Death by letters...

Today all the mail started to arrive from the various parties involved in the purchase of my new place.

I received letters from:

• Estate Agent
• Mortgage Broker
• Solicitor

The estate agent wants a cheque for £250 as a deposit to show good intent.

The mortgage broker wants more documents than you can shake a shitty stick at, including my original passport and driving license! Obviously they want a copy of the contract too! Eeek fingers still crossed for tomorrow and early news. (Please please please!) Oh and they want some card details to take the minimum surveyors charge and application fees for the mortgage... about £600.

The solicitor wants lots for things signing (first born child and all that guff included) and a retainer cheque for £300.

Obviously I'm going to sit on these (but have them ready filled in and ready to go) in anticipation of the contract coming though (please please please, fingers crossed!)

Here we are at day 3 of the process of purchase and we already have outstanding bills of approximately £1150. This is an expensive game to play.

I can see how this is going to get awfully stressful in no time at all.

Offer accepted!

They've taken the bait! :)

The offer has been accepted at £340K, the place is off the market, and they have applied only one stipulation, exchange of contracts must be completed within 28 days...

As advised by Rapport, they know that Christmas is coming, and what they really mean is they want to see a survey being done in double quick time, to prove my seriousness of intent.

The vendor (or the vendor's intermediary, what will I call them... er... the Wholesalers, that's what they are) has all the documents and the supporting materials ready to go, so their side should be reasonably rapid.

Unfortunately for me it does cause a couple of problems. First of all I just wanted to put down a 5% deposit, but the mortgage lender wants audited accounts for the last three years, it would take a couple of weeks to get my accountant off his arse to do that, so no joy on the whole 28 days thing.

This means that I am going to have to go with an alternate lender who lends upon the basis of my contract rate, not on certified accounts, and that means a 10% deposit, bah humbug. It is going to be hard to get that money together at short notice.

Anyway, needs must when the devil drives (or the Wholesaler in this case).

I have instructed my solicitor, and I am awaiting the documents for the mortgage to come through. I've passed on all the details of the various parties to those that need to know, all I have to do now, is get the money moving in the right direction, and to get this job in my interview this afternoon!

Smile on full beam, time to start psyching myself up!

Problem 2 of n^2.

The vendor is clearly an alien from planet Zar'tog! More later...

This morning I was woken by my IFA asking for more details on my finances. It seems that the mortgage lender is not satisfied with my income details, and needs to see the last three years of audited accounts anyway. WTF? The whole point of going to this IFA was that I didn't need to do that. What is particularly galling is that I got my accountant to leave those details on my voicemail, transcribed them to my laptop and deleted the message, then my laptop crashed and I'm going to have to go back to him and get the figures once more. Shit I work with computers and didn't back up my work. IT Rule 1: Always backup frequently. DUH!

On top of that I'm now going to have to get my accountant to do the last years accounts early as last year was a bumper year, and I want that included in the calculations, not 2001 when the "Great Contractor Market Crash of '01" occurred! (Thank you OBL and your Al Qaida buddies!)

Back to the vendor bizarreness once more... Money-Man contacted me this morning and said that the vendor was demanding proof of my address and proof of my identity. Apparently required for anti money-laundering reasons. (Yes, I thought "WTF?" too.)

I asked if this was the next stage and they were accepting my offer on the property.

Apparently not....

My initial response was to get very pissed off, but I bit my tongue and clarified, that after yesterday's nonsense with their way of negotiation, they were now not accepting my offer, but expecting me to start jumping though hoops for them.

Apparently so....

Good grief these guys really are from another planet, do they not know how business is done here on Earth?

Long story short, I dropped by the office after I had had my lunch, and gave them a bank statement (with a £125K balance, hopefully they will stop titting me around now, when they see I have cash to buy) and my passport to copy for the vendor.

Once the copy had been made, I then made it clear that any further nonsense and I would be withdrawing my offer. I want a quick and painless sale, that was why I was only looking at empty places, and if the vendor continued to play silly buggers, I would be looking elsewhere.

I got a call from the employment agency and the interview has been set for Monday at 4PM, all mojo gratefully received.

This evening I phoned up the IFA and left a message (another five o'clocker) saying that I had contacted my accountant and he would be prepping the figures for next week.

This is a lie, all I got was my accountant's voicemail and the bugger never called back. Time for a new accountant, I've had this guy for 10 years and he has been pissing me off for the last six of them!

