We Bought a House!

We bought a house! 

It’s quite an exciting change, and after renting for so long over the past decades it’s nice to have a base that we can really call our own.  House hunting has been a big part of our focus over the past two months and even I can’t believe just how many properties we’ve looked at.  I tried keeping track of them in the beginning, but then just ran out of patience, but I think we must have seen something like 40 or 50 properties to get to this stage.  Part of the problem was we didn’t quite know what we were looking for.  We started off our conversation about a year ago, finding the appeal of a ‘bolt hole’ attractive after the past couple of years of Covid-uncertainty.  Pretty much all of the countries that we were planning to spend time in during the past two years have imposed heavy restrictions on foreigners on their shores – restrictions that are only just now starting to ease.

It’s a bit scary thinking just how much money we’ve paid in rent during our expat lives, but it’s worked for us and we’ve appreciated the flexibility that that’s given us, especially in the down times.  In fact, not having a Dubai sized mortgage hanging over our heads when the GFC cost both of us our jobs in 2009 allowed us the freedom to do our first loop of the Indian Ocean in our yacht Aroha.  You can read about that adventure by clicking below!

Our Longest Passage

The bolt hole needed to be somewhere where we could leave some belongings, be close to our UK friends and family, and of course somewhere where we would be happy spending time ourselves.  And somewhere where we could invite friends and family to join us.

We were a couple of weeks into our search when we realised how active the Air BnB market is here, and the extra income from letting it when we weren’t using it not only made sense, but allowed us to up our budget a little.

Now, throw into the mix the desire for a modest renovation project.  I think this comes from a mix of me working so long in real estate development, but also from not being able to alter our rental properties.  We were keen to be able to add value, and well as our mark to a property.

I felt a little sorry for the first agents we dealt with – we weren’t really sure of our budget, type of project, and our location was quite a big area described by arcs from friends and family locations!  So now I can see clearly why it’s taken so much effort to get to this stage!  I put together a couple of montages of images of projects we viewed on our journey!

In first year of architecture school I studied Aotearoa New Zealand’s oldest building.  The Mission House in Kerikeri was built back in 1822, an age which seemed impossible to me at the time.  Of course, NZ has a short history and that shows in the age of “old” buildings.  The fact is, buildings that age are not uncommon here in the UK, and many of the ones we’ve looked at come from that century.  It’s quite convenient that the Victorian era building boom resulted in many sturdy buildings that last well to today.

I’ve grown up thinking that you should walk away from any building with a crack in the structure, damp in the walls, a rotten joist, or worms in the wood.  Certainly, none of those conditions are idea, but here in the UK none of those things are deal breakers.  There’s so many old buildings here that dealing with these type of issues is quite common.  One chapel we looked at as a potential conversion project had a crack on the façade big enough to slide your fingers into, and the surveyor merely mentioned that it would be an easy fix, since it hadn’t changed since the end of WWII!

We were attracted to Wales initially because it’s a little off the beaten path and therefore a little cheaper.  But after traveling around quite a bit, we’ve both some to love South Wales – it’s pretty nature, the friendly people and their melodic accents, and the range of outdoor hiking and biking.

After my first few years living as an expat in Singapore and Prague, I loved the multiculturalism, but I was craving watching a film without subtitles.  It sounds pretty simple, but I just wanted to sit through a good movie without my eye being drawn to text across the bottom of the screen.  We haven’t been to any movies in Wales just yet, and I imagine they don’t have Welsh subtitles, but it is somehow comforting having two languages on signs and in official contexts, and hearing Welsh spoken quite frequently.  About 30% of the population speak it, so it’s pretty common to hear it when out and about.  I find the language a little guttural and jarring, but English spoken with a Welsh accent is delightful!  Like the Irish accent, I find myself wanting to reply in the same accent!

We’ve been told it takes two to three months for a routine property transaction to complete.  It baffles me how it could possibly take that long, but it’s accepted as the norm here.  It’s strange to me that all the actions are sequential – you need to prove your identity before you prove your source of funds before the memorandum of sale is issued before…  You get the idea.

Since drafting this blog, the building survey we commissioned for our future house returned a large number of significant defects.  We’d expected a few issues and we’d budgeted a reasonable amount to bring the property to our standards and to make it Air BnB-able, but the survey revealed too many issues to make it viable. We had no real choice but to retract our offer to buy and pull out of the deal.

So, with no new house, we find ourselves back at square one!  Of course we’re happy to have found the faults on that property now, and, looking on the bright side, we’re clearer on our objectives now.  Now we find ourselves back at the beginning of a new search for another property, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it in the long run.

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