but a block of land? Surely that's not considered a snap decision purchase, at least not normally.
But that's exactly what happened here about 4 weeks ago.
You see, the house situation has been a total pain in the bum. 12 months ago when we first began looking at upgrading to a bigger home there wasn't really a sense of urgency, although I did have in the back of my mind that at some point our cosy little 3 bedder would not cope with the strain of a toddler, a new baby and the need for office space in order to stop me from losing all our bookwork (and my sanity).
Don't even get me started on the farking kitchen.
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| Hello pantry? Where are you??? |
At first we had wanted to hold onto the house we are in now as an investment, but of course, the houses that satisfied our giant list of must-haves weren't within the budget that this would allow. We spoke to builders about extending our house as a way of prolonging the need to buy, but because of the configuration and placement of the house, the cost would far outweigh any return. We were essentially looking at a complete rebuild in some areas.
I just didn't see the point.
Reluctantly, we considered selling our house to put us into a higher price bracket, but even then the houses would need work (and $$$) for us to get what we wanted. I know, I know, we were making things hard on ourselves by being so picky but dammit if Mr Bond gets a giant Man Cave to keep all his boy crap and machinery in, I think it's only fair I get a bloody dishwasher!
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| Image Credit There it is! #dreaming |
The problem?
The bank, of course.
The application that would breeze in on paper somehow got rejected because this particular banks policy's involving personal and business debt meant we were 'unserviceable'. That's loyalty for you.
You can bet I am thinking of another 4 letter word starting with C when I see one of their ads on TV...
After months and months of searching we felt that we had exhausted all avenues and we were at the point where we felt like someone was trying to tell us that we needed to look outside of our lovely little Peninsular box and consider a completely new plan of attack. Certainly Mr Bond was feeling this way after working away for so long, maybe we would be better off packing up and doing something completely different? A change of career, a change of location, a chance to set ourselves up for the next stage of our lives before we are too invested in school enrolments and a bigger mortgage.
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| Image Credit Location, Location, Location |
I wasn't prepared to shut the door on the idea completely, especially if there was a chance to have all of us permanently living under the one roof again. I figured it was all a matter of timing and eventually the right opportunity would present itself. Besides, people happily manage in lesser conditions than us, we could certainly make it all work if we had to.
Meanwhile as we were having epiphany's and scouring Seek and Realestate.com.au for our new life in far flung locations, our Mortgage Broker had been working with alternative lenders to get us the finance we needed for the block of land. I'm sure you can guess what happened next - our finance was approved!
I remember thinking what a waste of everyone's time it had been since we were on the verge of just packing up and starting fresh all over again. At least we had approval for the money and could use it to buy a block of land anywhere, so all was not lost. We also had 6 months up our sleeve before we had to make a commitment, which took a bit of the pressure off.
Apparently Mr Bond was not only not on the same page, but he was reading a completely different chapter.
That weekend while Mr Bond was at work I got a phone call from him saying he had put an offer in on the block of land. Back up a minute, is this really what you want to do? I was a bit surprised because usually it's me who gets impatient and makes a snap decision about things like this. After all the talk about moving up the coast it was the last thing I expected him to say, but he sounded so calm and sure of his decision I wasn't about to argue.
Later that day we got confirmation that our offer had been accepted and while it was exciting, I was definitely worried about taking all this on with a baby due to arrive in a matter of months, especially since we had ignored the first rule of buying property:
SELL YOUR EXISTING HOUSE BEFORE BUYING A NEW PROPERTY.
Oh yeah, that old chestnut.
So the last month has been spent preparing the house for sale, applying as many tips and tricks as possible from Selling Houses Australia (I'm slightly addicted) and hoping that our expectations are realistic.
Now that is is done and we have a plan to move forward we both feel that it is the right thing to do. The stress of not knowing which way to go was causing us both a lot of sleepless nights, it was a relief to have made a decision. We love the area we live in and after being here for 10 years honestly I was terrified of the idea of starting over again in a new town with two small children. I am also terribly excited about getting to design a home that will give us the space, feel and functionality we have been searching for.
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| I'm pretty happy to not be leaving this |
