We Bought a House!
Nick and I successfully navigated the insane England house buying process, and we got the keys to our house last Thursday. To say that it is different from buying a house in the US would be an understatement.
After naively making an offer on a house about six months ago and not being chosen, we decided we had no idea what we were doing so we needed to call in help.
It is NOT common for people to have buyer's agents here. In most cases, you are on your own as the buyers, navigating the whole process from offer to completion yourself. The sellers will have estate agents acting for them, but those agents are working in THEIR best interest not yours (so be aware of this when getting information).
If you want a buyer's agent you will be paying a pretty penny for it (usually anywhere from 1-3% of the purchase price of the home). I'm happy to provide a recommendation if anyone is popping on here from London and needs an agent. Usually you are paying a buyer's agent for the full search to completion, but our agent had the option to find a property ourselves and then he would step in for a lower fee. We ended up doing this because a property came on the market one street over from where we are living now, in our ideal location so we jumped on it.
One of the first things he said to us was, "You know, I've always heard the saying 'the worst house on the best street', but I've never come across it in real life." And he wasn't wrong. It needs a lot of love, and I've already had to double my meditation time every day to fend off the overwhelm. (I'm sure Nick would say I should triple it.)
But here we are, 2.5 months after we made an initial offer with keys in hand. Honestly, it shouldn't have worked out for us because we were up against mortgage challenges (shout-out to our awesome mortgage broker), there were 8 other offers on it including some builders probably offering cash, and there were days where it seemed easier to wait it out for a house that was at least liveable.
We didn't give up though, and we trudged ahead with the mentality that if this wasn't meant for us we would come up against a cement wall. And we never did. There were some very small windows we had to crawl through, but we found a way.
Now, we are on the journey of finding an architect, a builder, navigating planning permissions in a conservation area, and party wall contracts (thanks terraced houses). It will be worth it.
