It’s been a rollercoaster few days and for those who follow me on Instagram, thank you so much for all of your advice and positive vibes!
Last weekend I spotted a house on the market.
Not just any house. Our dream house on paper. Period property. Bags of room (as in 2,700 square feet). Over 80 feet of garden. Cellars. Garage. Sheds. Converted Attic. Doors away from the school we want our daughter to attend. I mean, it was incredible.
Not only was it a jaw-dropping property, but supported the lifestyle we want. I want to walk my daughter to school when the time comes. That school. We want to update a home and make it our own all over again, but not to the extent we did last time where we had to add all the basics like floors and windows.
It was everything we pictured for our forever home.
So we viewed it. We loved it. We made an offer.
OOPS.
It all happened so fast.
We were told explicitly that it would go fast and to be in with a chance of getting it, our own house should be on the market. So that’s what we did. We went home and put our house on the market with the explicit view that we would only sell for that house. We (prematurely) started getting excited about our new life – all within a matter of hours.
The funny thing is, we didn’t really think we’d get the house. There were 9 other offers made in the same price range. NINE.
Knowing that some other wannabe buyers from the open day wanted to develop the property into flats, I wrote a letter to the homeowner following some great advice on Instagram from the ever-lovely Simply The Nest, and told the owner just how loved that house would be if we lived there. We’d make it into a family home and cherish it to no end, with Luna making their blue shed into a doll house.
That letter won us the house despite not being the highest bidder. Our offer was accepted and we had to work fast.
As for our own home? We had offers within hours. In fact, we were made offers which were DOUBLE what we paid for it. A good, no wait, AMAZING achievement which was only accomplished through hard work and renovations since 2011 (might do a post on this in more detail if anyone is interested?)
I’m so so proud of what we’ve achieved and it puts us in a powerful position to buy our next adventure on the property ladder.
The ‘new house’ came with some concerns…and would stretch our budget to the point where we’d most certainly struggle for around 4 years.
Another factor, myself and Joe both start new jobs this month meaning we couldn’t 100% guarantee that our mortgage would go through, but we wouldn’t find out until we formally start legal proceedings, by then we would have accumulated a significant amount of cost. We were given a matter of hours to make a decision due to the competitive nature of houses in our area.
We did a lot of calculations. A bit of crying. Got really excited when we decided to go for it. And then crashed again when we decided that we’ve spent our 20s scrimping and saving, sacrificing holidays and weekends away, and we just don’t want to make our little girl miss out on the same.
Two days after the whole process began, we politely declined the dream house and removed ours from the market.
It was the hardest decision having to turn down your dream home when it’s so close in your grasp. But it was a bitter truth that it was the right house at the wrong time.
A huge thank you to everyone that was supportive to us, gave invaluable advice and asked how it was all going! We’ve made the decision that we will move soon to cash in on our house’s profit and to make sure our little girl stands the best chance with schools. But gosh I’ll miss this home!
