Or not. We recently obtained a British Gas supplied Minim electricity monitor. Super easy to set-up and use it shows how much energy is being used. It’s a tad scary to watch the graph shoot up when the kettle is on for example.
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So, after two weeks of house hunting we found a lovely house, arranged to put ours on the market and then promptly changed our minds. Why? We heard some bad things both about the area the house was in and the people who were selling it. I also cross-checked the former piece of information with another estate agent who backed it up so we’re staying put. For now.
Tags: houses
On Friday met with our always friendly mortgage broker who has given us a very good idea of what we can afford so now we can set our sights on what we want. We’d previously looked at a few houses slightly higher than our price ceiling along with a couple under it but at least we weren’t far off. Hooray for our not that bad maths skills!
And so to our three house viewing, Saturday morning extravaganza.
Waterloo Park Avenue
On the doorstep of Waterloo Park which would have been very handy, lots of space but needed a lot of work and money spent on it to make it work for us. We were only in there about five minutes and knew it wasn’t right after about 30 seconds. Were we child-less it’s the sort of project I could see us relishing in that Property Ladder style.
Hemming Way
I’ll come back to…
Turner Road
A very nicely decorated house that was very much in keeping with our style but had a slightly odd, albeit large kitchen and the bedrooms were disappointingly small. One was even smaller than our current third bedroom! Also was (slightly) too much for us, we could stretch to the asking price but it’d have to be exactly right and this one wasn’t.
And so we return to Hemming Way which we like a lot. A three year old new build that has a fantastic big kitchen/diner that opens out to the lovely sized garden, three good sized bedrooms, a big bathroom, an en-suite shower room, and a shed with a cat flap! Our only concerns are storage space (the loft isn’t that big), how we’d add more value to the house and if it’s a “big” enough move up. Could we get more for our money? Interestingly the Turner Road house is almost £20,000 more expensive than this one and would appear to actually be smaller.
We’re having a second viewing on Monday.
Tags: houses
Two more houses have been seen and evaluated.
Bramfield Close
Another one minute walk away from home, overall was good, needed a small amount of work and repainting but for what it’s on at we realised it might not be that big a move for us – if we can afford more we want to go for more!
Meadowbrook Close
Down Long John Hill, a nice semi in a very quiet close. This had a really good feel about it and some really nice features along with a perfect kitchen but the bedrooms were slightly smaller than I was hoping for which put me off.
I think we’re on the right track but I don’t feel like we’ve found the right place just yet.
We’re seeing our IFA tomorrow then three more houses on Saturday at which point we should know:
- If we want to sell
- What we can afford
- What we want from a new house
Tags: houses
House Viewings and a Wedding
Apparently we’re thinking of moving. Yes, I was surprised too. Chloe’s been looking at houses on and off over the past month and suddenly we’re actually arranging viewings and valuations and all that jazz. Yikes!
So, we headed back fairly early from Topcroft for two house viewings. The first was literally 1 minute’s walk from where we are now, it was nice but had a small, small garden and I remain unconvinced for now.
The second was lovely. It’s a three year old new build with three floors, loads of space, a lovely secluded garden and a park 30 seconds away. However it’s in Old Catton and thus is more than double the distance out of the city we are now and thus leaves us conflicted due to Chloe’s non-driving status. It also had a slightly small master bedroom, despite the en-suite.
However we haven’t got our house on the market yet and don’t actually have any idea of our budget, we’re getting our house valued tomorrow (and again on Tuesday) and need to speak to our IFA to see what mortgage we could afford. Let’s see what happens shall we?
After a brief trip to the city for Chloe to have a job interview we got ourselves ready for Chloe’s friend Laura’s wedding reception which was great: chocolate fountain, cake, muffins, pizza, curry, chilli, a bouncy castle, lovely garden and gorgeous decorations:
Tags: out&about
