Sold!

We returned from our trip back to the UK exhausted and forlorn, but had no time to sit back and refresh with so many unexpected developments to come.  A house we had intended to attend the auction for failed to sell while we were away and we were invited to put in an offer.  So with our recently increased budget we set out to the estate agent to work out our best price.  Someone had already put in an offer 'deemed acceptable by the vendour' so we had to ensure our offer was at least equal to that already made if we wanted any chance to secure the property for ourselves, and after some intense haggling we finally agreed on a price.  The price was a little higher than we had hoped to go, but still well beneath that of similar properties in the area so that we still felt like we were getting a bargain.  One more person was planned to come in and make an offer before all offers would be submitted to the vendor who would then pick their favourite.

As if buying a house wasn't enough for my jetlag addled brain to deal with as we were sitting in the estate agents office I received a voicemail explaining that my interview had been shifted from 11:30 to 12 o'clock.  Now I knew I had applied for my contract to become permanent, but no one had actually bothered to tell me the interview had been scheduled for my first day back.  So with my head buzzing with a maelstrom, with jet lag, thoughts of my father, our house and my imminent on-call, I turned up to work and went straight in for my interview.  It was as you might well imagine a disaster and I was lucky to even have my current contract extended to September, the tone of the feedback I received suggested if it wasn't for my mitigating circumstances I might have been relieved of my post then and there.  The uncertainty of my employment is certainly not good news, and it was even worse considering we were on the verge of getting a mighty big mortgage.

The agent didn't keep us waiting long and we knew later that night that the vendor had considered all offers carefully and that it was very close, but we were the successful party.  When I heard the news my stomach exploded with a mixture of pure excitement and fear.  It was done, we had bought a house, subject to finance of course.  The finance, that was our next hurdle.  Our mortgage broker insisted it would only take 5 working days for the bank to sort it all out, we gave her a little longer.  Around lunch time on D-Day we still hadn't heard the confirmation we were waiting for and the agent was getting a little edgy, calling us up every day to ensure we weren't going to pull out as she still had several interested partys waiting in the wings.  A call to the broker revealed that because of the backlog of work from Easter the bank hadn't managed to get to our application yet and was currently applying for an extension for us which after much confusion and a 3 way conversation with the agent and our solicitors was finally agreed upon.  The extension proved to be pointless though as we got a call that very night to say the bank had finally got to our application.  It was mixed news, the bank valued the property the same as us, but because of the close proximity to some overhead power cables would only lend us 90% of the purchase price instead of the 95% previously agreed upon.  Our mortgage broker did a quick calculation for us and worked out we would need to save another $6,000 by settlement in order for us to be able to meet all the costs.  It didn't take us long to decide that the amount should be achievable, with Barnadi's boss Sam giving us reassurance that he could always lone us the difference if we couldn't save enough.  So it was with much celebration that we agreed to the terms of the loan and with that, we had officially bought a house.

So what can I tell you about the house?  It is in Bundoora and only an 8 minute walk for Barnadi to get to work (not so convenient for me, but at least only one of us has to commute now).  It is on a quiet residential street far enough away from the main roads to remain quite but close enough to be accessible to local shops and facilities.  The house is not huge, but has 3 bedrooms and sits on top of a 600m2 block of land, with beautifully tended gardens and a back gate that opens onto parkland.  We can't wait for settlement when we can truly call it our home.