Shortly after that I got a call from Rapport indicating that the details were with the vendor, but since the vendor is a business, they would be closed for the weekend, so not to expect any progress until Monday. Rapport also let slip however, I am the only person though his estate agency to have put in an offer, and that neither of the other two estate agencies had put any offers in.

This means I'm in the driving seat, as far as I'm concerned.

Reading between the lines, I'm going to take it that the offer at £340K has been accepted and due diligence is being done to make sure I'm good for the cash by the vendor before they take the proposal to the actual property owner.

If this is the case, and I'm the only person with an offer in, during a falling market, especially as the market is so slow (three months ago this place would have only been on the market for a matter of days and sold within the week), I'm going to take it that I am the person in control with this game, in which case when they do come back with a formal acceptance of my offer, I think I'm going to drop the price a couple of K, just for prating me about!

What the hell, the market dropped 1.1% last month which means the place is devaluing at the rate of £950/week by my calculations based on their asking price, well these guys have made me wait a week right?

Also I think I should point out, I said my new offer was £340K, I didn't reiterate ignoring the first £3K of damage/repairs from the surveyors report bit, so we will be renegotiating no matter what, when the surveyor's report comes through, don't worry I'll be clawing that £5K back. :)

From Monday next week I shall be calling myself, "Msr. Reynard", or maybe, "The Cynical, Analytical, and Game-Playing Bastard" :D

Suggestion for readers: Never get into a negotiation/conflict situation before you find out who you are up against, in this case my opponents would be much better off knowing that I have a PhD relating to Artificial Intelligence, a large part of which comes from writing and developing Game Theory simulations. Unluckily for them, they don't know that do they! ;-)

I must make an effort not to get too big headed, they know the market, I just know the games!

Right, now for a pleasurable and most relaxing weekend. No more thoughts of all things home purchase related until Monday when I go for the interview...

Problem 1 of n.

The plan, the one for the quick an easy sale... er... it's gone tits up already! I'll get onto that in a moment though.

I was woken this morning by the solicitor responding to the voicemail I left, she went through the particulars of the sale, and came up with a frightening figure for the purchase, the total bill will come to a little over £12K including over £10K stamp duty! Add to that £500-1000 for the surveyor and the 5% for the deposit and I'm going to need about £30-32K just to purchase this place... And that's assuming the price stays at £335K, which it won't. Eeek, I'd better start moving some money from my various investments and savings accounts. She told me to contact her once my offer on the property had been accepted and then she could get things underway. All very thorough and efficient, that's what I'm looking for.

As expected, shortly after that I got a call from the mortgage broker guy, he listened to my financial particulars, said he could see no problems and he would let the estate agency know to proceed.

Back to the problems...

Had a chat with the chaps who were going to pay me to work for them, seems the funds for the job are coming from the US, now I have another reason to viscerally hate GW Bush, his trashing of the US economy means that my almost employers can't afford to pay me due to the terrible exchange rate on the USD to GBP (or "Cable" as we call USD-GBP in the foreign exchange investment banking sector).

Luckily I was called about an hour before that conversation by an employment agency, saying that a Japanese investment house wanted to interview me for a position, so all is not lost! They will be getting back to me tomorrow with a date and time for the interview.

So it seems that I am unable to legitimately progress with the mortgage application. Note the use of the word "legitimately". Obviously I intend to carry on, on the offchance I manage to land the job from the interview or get a position after all the running around I did over the last week. More fingers crossed. If you haven't already got your fingers crossed, do so now. :) (If you have, cross them harder please. :D)

Predictably the vendor was not interested in my offer, no news there, I was expecting that.

The story stops being linear and goes a bit exponential here though.

The guy who phoned me from the estate agency to tell me this was not the guy who I have been dealing with to date. Now when someone does a switch like this, my first reaction is to want to know why. It is a common tactic in sales, to have a good cop/bad cop thing going on.

So I'm thinking, OK I have one guy who's really nice and shows me around the property always phoning me and keeping me informed and building up that rapport. Now I have been passed onto someone else to do the money thing, I'm thinking here comes the bad cop bit.

As it turned out, I'm right on the button!

This new guy claims that the vendor is actually a company working for a mortgage lender who has reposessed the property. (Well that explains the quick sale and the empty property I guess.) It turns out the way they do business is to find out what my biggest offer will be and decide if they are going to take that or not.

Since I wasn't born yesterday, I politely declined his offer to be totally shafted in the negotiations... Duh! He then became very aggressive with the salesmanship, "I know what you mean, but this is just they way these guys do business, I'm dealing with an administrator here, they're like robots, what is on their screen as the minimum price is all they will accept, they demand the top price you will pay and they work from there, so what's your top price?"

