houses

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.

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.

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