the closing date with most of the offers subject to survey because few mortgage firms want to believe the bland Home Report. So instead of having a conclusion on the day of the closing date, there is a delay of several weeks while the buyers organise their own survey and in our case more specialised inspections.

The losers in this money game are the sellers, and the winners are the failed buyers, the lawyers and the surveyors, the latter two no doubt rubbing their hands in glee at their swelling coffers.

So now we are waiting at the end of the phone for the all clear call, and I'm about to make another stress busting banana loaf.