Obviously this guy was not getting the message, so I reiterated my position, "I don't care how they do business, I'm not telling you my top bid, you're working for them not me, so it's my job to know what I'll go up to, and its their job to meet me somewhere in the middle".

"Well they've rejected £335K, what are you prepared to top out at?"

I know this guy is just trying to play me, but I'm having no more of this, he's just asking me the same thing over and over again, and not listening to the bits he doesn't want to hear, I came back with, "I'll go to £340K".

"Is that you absolute maximum bid?"

"Maybe, maybe not, who knows, I may go to £350K, £400K, £450K, if they aren't going to give any hints or play the game, if they aren't going to come back with a counter offer, fine, I'm just going to increase my offer bit by bit until they accept or I hit the limit I may or may not have, tell them whatever you want, but I'm not playing the game their way."

"OK, I'll go to them and tell them your top bid is £340K".

"Yeah, you do that".

I was phoned up by the usual guy at the end of the working day, the chap I shall now dub Rapport (The other guy is going to be called Money-Man), "Just to let you know, the new offer has been passed over to the vendor, but they haven't come back to us yet, so you'll probably hear tomorrow".

Let's see what they come up with tomorrow, and hope that the interview comes though sooner rather than later. (Although I did tell the employment agency that I was available tomorrow and Monday only, in order to motivate them into quick action.)

A job, all but the paperwork.

Went to see my ex-superior at my ex-client today, we stepped out an had a coffee.

There were a couple of things I needed from him so that I could get the ball moving on the mortgage application.

• A minimum of a six month contract.
• A minimum rate of £450/day, but £500 would be nice.

Their intention was to make it a four month contract, but I persuaded him that they could make it a six month contract and just terminate it with a 30 days notice after three months, he was cool with that.

And as for rate, they were looking to pay between £400-500/day, so that all looked good, the final figure was to be announce later but he was prepared to commit to somewhere between £450-500/day which was all I needed to be comfortable with the mortgage application.

When the meeting/coffee was done, I headed off towards another meeting with an agent, an actual good one who wanted to meet a potential candidate before sending a CV to a client (unheard of these days!).

En route to the other meeting, I phoned up the specialist Independent Financial Advisor (IFA) that I have found who specialises in dealing with contractors, he manages to arrange mortgages based upon multiples of daily/hourly rates rather then the usual salary. Lets face it my salary is small and my dividend income is huge, its a great way of reducing taxes paid, problem is most mortgage lenders don't include dividend income in your calculations. :( I got him on the ball, getting an agreement in principle for the mortgage.

I also called the estate agent and made arrangement to see the property at night, to make sure it was still OK in the dark.

After my second meeting, I rushed home and then drove onto the Stapleton Hall Road (while giving financial details to the IFA on the hands free, very naughty!) and had a look around.

It still looked nice, the property is on the market for £370K, I put in an offer for £335K. And stressed all the stuff from the previous post as discussed with my brother and his girlfriend.

The estate agent said that I would have to be vetted before they would contact the vendor with the offer, and to that extent someone from a mortgage brokerage would contact me tomorrow morning to ask a few questions and see if I was good for the mortgage.

I also got the number of the solicitor who did my brother's conveyancing, she managed to get the whole thing done very rapidly, so I'm going to instruct with her to do the same rapid job for me. I left a message on her voicemail (obviously this was after five, and all solicitors have gone home at five on the dot! :)

Obviously I don't expect my first offer to be accepted, but you never know... Stranger things have happened. Fingers crossed.

Lets see what happens! Excited! That's! Me!

A Job!

I was e-mailed by one of my ex-clients today, it seems they have a position for me.

This is good, this job was the best one I have ever had (23 to date, contractors certainly do get though employment), these guys are the best, the don't pay too well, but I really did enjoy working with them.

I have arranged to drop by and see them in their new office tomorrow and see what we can negotiate!

I also fielded a call from the estate agent, seeing if I was interested, I played it cool and said I was still looking at the photos I had taken, I was interested but not going to rush into anything.

Fielding phone calls

Spent a lot of time today speaking to contract agencies on the phone, the game for a job has begun!

Nothing to report on the buying a house front.

Spoke to my brother

My brother has just bought a place, and is in the know with the whole process.

I told him the place was on the market for £370K and I was going to put in an offer for £350K, both he and his girlfriend were astounded that my offer was going to be so high, they suggested that my offer be as follows:

• Purchase price £335K.
• No need to renegotiate if there was less than 3K of work needed to be done post surveyors report.
• Stress that I am a first time buyer, hence NO CHAIN.
• Stress that I am hot to move quickly.
• Stress that I have the cash in the bank and the mortgage arranged.
• Stress that the market is dropping currently, every month they leave it will cost them another couple of £K on the selling price
• Demand that once the offer is accepted that the property comes off the market with all estate agents.

I should note that the property is listed with three different estate agencies, since estate agencies will charge more for this competitive service (they may after all advertise the property and one of their competitors sells it, so they receive no commission), this is usually an indication that the vendor is looking to sell quickly or that they are under financial duress. In this case since the property is empty, I'm guessing that the current owner is paying for a mortgage and a very expensive bridging loan while they are owner of both properties.

More viewing

Dropped by the estate agents for a further viewing of both properties at midday today.

I remain unconvinced about Ashley Road, it hasn't grown on me, so I'll have to give that one a permanent miss I think.

However, I think I may have fallen in love with Stapleton Hall Road, this place is so big an roomy, it has a lovely bit of decking at the back of the house to sit out and enjoy the air with, the rooms are huge, there is loads of space, it's all looking good. I'm going to have to com back and see the place in the evening, and see how it plays upto scrutiny in the dark.

There are a few things wrong with the place, the en-suite shower room on the top floor has flooded at some point, and this has damaged the wooden floor there, the ceiling in the kitchen has been repaired where it came though, the area over the door in the kitchen needs to be painted as a result too, and the floor in the kitchen needs to be revarnished where I guess the ceiling came down. Finally there is damp between and underneath the bay windows in the living room which I am informed has been fixed, and just needs the cosmetics doing to it. As ever I shall take expert advice on this from a surveyor if we get to that stage. Only a fool would trust the word of an estate agent, he is after all a man employed by the vendor not the buyer!

I shall have to get the whole mortgage thing seriously underway. And that means getting a contract sorted out sharpish. (I'm an IT contractor for investment banks in The City.) This isn't the best time to be looking, but I'm sure something will come up. (Keep positive!)

Once I have a job signed sealed and delivered, I think I'll be putting in an offer for this place.

Who would have thought that the second place I saw would be the one? I was honestly expecting to have to go and see tens of places maybe even hundreds. I guess sometimes you have to strike lucky.

The rest of the day was spent contacting ex-clients looking for work, and scouring the usual job listing sites and applying for consideration for contracts. About 12 applications in all I think. I'm pretty hopefull that one will come up.

I have a vision!

This morning I woke up with the notion that it is time to buy a home.

To that end I got up and walked the length of the Stroud Green Road and Crouch Hill and registered with every estate agency I found.

One estate agent called me just 10 minutes after I had left his office and told me, "My 2:30 has cancelled, would I like to look at some places? (It was a terrible lie, but I humoured him. I am such a cynic!)

So on day one of the search for a new shell, this little crab got to look at a couple of places one on Ashley Road and one on Stapleton Hall Road.

Since I didn't have a camera or notepad to hand (and with my known tendency to merge things in my head if I don't take copious notes), I arranged to go and look again at both properties tomorrow.

Ashley road I was not too keen on, it had lots of built in storage space, but the kitchen was awful, I would have had to swap the bathroom and kitchen so the kitchen was bigger and hence usable, don't think I'll be progressing on that one somehow.

I really like the look of the Stapleton Hall Road place, it's a four bedroom maisonette, on the second, third and fourth floor of a converted Victorian residence. One of the bedrooms has been converted into an office (excellent, just what I need), the master bedroom has an en suite shower room and a walk in wardrobe. The guest bedroom is sizeable, and the single bedroom is comfortably big enough for my daughter when she visits at the weekends. The living room is huge and has a double door through to the kitchen which is the same size with a really nice fitted kitchen including a big five ring stove. Lots and lots of space I really like space! Finally it is right next to a train station that will get me into The City in 13-15 minutes! Yay!

Obviously this is only the second place I have seen so I have to keep some perspective.

I have just come off the phone with a specialist IFA who deals primarily with contractors like myself, time to sort out a mortgage. The plan is to get a tracker mortgage with a offset account option, with the minimum deposit allowed. Then whack my not inconsiderable savings into the offset account and minimise the interest I'm paying while still keeping the flexibility to get my money out if I decide to buy another place. This way I don't have to go though the polava of a remortgage to get the cash out again, but I still get a very low cost mortgage without committing my funds to the deposit.